Farmland for the Next Generation

- First of all, good evening and thank you all for joining us.

We are recording tonight's sessions and all of the sessions for the remainder of the webinar, and we will share those with you.

We do hope that you will stay with us and participate and ask questions, but the recordings will be there if you do need them.

I wanna welcome you on behalf of the Farmland for the Next Generation team led by Christi Powell, and we appreciate her leadership on this project.

Our series is on finding, leasing and purchasing land in Pennsylvania.

Our format tonight will be a brief introduction, making sure that we get everybody up to speed on Zoom, and go over all the housekeeping details, get all questions answered, and then make sure that we're here for you to answer all your questions going forward for the remainder of the webinar.

Our agenda for the evening is as follows.

My name is Linda Falcone and I will be your master of ceremony, I guess, tonight, and then I will introduce you to my colleagues on the team, and we'll do a brief presentation on how to use Zoom then we'll go over the format that each night we'll take in the webinars, how to find the course materials to make sure that you can look through them at your leisure, then we'll go over some general information that will help you as you begin your process of searching, or maybe you're already farming, but you're trying to expand your offerings.

So we'll give you some access to some resources out there.

We wanna find out a little bit more about you.

So we're gonna do some polls tonight so that our presenters get to know you a little, and we have a survey that we would like you to participate in.

All of the polls and surveys are anonymous.

So you needn't worry about that information being retained or any kind of personal links to any of that, and then as I said, we are going to stay on until everyone's questions tonight are answered, or we have the set of questions that you would like us to have answered during the webinar.

So if you are having any kinda technical difficulty, I put a link into chat for Dana, who is our technical assistant this evening.

Thank you, Dana, and my email is also in there and you're welcome to reach out to me anytime during this webinar if you have a question or a quick, you know, something you need followed up on, I'd be happy to help you with that.

So I think we've got most everybody in, and Dana has hit record, I believe, and we'll go ahead and get started.

Oops, so Penn State is an equal opportunity organization.

We do not discriminate based on age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, service in the uniform services, veteran status, sex, sexual orientation, marital or family status, pregnancy or related conditions, gender identity, genetic information, or political ideas.

Discriminatory conduct is not tolerated at the institution.

We also want you to know that this presentation is available in alternative media upon request.

So you can just get in touch with me if there's anything that we can do to help you, in that where trade names or vendors appear, no discrimination is intended and no endorsement by Penn State Extension is implied.

Some of those technicalities.

This is the good news about this project right here.

We'd like to acknowledge our funder for this project, which is the USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program grants and the American Farmland Trust.

This evening and the other webinars, and all of the material have been made available to us because of these grants.

This is our award number, and this grant allows us to offer this workshop at no charge to you and give all this information to you.

So we're very pleased that we were the recipient of this award.

The grant looks at land access and saving for long-term assets.

So it combines two approaches for addressing the common barrier for new and beginning farmers and ranchers.

As I mentioned, I'm Linda Falcone, and you can reach out to me anytime this week for any help that you might need.

One of our teammates who could not be with us this evening, if you are there, Maria, do let me know, but she has actually taken another position at another Extension university at University of Michigan, but she has helped us with our evaluation procedure for this grant, and we wanna reach out and thank her for all of her work, and it was great working with her at Penn State Extension.

I would also like my colleagues to introduce themselves.

Tomorrow evening, your presenters will be Megan Chawner and Christi Powell.

Christi, as I mentioned, is the leader of this project and she's done an excellent job, and she and Megan will be presenting information about finding land, and Megan, if I can put you on the spot for a second, could you tell us a little about yourself and about the workshop, and then I'll ask Christi to do the same.

- Sure, thanks so much, Linda.

Hi, everyone, I'm Megan Chawner, I am a vegetable educator in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

I'm located out of the Allentown office, but we drive around and make trips everywhere, and I work on the production end of vegetables.

So if you have a problem with, the one thing, the example I always use is what's eating my tomatoes.

I'm the person you call for that, and Christi and I will be presenting, sorry, my cat wants to be a part of this.

Christi and I will be presenting tomorrow on finding land and so we'll talk all about resources and strategies for finding land.

- Christi?

- All right, great.

Thank you, Linda for emceeing tonight, and a lot of what Megan mentioned is what I would say for what we're doing with finding land section, but my name is Christi Powell, I'm an Extension associate.

I am based out of the North Hampton County office.

So Megan and I do a lotta work together when we are in person, just because geographically, we are right next to each other.

So that's why we decided to partner up with the finding land section, and also because Megan and I have had some experience before with land access stuff with a workshop that we have done before with a former colleague, but yeah, and I'm the director of the grant that helped fuel these workshops here.

So I'm excited that we're finally all together, and if you have any questions along the way, you know, feel free to reach out to any of us and welcome.

