Start where you are: plan where you want to go. Talk to someone who already has a homestead, the animals, or the garden you think you’d like to have. Budget for the time the farm needs; it will always need more time than you expect. It’s difficult not to want to rush headlong into doing everything all at once. I get it because I wanted to as well, but that’s the best way to  burnout and feel like a failure.

The Kansas Rural Center is excited to address that need and is happy to announce that enrollment is open for our very first “Farm Beginnings” training, which will run for eight weeks from January 15 – March 10.

Throughout 2022 half of my job has been to work toward developing a beginning farmer and rancher training curriculum that the Kansas Rural Center can use to provide education to annual cohorts of new farmers who desire further education about farming but may not want to or be able to enroll in an agriculture program at a Kansas community college or state university.

Though it’s true that many of the new farmers I’ve spoken with struggle with land and capital access, they face many other roadblocks that I didn’t necessarily expect.