Agriculture Training Center

cultivating farmers, food, and community

Organic Farm School | Organic Seed Project | Workshops and Events | Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) | Staff/Contact | In the News | back to Agriculture

The Agriculture Training Center has four main projects or areas of focus:

• 

  Students learn to operate equipment safely

  Organic Farm School – seven month residential program for aspiring farmers seeking to learn and practice the technical and business skills needed to run a small scale organic farm.

• Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Produce Shares – receive locally-grown, organic produce for 20 weeks. Shares are available in two sizes.

• Organic Seed Project – through grant funded projects, the ATC offers organic vegetable seed education, production and improvement activities.

• Workshop/Events – the ATC hosts periodic educational activities and programs throughout the year.

Studying in the classroom

Organic Farm School

Overview

This full-time, 7-month long expe­ri­en­tial pro­gram is for aspir­ing farm­ers seek­ing to learn and prac­tice the tech­ni­cal and busi­ness skills needed to run a small scale organic farm. Through coop­er­a­tively man­ag­ing the Center’s eight-acre farm and attend­ing weekly lec­tures, dis­cus­sions and demon­stra­tions on top­ics includ­ing organic crop pro­duc­tion, soil sci­ence, busi­ness plan­ning, and direct mar­ket­ing, par­tic­i­pants will acquire a thor­ough edu­ca­tion in organic small farm man­age­ment.

For more information, visit the Organic Farm School page or download the OFS booklet for prospective students.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Shares

Picking basil on harvest day

If you love good food, you  will love receiving our  freshly har­vested organic veg­eta­bles burst­ing with fla­vor and nutri­tion for 20 weeks this summer! Grown by the staff and stu­dents of the Green­bank Farm Ag Train­ing Cen­ter, your mem­ber­ship helps sup­port our non­profit edu­ca­tional cen­ter while pro­vid­ing you with top qual­ity veg­eta­bles at an afford­able price. Click here for more info on signing up!

Organic Seed Project

The Greenbank Farm Ag Training Center is excited to have begun incorporating vegetable seed crops into our production activities and education curriculum. We feel that seed stewardship is an important, yet commonly overlooked, component of developing a sustainable local farm and food system. Activities at the ATC include workshops, field days, variety trials, seed production, plant breeding and community building around organic seed. For 2013 we have funding from WSDA SCBGP to work on strengthening our regional organic seed community. Click here for more information or to get involved!

Workshop/Events

For a list of our workshops and events that are open to the public, please visit our Calendar of Events page.

Certified Organic

Our farm is cer­ti­fied organic and par­tic­i­pants are taught key cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stan­dards as well as how to cer­tify a farm. Stu­dents are involved in all required record keep­ing and par­tic­i­pate in the annual cer­ti­fi­ca­tion inspection.

Contact Us

For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:
Sebas­t­ian Aguilar
Train­ing Director
trainingcenter@greenbankfarm.com
(360)222‑3171
765 Wonn Rd A-201
Green­bank, WA, 98253

Ag Training Center Partners

The small farms and farm­ers of Puget Sound
The Organic Seed Alliance
WSU Island County Exten­sion
WSU Mount Ver­non Research Cen­ter
Tilth Pro­duc­ers of Wash­ing­ton & South Whid­bey Tilth
Goose­foot
Good Cheer Com­mu­nity Food Bank Garden 
Deer Lagoon Grange
Whid­bey Insti­tute 

Support for our Programs and Educational Training

The con­tin­ued cre­ation of a sus­tain­able agri­cul­tural sys­tem that includes our land, our food — our health – and our com­mu­nity, will be in the hands of the small but grow­ing group of moti­vated young farm­ers that are start­ing small-scale, organic, direct-market farm­ing oper­a­tions around the coun­try. These young farm­ers have the pas­sion, intel­lect and strength to over­come the hur­dles placed before us by the grad­ual indus­tri­al­iza­tion of agri­cul­ture over the past 150 years. To ensure that these farm­ers suc­ceed, they must have access to oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn and expe­ri­ence the best man­age­ment prac­tices of organic farm­ing as well as how to plan and oper­ate finan­cially prof­itable busi­nesses. The Organic Farm School has taken on this mis­sion and has suc­cess­fully pro­vided its stu­dents with a com­pre­hen­sive edu­ca­tion in how to start and oper­ate a small-scale organic farm.

Our sup­port comes from pri­vate and pub­lic sources: indi­vid­u­als, foun­da­tions, busi­nesses and grants from the United States Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture. We are a pro­gram of the Green­bank Farm not-for-profit organization.

For the past three years, we have been build­ing the farm infra­struc­ture nec­es­sary to sup­port our land stew­ard­ship activ­i­ties and small farm busi­ness activ­i­ties. This includes stu­dent hous­ing, work­spaces, tools, green­houses, trac­tors, imple­ments, fenc­ing and an irri­ga­tion sys­tem. While a basic and func­tional sys­tem has been put into place, infra­struc­ture is expen­sive and in farm­ing – most costs are ‘front end’ costs. We have many improve­ments to bet­ter demon­strate best prac­tices planned and a fundrais­ing effort is under­way to accom­plish them.

Please con­sider a gift to our pro­gram. For more infor­ma­tion on giv­ing to the Ag. Train­ing Cen­ter contact us at gbfarm@greenbankfarm.com or 360.678.7710.