- Thank you, Christi, and on Wednesday night, we will be looking at leasing land and our educator for the evening will be Lynn Kime.

Lynn, would you mind giving us a brief introduction and a little bit about what you plan to teach on Wednesday night?

- Yes, my name is Lynn Kime.

I'm a senior Extension associate at Penn State.

I worked out of the Penn State Fruit Research and Extension Center in Biglerville, which is located in Adams County.

Some of you may have heard of a little town called Gettysburg.

Biglerville is just north of Gettysburg.

So that's the area that I'm located in, but I do cover all of Pennsylvania being a team leader for the New and Beginning Farmer Team.

Wednesday night, we're gonna cover leasing land and I can bring a somewhat of a unique perspective to this because I have leased land and in the past and I now lease some of my land out to an a neighboring farmer.

So I've seen the both sides of the coin and some interesting scenarios from both sides.

So, like I say, Wednesday night, we'll cover leasing land.

- Thank you then Lynn's our go-to many, many topics.

- So thank you then.

And now Jay Eury and Jay will be doing our purchasing land on Thursday night.

- Hi, everyone.

Nice to have you here.

My name is Jay Eury.

I'm relatively new to Extension.

I grew up live and work in South central, Pennsylvania Franklin and Adams counties are the two counties that I know the best and a little bit of Cumberland County.

My focus areas are not so much around land access and I'm really more of a student here.

So I'm gonna be looking to Lynn as well as Christie and Megan to be the real expert here but I'll be presenting information on how to purchase land on Thursday, April 1st.

The things that we'll be covering there in the purchasing land session on Thursday will be everything you need to know and consider to get ready to buy land how to line up financing and the things that you need to consider as you try to close a deal when you're purchasing land just a little bit about me.

I think a good way to think about this series is that the Extension educators that are on this call are associates whatever our titles are, are really long-term resources.

And so I want everybody to know that my focus areas include direct marketing especially around farmer's markets, as well as agritourism, food access and food security issues and Anchor institution food system development which is just a fancy way of saying basically how do we get big organizations and businesses like hospitals or health systems or universities to invest and support local farms and markets.

So in addition to the content we'll be talking about here if anyone has questions, issues, ideas or you're looking for connections in any of those areas or here in South central Pennsylvania I'm happy to be a resource and just to make it really easy.

I'll put my email in the chat now in case anyone has questions or wants to say hello, thank you.

- Thank you, Jay.

And as men, as you can see we all have very diverse backgrounds and bring a lot of different perspectives to Extension.

And you're just meeting six of us here.

We have 300 friends behind us who, if we don't know something about a topic, we can generally find someone who's an expert in a specialized area.

That's one of the really nice things about Extension is that there are so many people that focus on very specialized areas and we can get access to those people for you.

And that's our role too.

That's what we're here to do for you.

Okay, now some of you may have become Zoom experts in the last year.

And some of you're probably hoping that your internet doesn't crash tonight.

So, you know, if regardless of where you are on the spectrum I bear with me for a minute.

We wanna make sure everybody has the basic Zoom etiquette in place.

Dana is recording the sessions for you.

We will have all five of the sessions recorded so you can come back to those later on.

We will not be recording the question and answer periods in case people are asking personal information at that time.

Now, if you see on your screen, the toolbar that I have on my screen, you'll see over on the left you have mute and unmute and start and video or start video.

Excuse me, if there's a red line over it that's a good thing.

That means no one can hear you.

You'd be surprised what we've heard in the last year that people didn't intend for us to hear.

So it's always good to check your microphone and make sure that your red line is over top of your microphone.

And we can hear what's going on in the background.

My dog likes to chime in.

So I keep mine, my red bar on it.

I keep my mic shut when I'm not speaking you can also turn in your video on and off.

Now later after we finished our presentation we will allow you to turn your microphone and video on and ask questions so that we can get to know you at during the presentation.

The next button that's important is the chat and it should be in the center of your screen.

And if you've never done a chat before I'd like you to participate in the chat right now even if you have done this in the past I'd like to know where all 86 people are from.

So if you could practice with me by clicking on chat and at the bottom of your screen you will see a little box where you can type just type in either your county of you're from PA or if you're not from Pennsylvania my earlier presentation today, we had somebody from Europe let us know where you're from.

Cause I know there's folks that aren't from Pennsylvania joining us.

Lynn had somebody from, was it Bali Lane or Belish?

- [Lynn] Yeah, Belish .

- Belish, yes, okay.

So look it, we've got quite a few folks in and out.

I see mostly seeing Pennsylvania, Kansas good, lot of Eastern counties.

Okay, so good.

We know where the chat is.

So the reason we're doing this right now is not only to see where everyone is from.

We have a poll that we'll do but we also want you to be able to put your questions to us in the chat.

So if anything comes up and you have any questions just put it in chat for us.

