Through his Moon & Stars project, Nando Jaramillo has been connecting community, traditional food, and regenerative farming through heirloom corn and the arepa-making process.
Nando has been working with workshop co-host Willie Gibson, CCA, agronomist with the White River NRCD, for a few years to manage the land he leases under Certified Organic standards & innovative cropping strategies for optimal corn production and to generate soil/ecosystem health. Floricola Farm has been a cooperative host for Nando, with about 35 acres of long-time field corn land being transitioned to perennial pasture and crop rotation.
Through this partnership, this work is also exploring the role of agroforestry, creating space to test how practices like cover cropping & planned future grazing can function within and alongside tree-based systems and how soil and management context inform options when the goal is to increase water and nutrient cycling and overall soil health.
Come tour the farm to hear about these collaborations in action—the successes, challenges, and lessons learned—and join the conversation as we dig into soil health and talk about how the path to improving it is often crooked.
We aim for this event to be accessible to all! Please reach out if you have mobility needs that we can accommodate. Parking will be located across the street from the cornfield adjacent to the yellow farmstand. Folks will need to cross the street (a very short walk) for the field-based workshop, which is happening on the river side of Rt 14. If needed, we can park a few vehicles next to the corn planting. Also, if you're bringing small children, please keep in mind that we'll be relatively close (~40 ft) to a busy road with a 50 MPH speed limit.
This workshop earns one RAP Agricultural Water Quality education credit and is supported by the Transition to Organic Partnership Program.
Moon and Stars is a Resilience Grant Awardee.
Cost: $35 member, $45 non-member, free for farmers thanks to generous support from TOPP, free for BIPOC*
*We aim to keep our event prices low for everyone, but if the cost of registration is a barrier, please reach out to request a scholarship. Additionally, NOFA-VT offers the option of free registration to anyone who identifies as Black, Indigenous, or a person of color (BIPOC) in an effort to actively work toward dismantling systems of racism that have historically disadvantaged BIPOC and continue to do so today. Learn more.
Co-hosted by:
