Anyone interested in learning about a wide-variety of farming and agriculture-related topics are invited to join in this year’s Practical Farmer’s of Iowa’s farminar series.

It is an interactive, online series of free programs designed to educate the public on several topics such as Whole Farm Revenue Protection, a new crop insurance product, retaining customers in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) businesses, adding small grains to a crop rotation, custom grazing with goats, creating a viable small-scale vegetable farm, selecting and growing oats, working with cereal rye, effectively marketing fresh produce, how to make meat pricing decisions, differences between two specialty crop insurance options, preventing and responding to pesticide drift and implications for farmers of the Food Safety Modernization Act.

Each weekly webinar program will be on Tuesdays from 7-8:30pm starting January 13th through March 31st.  It will be led by farmers and is open to anyone with the ability to ask questions to the presenters in real time.

Jefferson farmer Bill Frederick will conduct one of the programs on Tuesday, February 3rd.  The topic of the farminar is “Setting Up Fall and Spring Small Grain Production for Success”.  It will cover practical aspects of successful small grains in association with field preparation, plant populations and planter settings, stand assessments and harvest tactics.

Frederick will be speaking about growing small grains, such as oats, wheat and rye for both grain production and fodder for livestock.  Other speakers included in the program are another farmer from Adel, Dustin Farnsworth and small grains researcher David Weisberger

You can participate in the discussions by having a working computer with an Internet connection.  Then logon to practicalfarmers.org/farminar and click the link to connect and sign in as “Guest”.  Anyone with questions can call 515-232-5661.