And one of my colleagues will read that to me and we'll get to that somewhere in the evening.

It's kind of hard for me to read and to speak at the same time.

I'm not that clever, so, okay.

So, oh, and if you push the leave button you will get a second chance to say, no I don't really wanna lead.

And I hope you'll stay with us for the remainder of the evening.

So welcome to the folks from Pennsylvania and from Maryland.

I see on the last, on my screen and it seems like everybody's doing okay with chat.

All right.

Good, and moving forward.

Make sure that that microphone is muted.

Oops, sorry.

Okay, we put this in here because there's a lot of legalees in the stuff that we're talking about and this is not meant to be a legal advice.

This is meant to provide you with information to help you get started and make decisions.

Whenever you make any kind of lease or purchase you wanna speak with professionals about your particular situation and you want that legal advice from a lawyer and realtor or whatever specific advice that you need.

So please know this is not intended for as legal advice.

This is solely for public information and when we have our guest speakers next Thursday they do not necessarily state or reflect the same perspective as Penn State or the American Farmland Trust.

So they're just going to share their perspective and what they have learned over time.

- So now is our chance to get a little opportunity to get to know you.

So Dana, could you put up poll number one for us?

And if you've not done a poll before there are three questions for you and we're gonna take those so that our speakers for the next couple of days get to know kind of who's on the call.

So let us know if you've worked with Penn State Extension or not.

And if you can't see all three questions there's a gray bar on the right-hand side of your pool box and you can scroll up and down on the right-hand side.

So we've got about half the folks voting so far.

We're pretty evenly matched.

If you're on a phone and unable to or unable to use chat but or excuse me unable to do the poll, but you want to put it in chat.

You can do that as well.

You got that 78%.

Yes, doing good on the Zoom stuff.

Give it a couple more seconds.

Great, It looks pretty good we're gonna end the poll now.

I wanna share the results.

Hopefully you can see this.

So about 78% have worked with Extension in the past.

And some of you have not where you are not really familiar with everything that we do and all Extension system operations can be very helpful to you.

So it's something very important to know if you start farming, (indistinct) evenly split on if you're currently farming or not and most of you are going to make this into a business.

So that's good to know because some of the resources we're gonna share with you will help you decide which alternatives might be best for you and your land and your resources in order for you to make the most money with that plot of land.

All right.

So thank you very much with that.

If you wanna close the poll box, the little X at the top of the poll on the right, we'll close that window for you.

Okay, so for those of you who have not worked with Extension before I'm gonna tell you a little bit about it, but I bet some of you have worked with us may learn something as well.

So Penn State Extension is part of the land grant university system.

Penn State itself is actually part of the land grant system and the land grant universities were granted in the 1880s.

So you'll, these are the bigger institutions.

A lot of them are in the big 10 there historically land grant universities are we're an innovative way of supporting, you know growth in the country, trying to grow the economy by supporting key fields like agriculture science and engineering, and the primary function of land grant institutions in universities is to teach do research and provide extension.

And Extension didn't come around until 1914 but even then we're over a hundred years old.

And there's still a lot of people that don't know what we do.

Penn State Extension is the outreach arm of Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences.

And our mission is to translate the research and development from the university and other land grant universities into useful information for the larger community.

And we deliver unbiased science-based information to individuals, businesses, and communities.

We have seven program areas from agriculture, food, safety public health, family wellbeing, community development and youth leadership.

So you're probably familiar with some of the things that we do most familiar to people is four H which is in every County in Pennsylvania master gardener and master watershed.

So yes, we are in every one of the 67 counties here in Pennsylvania.

And even with COVID, although our offices are closed every one of our educators is available to take calls and emails and get you to the person that you need to answer your question.

So you can see from the educators you've met tonight that we are very diverse in our backgrounds.

We deal with a lot of different topics from community development and agriculture to family issues and animal production and live livestock and horticulture and four H.

So there's so many different things.

If you have not explored our website, extension.psu.edu you'll be very surprised at what you will find there.

So we'll have a, another quick poll.

If you could launch poll number two, we'd like to know how long you've been actively looking for land.

And then when you find land, do you plan to purchase, lease or you're unsure, and you can select all that apply to you.

I'm sorry, I'm having internet issues.

I'm gonna go ahead and turn off my camera to preserve my bandwidth.

So far this poll is very positive news for Pennsylvania.

We have about the same number from last time.

So most people are in the early about half are in the early stages of looking one to three or three years or less.

And some are just interested in finding out information.

So that's good.

Okay.

And the good thing is those that will take action will purchase.

And we definitely need to have the next generation of farmers on hand to grow our food supply.

So that's good to know that we have people that are interested in purchasing and leasing.

And then for those that are unsure, we hope that you will be able to make a better decision at the end of this week.

And when you finally find a piece of land that's right for you.

