Women's Agricultural Network Blog

Vermont Farm Women’s Fund Grants
Deadline: October 25, 2009.
The Vermont Farm Women’s Fund (VFWF) is offering its next round of grants to help women farmers improve their businesses or become more involved in agricultural policy development. The fund provides two kinds of awards: Farm Business Development awards provide support for education and travel related to helping recipients improve some aspect of their business. Leadership Development awards provide support to help women farmers develop skills, access and opportunities to provide leadership in agricultural policy development. Farmers can use awards to help research and develop new products; conduct feasibility studies; and to attend workshops, conferences and classes to learn new marketing, business management and value-added production skills and knowledge. Additionally, applicants for either award may request funds to help defray associated travel, childcare, and replacement labor. Grants are capped at $750. Average award size to date has been $608. Visit Vermont Farm Women’s Fund for more information. Click on the “Upcoming Deadlines and Applications” link on the left to get to the online application form. Or, you can request an application package by calling 802-223-2389×15.
Southern SARE Invites Producer Proposals
Deadline: November 24, 2009
The call for proposals have been released for the 2010 Southern Region SARE Producer Grants. Proposals are due by November 15, 2009. Obtain the calls at: http://www.southernsare.uga.edu/callpage.htm3 Southern SARE producer grants are only open to farmers and/or ranchers or producer organizations. Any farmer/rancher or producer organization in the US Southern Region is eligible to apply for the grants which have maximums of $10,000 for individual producers and $15,000 for producer organizations to be used within two years. The Southern Region is comprised of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Puerto Rico and the U.S.Virgin Islands.

The Farm to Plate (F2P) Initiative, approved at the end of the last legislative session, directs the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, working in collaboration with the Sustainable Agriculture Council and other stakeholder groups, to develop a 10-year strategic plan to strengthen Vermont’s farm and food sector.
F2P will identify critical bottlenecks and priority investment areas that will help increase economic development activity to achieve a diversified and appropriately-scaled farm and food sector which serves both in-state and regional consumer markets to stimulate economic development in Vermont’s farm and food sector.
The strategic plan is due to be complete by June 30, 2010, so we need your feedback today! Please take a moment to fill out an online version of the F2P Survey.
The Farm to Plate Initiative will be seeking community input through a series of regional Local Food Summits in November. These plans are newly in the works and F2P staff are scurrying to contact regional food centers and other local groups to help host and arrange dates, locations, and logistics for these meetings. If you’d like to join the F2P mailing list and stay informed about progress, please send an email to heather@vsjf.org.
For more information, please visit the Farm to Plate website.

I recently had some time off which was wonderful because it provided time to recharge my well with the energy that I’ll need to get through the next few busy months. But time off is not always a good thing for me because it gives me too much time to think about new ideas, new programs, new projects that would be fun to get started.
I find myself in a familiar pattern. Crazy, busy schedule leads me to shut down on new ideas and leaves me feeling drained. So I take time off, get rested, read some books, hear some new ideas, meet up with interesting people. Then I find myself taking on a lot of projects, starting new initiatives, and filling my schedule to capacity again. Which brings the wheel full-cycle. Since I recognize the pattern you might think that I’d do something about it but no, I choose to relive it over and over.
I finally figured out that there must be something in the pattern that I enjoy. And I’ve noticed that I’m not alone. Many of the farmers and business owners that I talk to seem to be on the same roller-coaster. In the past I’ve counseled these busy professionals to manage their priorities better, make informed decisions, and separate the urgent tasks from the important tasks and focus on the important. I still think all that advice makes sense and this year I’m going to dedicate myself to taking some of my own advice. But in the meantime it may be that we will all have to acknowledge that these race and rest patterns of activity are just another way of living in our ramped up world. So in these last days of the harvest season take care, rest when you can and look ahead to the next rest cycle.