Lauren Olson – Page 3

January 7, 2022Lauren Olson

Boosting Your Business and Marketing Skills: Ag and Food Producers Academy

Winter is an excellent time to learn new marketing and business skills to streamline your food or farm operation in the coming year. Taking the time now to prioritize goals could lead you to succeed in your marketing aspirations. But what to learn and where to look in a time where there is so much online? At Cornell Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County, we are putting on the Ag & Food Producers Academy that starts this month on January 15th! It’s available for existing and planning stages entrepreneurs in the 6-county northern New York region. There are 4 course tracks to choose from, and all online sessions meet on weekday evenings.

Reasons to Participate

Hear from industry professionals. All the instructors for these courses work day in and day out with farmers and entrepreneurs. For example, Nicole Tommell is a Farm Management Specialist with 15+ years of experience advising producers on business planning and financing. You can hear her lead participants in the Prepare to Succeed: Business and Financing Options Course.

Nicole Ouellette, Jeremy Bloom, Flip Filippi, Nicole Tomell and Lauren Olson

December 13, 2021Lauren Olson

Food Producers Talk Social Media: Top Takeaways!

Did you miss our recent webinar Food Producers Talk Social Media? Wondering about some tips to implement in your own social media marketing? Catch a recap of our Producer Panel Conversation, where you can hear from Dan Rivera of Triple Green Jade Farm, Jessica Bouharevich of White Rainbow Farm, and Cori Deans of Small Town Cultures.

Our featured entrepreneurs had some useful tips, check out our favorites below. If you’d like to see the entire session, find the recording HERE.

Use your authentic voice when talking about your farm or food products. People want to hear from you and your role in the business. Speaking about your farm operation or food items in a real and honest way is the best way to connect with current and potential customers.

Dan: When starting a food or farm business it’s a nice idea to document what it is that you are doing. Showcase to people what it is that you are spending your time on, be authentic with your business, don’t get caught up in what you should be doing. Focus on WHAT you are actually doing and focus on quality over quantity of posts.

Triplegreenjadefarm: Insta post text: ‘Filled our raised beds yesterday with compost and topsoil. 1.5 cubic yards shoveled out by hand in about an hour. Go to know for the future! “What’s this got to do with our bread oven, you ask?” Well, most of the herbs (rosemary, cilantro, dill, for example) and veggies that we will include in our hearth-baked bread recipes will be organically grown right here. The rest will be for our own homestead garden use. #raisedbeds #dirt # gettingdirty’

Don’t automatically count out certain platforms just because you think they won’t do well or you don’t want to use them.
Read more Food Producers Talk Social Media: Top Takeaways!

October 24, 2021Lauren Olson

Cranberry Harvest at Deer River

You may not think of cranberries as a North Country crop, but we have one commercial bog producing over 80 acres of this autumn fruit. Deer River Cranberries was established in Brasher Falls over 20 years ago and the Local Foods team at Extension caught up with the managers to learn about and photograph the entire harvest.

So how do cranberries get from the bog to your table?

Each ‘bog’ is like a garden bed that’s sunk a foot or two deep and is 5 acres in size. With 15 bogs currently in production, Deer River produces 1 million pounds of berries in an average year (though this year’s crop was earlier and smaller than usual due to cranberry tipworm).