And again, you can close that poll for yourself.

All right, so the format of the workshops tonight we don't expect to go all the way to eight o'clock.

In fact, what we plan to do for the first week Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we do not meet on Friday is we will start promptly at six and we will go until probably about 7:15 give or take 10, 15 minutes either way.

And after that, we'll open it up to questions and we're gonna do that tonight too.

So we'll have our presentation and then we're gonna open it up to questions and anybody who wants to stay and ask questions we will stay until we get them all answered, unless it's like midnight.

But anyway, so I will do a brief presentation this evening Christi and Megan will do the finding land tomorrow night.

And then Lynn will do leasing land on Wednesday.

Jay will do purchasing on Thursday.

Then you have a break until next Thursday.

We did that for a reason because there's so many resources that you can look through in order to help you with this decision and what you're doing that we wanted you to have time to do your homework if you choose to do that.

So you'll have the week off and then we'll meet back again on April 8th.

And we will have a lawyer from the Penn State Ag Law Center and a panel discussion.

And so basically the format will be six to about 7:15 of presentation, a break, and then the remainder of the evening answering individual questions.

Okay, and again if you have questions, so the recording, yes.

By the end of this presentation we will show you how to get to the handouts for this.

And the recordings will be available at the end of all of these sessions.

Okay, Catherine, is that good?

Okay, all right.

So we're gonna do our next poll.

This next poll will help us with our last night on April 8th.

So if we could launch poll number three.

So we are trying to find out if you are more interested in urban, suburban, rural, or you're not sure yet.

And where in Pennsylvania, you want to purchase your land or if you're not looking at Pennsylvania, and you're just looking outside, that's fine too.

You're welcome to be here.

I didn't mention during introductions, but I'm from Wyoming County and I would consider that rural.

And it's a lovely place for families and for raising (indistinct) crops and kids.

Give it a couple more seconds.

Okay, so the majority of folks wanna find a land in the rural areas and in suburban areas.

And it looks like Eastern PA is the most sought after area.

Okay, so I'll explain in a second how we're going to do our breakout sessions on April 8th and this information that you just entered for question two will become relevant then.

So we'll stop sharing and you can close that poll box.

So on April 8th, Brooke, your who was an attorney at the Penn State Ag Law Center will do a presentation and address any questions that we have not been able to answer during the sessions this week.

So we'll make sure that if you have anything you get the question to us and we'll get it to him and he will answer it.

The second part of that evening we're gonna do breakout sessions.

This night we'll probably run til eight o'clock.

I will say that this session will probably run until eight o'clock.

So Brooke will do his presentation.

We'll take a break and then you will have the option to pick one of these three areas.

If you're looking for land in Eastern PA then you'll pick the Eastern PA breakout room and you'll have a panel.

You'll have a panel of people three to five people that will be there to discuss purchasing land in Eastern PA.

There'll be a room for people for Central Pennsylvania and a room for people who are interested in Western PA.

And you'll get a chance to talk to them about any specific questions.

If you find that you wanna jump from room to room, you can do that.

If you're somewhere in the middle like (indistinct).

So make sure you've got a pen and paper and you're writing down any of your questions for the night.

You're putting them into chat when you think of them or you're emailing them to me that somehow you're getting those questions answered by getting them to us, okay.

So we did wanna make sure that we knew how many people were interested in urban farmland.

And I just put a link into the chat for you.

That link is for those of you who did say you were interested in urban farmland.

The resources in this workshop will be good for you.

However, they do not focus at all on vertical rooftop farming, okay.

So if those or urban settings are important to you in your search please make sure that you get that link that I put in there.

It's also in other resources that we have there but it's right there for you.

The urban farm Lam link, okay.

Don't worry this is our last poll, but this will help us to understand where you're going with your the land when you purchase.

So how many of you check all that apply here multiple choice and check all that apply.

What do you hope to do with the land?

Do you already have an idea?

Is this something that you've already been researching and it's okay if you're unsure, you know you might be very early in this process happened to see the workshop and say, hmm let's get started somehow.

Almost done the last ones and here are the results.

And livestock is number one, it's 68% with tree and fruit and vegetables close behind.

So lots of interest in the top three there, that's good.

And as you delve deeper into those areas and you find the land, you've got to make sure that the land and your business plan match well together.

So we have some resources we wanna share with you about that now.

So if you wanna close that poll out and you can do that.

- [Woman] Linda just wanted to interrupt here.

Someone had asked the question about agritourism and, you know we could pretty much with that area, you know you could be doing one of these other operations and then say you would be open to the public.

And if you would have like a market, that kind of thing.

You know, when you have it more public outfacing we would consider that agritourism if you have certain additional activities that add value to those different operations, that will that's what we would pretty much define that us and Jay provided a really good example in the chat too.

