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Workshops and classes, and what we would teach
Learning to make the thing yourself, taught by the people who grew what you are making it from.
Teaching people to make the thing themselves is something we intend to do here. A wreath in November, an arrangement in June, or the far less glamorous business of getting something to grow in your own yard.
It fits this farm particularly well because both halves of it are skills rather than products. Somebody who spends an evening learning to build a wreath leaves with the wreath and with the ability to make the next one.
What follows is what we have in mind. None of it is running yet, and which parts happen first depends a great deal on what people say they would actually turn up for.
What we would teach
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Wreath making, in the run up to winter
The obvious first one. Late fall, everybody around a table with greens and wire, and you go home with a wreath you made. It is the workshop that most naturally already exists inside what the floral side is doing anyway.
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Arranging what the season gave you
Not a set recipe but the actual skill, which is looking at what is in front of you and making something of it. That is the useful version, because it works again next week with completely different flowers.
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Growing a few things at home
Alex is fond of the point that anybody can put a herb box on a windowsill and have a little more say over what they eat. The gap between that and a vegetable bed is smaller than most people think, and it is very teachable.
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Keeping a harvest
Storing, canning and putting food up for a winter. It is the least fashionable subject on this list and probably the most genuinely useful, because it is what turns a good garden into food you eat in February.
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Small groups, hands on
Few enough people that everybody actually gets shown rather than watching from the back. A workshop where you leave without having properly made the thing is a demonstration, and demonstrations are not what we want to run.
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Taught by the people who grew it
The material comes from the field it is being taught in, and the person teaching knows why it behaves the way it does. That is the difference between a class at a farm and the same class held anywhere else.
How we plan to get there
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1
Start with the wreath run
The materials, the timing and the skill are already there every November. Turning that into a table of people making their own is the smallest step from what the floral side is doing to a workshop that works.
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Somewhere to actually hold one
A table, shelter, and a way for people to arrive that does not run through a family's kitchen. That is part of what the move to the back place is meant to make possible rather than something to improvise around.
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3
Run a couple and listen
Two or three, kept small, offered to the list. What people ask about afterward tends to be a better guide to the next class than anything we would come up with on our own.
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4
Build a small calendar
A handful across a year, tied to what is actually happening on the farm at that moment. A workshop in the right week teaches itself. The same workshop in the wrong month is a lot of work for a worse result.
Why teaching belongs on a farm like this
There is a version of a small farm that sells you food and a version that also hands over a bit of the knowledge behind it. The second one is more work and it is much more in keeping with why these two are doing this at all.
Alex talks about it in terms of what a household can take back. Get a deep freeze and fill it from a farm nearby. Put a herb box on the windowsill. Learn to keep a harvest. None of those turn anybody into a farmer, and all of them move somebody a little further toward having a say over what they eat.
A workshop is the most direct way to hand that over. Somebody leaves able to do the thing rather than merely owning the result of it, which for the kind of person this farm is trying to reach is worth more than the wreath.
It also happens to suit a farm with two halves. There is something to teach in November and something completely different to teach in June, which means a small calendar of classes fits the year rather than competing with it.
Questions people ask
Are workshops running now?
Not yet. They need somewhere sensible to hold them and a farm with enough of a rhythm to plan around, both of which are being worked toward. The list is where the first ones will be announced.
What would the first one be?
Almost certainly wreath making in the late fall, because the materials, the timing and the skill are already there every November. It is the shortest step from what the floral side is doing today.
How big would a class be?
Small, and deliberately so. Few enough people that everybody actually gets shown and leaves having properly made the thing, rather than watching somebody else do it from the back of a room.
Do I need any experience?
No. These are aimed at people who have never done it before and would like to. Anyone who has done it plenty will probably still pick something up, but that is not who they are built for.
Could you teach growing rather than flowers?
That is very much on the list. Getting a few things going at home, and keeping a harvest through a winter, are both more useful than they sound and both are things we would rather teach than gatekeep.
How do I hear when one is scheduled?
Through the list. Classes will be small and tied to specific weeks, so they will fill from the people already following along. Telling us which subject interests you also helps decide which runs first.
Elsewhere on the farm
What would you want to learn?
Which class runs first follows what people actually ask for. Tell us on the list and it genuinely moves the order.
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