Workshops and Courses
Using place-based, experiential education, our curriculum provides the practical and intellectual skills necessary to work with nature. Participants learn to apply these skills to their own places. Through the Institute's humanities cornerstone, participants cultivate the creative and critical use of their minds. They learn to determine what is appropriate for and feasible in their places. They will develop a strong sense of where they fit into agricultural history and what they have to add to it.
“The Berry Center Farm & Forest institute provides such a unique learning experience. I love having an outside classroom to learn. For me, it is the most useful way to learn and retain information. Hands-on, visual, active learning in a natural setting— it just doesn’t get much better than that in my opinion! Transitioning to a farm from the city, there are several things I don’t even know to ask about. These small, intimate, and hands-on classes really help me learn about the farm skills that are all very useful in my everyday life on a farm.”
-Winter/Spring 2024 participant
Low-Impact Forestry Courses
The series of courses provides practical training in:
conducting a woodland inventory
selecting trees for harvest
tree felling with chainsaws
low-impact log extraction methods with a mid-sized farm tractor with forestry winch and draft horses
adding value to wood products such as on-farm milling of logs to lumber
using draft horses for timber extraction
Cooperative Economics, Thought, and Rural Leadership Courses
These courses, field days, and workshops highlight the culture of agriculture. Participants hone farming and rural leadership skills by blending economics, history, literature, practical and cultural arts, and good land management. Drawing from a lineage of agrarians (including Wendell Berry and those who most influenced him), participants learn how to connect the health of land and people through agriculture. This curriculum equips farmers–and the people who support them–to understand their places in agricultural history; use Wendell Berry’s writing and other agrarian literature and resources to advocate for healthy farms and forests; determine farm-based solutions that can pay for themselves; cultivate an agricultural economy of cooperation, parity, and democracy; and practice neighborly leadership.