- [Linda] So, and I encourage you then the next couple of slides are informational.

And Lynn, I hate to call on you.

What was that?

That your teacher told you when were in college that you've repeated to me, that's so important.

- [Lynn] The person that graduates today and stops learning tomorrow by the third day is ignorant.

- [Linda] No, that's not the one.

- [Lynn] That's not the one.

- [Linda] No.

- [Lynn] All right.

What we wanna do is teach you where to go to find the answers to the questions you have.

There's nobody that knows all the answers to all the questions.

And none of us on this that are teaching this know all the answers, but we made probably will know where to go to find the answers for you.

- [Linda] So really thank you, Lynn.

And I have taken that to heart and really with Extension there are so many questions that come up that we will just our role is to help you find that answer as best as possible.

And we rely on the resources behind us to get you those answers.

I go to Lynn a lot but we have lots of other people who can help us.

And we have some people that are focusing on agritourism if that becomes of interest to you.

So watch for workshops and materials on agritourism and we'll show you how to find some of those things on our website.

So the first site that I wanted to show you was the starting a farm.

And I mentioned extension.psu.edu.

If you type in Penn State Extension and whatever you're looking for in a Google search you're probably going to find something about new topic that you're interested in.

There are thousands and thousands of documents out there and I'm not kidding, but this particular page this landing page, starting a farm is meant for people who are just in the beginning stages that three years and under, you know, three to five.

And then there's the pages for people who've been added a little while, but maybe are trying to diversify.

I really want to point out the bottom left corner for you, okay?

So that let's stay connected.

Honestly, you know, I I'm not trying to push Penn State on you but when you're in that research phase and you're trying to gain as much information as possible if you sign up with us and you tell us your areas of interest.

So when you sign up, you're given a opportunity to tell us what you're interested in.

So if you said livestock on the last poll and all you're interested in is livestock then you sign up and say, I'm interested in livestock.

We're not gonna send you things on family nutrition.

We will only send you information about livestock.

So we take this very seriously.

And if you stay connected, then we send the information out.

I am signed up for many, many things.

And even though it's part of my job I still don't find it overwhelming.

We just don't.

We try not to inundate people with too many emails but that's how you find out about these great workshops that are no cost or low cost or new articles or new advances in science or so many different things.

So I highly encourage you to go out to the starting on farm page or any page.

And when you see that let's stay connected box I encourage you to do it and you can always opt out and unsubscribe, but we have articles, workshops, webinars online courses, videos, news flashes, newsletters just to name a few.

We can even direct mail to you.

And again, if you're in that research phase, especially or if you're in that phase where you just don't know what to ask maybe there's something you just never heard of or thought of.

We might be able to fill that gap for you before you miss out on something.

So that's the first place to go find information.

The second, this I'm sorry.

This is an example that we have out there.

This is just an article on owning and leasing agricultural real estate.

And it happens to have an embedded video in it where you can hear from someone who's already doing that.

That's a Pennsylvania farmer there and he can tell you about his situation and the article.

You know, again, it's on demand.

You can read it when you want, he's watched the video but there are, like I said, are thousands of articles out there on all kinds of subjects.

The other thing I want to point out to you is our bi-monthly no beginning farmer newsletter.

Now this particular one comes out tomorrow morning at nine o'clock.

This is just a picture of it.

It extends down.

There's probably seven or eight more articles.

And again, you'd get one email every other month.

And if lambs are not on your list and you're not into e-commerce, but maybe down below there's something on hiring employees or poultry that you are interested in, it's brought right to you.

And again, you can read it at your leisure save it for later, but it might be a quicker way than having to go search for information in yourself.

And you can sign up for that newsletter when you let us know what your areas of interest are.

And then there's a third section of our website that really really important, because most of you are more of you said that you were interested in farming as a business.

So agricultural alternatives or ag alternatives is important because this resource here, other Extension universities across the country, refer to our website.

We always hear about this.

Oh my gosh.

We tell people about your website all the time.

What this is, is a place where you can find out about different types of enterprises whether it's vegetables or fruit or livestock.

And then you can look at each specific commodity and decide exactly whether that's a good choice for you and your land and with the resources that you have.

So it can be used by full-time people who want to diversify or somebody who's part-time and wants to make money off of the land that they have.

So, Lynn, if you wouldn't mind cause I know you have created many of these.

Could you tell people a little more about what's in each of these ag alternative publications?

- [Lynn] Yes, we have publications dealing with business planning starting a business, several on insurance.

As Linda pointed out the owning and leasing real estate.

We have several that cover marketing recovery or irrigation but one of the things that I do wanna point out we do have probably 50 or more they deal with production of crop or livestock.

And each one of those publications or articles includes, you know the first section as always mark M.

First section is basically like an introduction into the topic that's being covered.

The second part is marketing.

And you know what we're trying to say is make sure you have your market develop before you start to produce.

And then we get into the production aspects and that may be anything from fertilization to breeding or anything like that.

Housing of livestock, fertilization, pesticides, be it whatever production method you choose and then harvest or a lot of stock may be more you know, slaughtering, where to go to find something like that.

And then there's always a budget section.

And those that the articles that are online that you get it's you have access to all have and we have an example of one of the interactive PDF budgets that all have links.

Each one of these articles have links to these.

And some of the articles may have as many as three or four different budgets.

You know, we may start with a budget for a cover crop and then a budget for planting and a budget for a year of no production kind of like I'm going through what's one of our most recent production or most recent articles was on hop production or hops production.

So when you plant hops the first year that you haven't planted you really don't get any production off of them.

But then when they become mature the second year third year, then you have all the items that are included, establishment, there's establish budget in there.

So you have all the costs of the trellis system and all that type of thing.

And each one of these has a place where you can put your own numbers in and the calculations are done for you.

As you can see there our numbers are in there.

Our numbers don't mean anything.

There may be a guideline, but you need to do the research and find out what your numbers would be.

And these, if these are a pro forma budget meaning if they're your best guests, you can actually once you start into production, you can actually use these budgets to track your profitability with these with this type of thing.

So, and then we have, we always have a full more information section.

So if you've gone through the publication or article and you think, yeah, I'm really considering this.

Now we have a place for you to go to find more information about that topic and between the marketing budgeting and the for more information section my opinion, some of the three of the most important sections of the articles are publications.

- [Linda] Thank you Lynn.

And you know if this is so detailed that it tells you everything from what kind of equipment you need to know your fertilizers and just all this stuff that if you're new to farming and you haven't been able to spend a lot of time researching it, it's a great starting point to begin to think of all the things that you would need and then to begin your research.

So hopefully everybody who will be joining us for the next four days is on with us right now.

I mentioned earlier that we are part of a grant and as part of a grant, we always have to tell the people that gave us the funding, who was on our call and what we accomplished with it.

And so we're asking that you will take this quiz that takes less than two minutes.

It's a survey or assessment.

There are, I think something like 10 questions on it.

It is anonymous and we need this data to report back to USDA.

So if you have a fancy camera and you hold your camera over top of the QR code and push on the click on link that comes up it will take you right to the Qualtrics Survey.

Or there's a survey link in the chat.

We really do appreciate you doing this.

When USDA says, hey, we had 80 some people attend this workshop and more attended during the week.

And people benefited from it.

Then we are able to get more funding in the future.

So don't leave us yet because the important part of this workshop is right after this, where we talk about all the materials that come with this workshop.

So if you could take a minute and grow out to that survey and let us know where you're at with the questions there I will begin back up in about two minutes at about 6:50.

And Lynn, did you wanna sing while I was or maybe how many, a nice melody to make the time.

- [Lynn] No, we'd like these people to stay on.

- [Linda] Okay, just checking.

Thank you, Catherine, you're with me on this.

- [Lynn] Now you really don't wanna hear me sing.

- [Woman] Me either.

- [Lynn] I think Megan and Jay could do it well though.

- [Woman] Linda, looks like we're getting some feedback.

The link might be the post survey link actually, we might've made a mistake here.

We might have an editing error.

- [Woman] I do that one, I cannot (indistinct).

- Oh, no is it the post Jay?

- [Woman] It is.

- [Jay] Yep.

- [Woman] It is, we'll get it fixed.

- [Linda] Can you get into those?

- [Jay] Yeah, lets see Linda.

So we'll just take, I don't know.

We'll just take 10 seconds or so, I don't know 30 seconds or a minute or something.

Interesting, let's do a little digging here.

Thank you for your patience.

I really appreciate it.

- [Linda] Yeah, that was my fault, I'm so sorry.

- [Woman] The pre-survey is in the chat now.

It should have it should end with NH4 the last four.

- [Linda] Yes, that's correct.

That is correct.

I'm sorry I don't know how I picked up the wrong one.

- [Woman] It's all good, it's there.

If everyone just picks it up in the chat, please.

- [Linda] The QR code was correct.

That one is accurate.

And now the one that's in the chat is correct.

Sorry about that folks.

Yeah, they're very simple questions.

They're the same as the ones who asked plus they would give you an opportunity to ask any questions that you might have for the upcoming week so we can make sure that we answer them.

Can we have about a quarter of the folks finished?

So we'll wait another few minutes.

We're about halfway at this point.

Yeah, Daniel.

So you mentioned that affordable is part of the key.

A lot of times, depending on your location, the more desirable or the location, obviously the more expensive it is, there is affordable farmland in Pennsylvania.

It just might not be in an area where you would really want to live because you're currently living in that area or you have family in that area.

You know, you might have to relocate to find a farmland that matches your budget.

Got about 56.

- [Jay] I'm gonna put a concert to refer to Linda just in the meantime for Daniel or for anybody else that's interested.

I'm gonna put a link is to a National Farmers Coalition tool.

I think they call it Finding Farmland Calculator that links in the chat now.

That might be something useful to think about to get you thinking about where those costs can come from.

And then on Thursday, we'll go over that topic in depth.

And then we'll also talk a little bit about the kind of the opportunities for finding credit and how to go about that as well.

That'll be on Thursday.

Yeah, I think Christie, I think Daniel more or less fit the (indistinct).

And we'll be weaving that question to every presentation the rest of the week and our panel discussion next Thursday.

- [Linda] All right, well thank you for putting the chat in and keep putting those comments in, because again stimulates the conversation to make sure that we address the things that you're interested in.

And if you're filling out the survey please continue to do that.

You have no idea how important it is to be able to go back to our funders and say, this is who we met with.

This is what happened.

This is where they're going with this information.

So can please continue on with that.

And again, I'm so sorry that I pulled the wrong evaluation link.

We have many links and you're gonna see that in a minute.

Okay, so when we were setting this workshop up we wanted to make sure that after a long day of work and being that we are on Zoom and people, you know might be tired or have family obligations or be getting interruptions.

And we understand all that.

We've been doing this for about a year but we know that if you just come and that you are listening or just reading the slides you're probably not gonna remember.

But if you participate or you've been involved in the discussion, or you do your work with the assignments along with hearing the lecture.

You're gonna remember things so much more.

So I really encourage you to take the opportunity to look through the materials that we're gonna show to you in a minute before the workshop.

If you can, we understand that you're busy, we all, we all understand, but if you can go through the materials beforehand and look them over fill them out if you can, and then you'll be ready for each workshop each night, we broke this up over the several nights so that you could focus on one area at a time and that you weren't inundated.

And that we weren't sitting here from hour after hour, unless we were talking about something that was of interest to you.

So here are two URLs.

And if you could put those in the chat for us, Dana, okay.

These go to the same location.

Okay, the same documents.

One is Microsoft base.

The first one with one drive, that's Microsoft based.

The second one, the land access one is Google docs.

And so if you're used to Google docs and that works easily for you, here's the second one.

There it is.

It's land access.

If that one works easier for you, then try the second one.

We wanna make sure that everyone can get into these folders because there's a lot of resources out there.

So while we're talking, please pick one of those links.

Like I said, one drive is Microsoft.

And the one that just says land access is Google-based.

So pick whichever one you're mostly in using now and see if you can get into those folders.

And if not, please put it in chat so we can get to you and help you.

When you get in there you're going to see several different folders that will look like my screen.

So you'll have a folder for tonight.

There'll be a folder on finding land, leasing land purchasing land, and then a direct resource list, okay.

And you'll see, each one of those has on average six to nine or 10 documents in it.

If you go to the finding land, which is tomorrow night and you open that up you're gonna see document number one, land requirements workshop.

And that is basically if you choose your homework for tomorrow.

So I'm not seeing anything in the chat right now that's saying that people can't get in and it's okay if you don't do this very often.

Okay, so Isaac, if you send an email or email, Dana there are emails up above we can email them back to you.

And if you can get into at least one of these you don't need to get in both.

You just need to be able to get one.

You'll find the same documents in both folders, okay.

Good, thanks for your feedback guys.

Cause it's really hard to tell what's going on at home, you know.

All right.

So in each folder, you're gonna see all these documents.

So you can look and everybody has a different style.

So if you wanna do one document at a time and just look at it and keep it on your computer, great.

If you wanna print one document great.

But some people like to have everything in their hands.

They wanna have that booklet.

So in folder one, which is finding land if you wanna print the entire packet and just hit print one time.

Look for the print version finding land, all worksheets and it's 19 pages, right?

So if you're the kind that feels best for that paper copy and you can write all over it, print the whole thing out.

If you wanna just keep it on your computer and download all those documents, you can do that, okay.

So again, it depends on your style doing one document at a time, or just printing the whole thing out.

I always run out of ink so I download.

So if you see up on the top of your toolbar in either one note or Google you should be able to download the documents.

So when we finish if you're having trouble downloading and it's okay if you've never worked with these, it's not a biggie.

We'll stay on and work with you until you get it done.

And we'll turn off the microphones and cameras.

And that we'll go ahead and get you help.

So if you found that document that was in the locating land or finding land file and document number one there's 14 questions on this document and it's for you.

No one else is gonna look at it but it is meant to assess your readiness where you are on this and what your goals are.

So it's to help you think through what it is you wanna do in a formal process.

There's some open-ended questions, but mostly it's a checklist and it's a beginning point to help you get direction for your search.

Again, you can just do this one document or you can print out all of those documents and, you know do them all before tomorrow night, or just at least look through them so that you have an idea and those questions might start popping for you.

I think someone just joined us if we could re-put the links back in for the tiny URLs.

Okay, and if you have any questions so far, let us know.

Jay, thanks for picking those up for me and others who have been answering.

Thanks, Megan, for answering as well.

Okay, so one last source of information that you can get on a regular basis is if you go out to our Facebook and Instagram accounts, we have the PSU farmland or excuse me, PSU farm and food, Facebook and the PSU farm business, Instagram.

And then we have the Penn State New and Beginning Farmer Facebook page.

So when you go into the folder that we were just in under the welcome introduction.

This PowerPoint is in there and these links are lied in there and you can just click on those, or you can search us on Facebook or Instagram and you can follow us and see what's new and what's going on there.

And also here are our contact emails.

And again, if we don't know the information then we will find it for you or find you someone in your local area.

Should you want to speak to someone maybe it's on pesticide training or not sure you have a specific problem with your crops or your livestock.

We'll find someone to help you with that.

And now we will open it up to questions and we'll stay on with you as long as you need us to.

So anybody who joined late, not a problem we'll help you find those documents and get you ready for tomorrow night.

And at this point, if you have a question you can put it in chat or you can unmute your mic and go ahead and let us know.

And if you can't get into the documents definitely let us know.

So the floor is yours, everyone.

- Linda, I just wanted to note here with the documents that we have shared in the homework.

It's totally up to you all if you wanna take advantage of it.

We're not gonna penalize you.

If you're not filling out these documents there it's totally there for your own use.

There's a lot of resources there and it's only to your benefit.

If you're gonna actually sit and fill it out or just have an idea in your mind of what you would be answering.

So it's totally up to you if you wanna take advantage of that or not.

- [Lynn] Yeah, I think you're going to get as much out of this as you put into it.

So take the time.

I encourage you to work through some of these documents.

And as Christi said, you don't have to do them all but again, you're gonna, you'll be amazed at the amount of information that you're, yeah that you'll wind up with in the end.

And any time you can narrow down that search into more of what exactly what you need the better off you'll be.

It's a daunting task when you're looking at it from the beginning.

However it's the same old thing, you just start small and work yourself into wherever you wanna be at the end.

- [Woman] Hello, I'm having to use my iPhone for the connectivity for Zoom that you can't copy the links from the chat.

Would there be a way to get those links via email or have whole document distributed?

- Can you send me an email at lxr6.

- [Woman] Okay, thank you.

- It's up to 6 @psu.edu.

Just tell me what you need and I'll make sure I get that to you.

- [Woman] Thank you.

- [Linda] Sure.

- [Lynn] Isaac I encourage you to do the same too.

- So if you're looking to save chat I'm not positive how it will work on your screen but you see where you type in the chat box.

And over on the right hand side there are three little dots.

So Isaac, if you click on that, can you save your chat?

It should work for everyone.

So again, write where you're typing in the chat box you'll see the name, the file, and the three little dots.

And then if you click on the three dots the top thing will be save chat.

Oh, Suzanne, I'm sorry.

We can remain here if you'd like next time.

How does your grandson like that Zoom class.

We've gotten many, many names in workshops.

We do assume that they're from family members.

- I just wanted to mention also all of these things that we're sharing in the chat since we are recording, they will show up with, they should show up with the recording as well.

Believe that's the way that it's set up that Dana has it set up.

Plus, we're gonna be sending out all these to you through these, these links are all within the folders.

And after the session tonight we can send just a follow up email to you all just so everyone is on the same page.

- We still have time and we'll be here waiting if anybody else would like to unmute and ask a question.

Again, the recommended homework would be under finding land document number one.

- [Lynn] Carrie, I see in the chat that you are an urban farmer and Erie.

If you are interested, there is a within the starting a farm website and under starting a business there is a urban farm record keeping book in there that I built on an Excel file or Excel workbook.

And it's, take a look at it for me and give me some feedback on it.

If you would, sometime I've had, it's been out for quite for about maybe five, six months now.

And I'd like to have somebody look at it and give me some feedback on it spent quite a bit of time building it, but I still appreciate and encourage feedback so that I can, if possible make it better for people to use in the future.

- [Carrie] Sure, I'm awful at record keeping.

So usually too busy farming to keep great records.

So I would love to look at it and hopefully are ensure I'll learn something from it but I can give you feedback too, though.

- [Lynn] Well, I have never met a farmer yet myself included that got into farming to keep records.

Nobody does that.

- [Carrie] Right.

- [Lynn] It's the part of the farm that you, the more people don't wanna do than want to do.

There's no question about that.

- [Carrie] I feel a lot of pressure now, though, that I wanna expand and I it's like the, what the prospect of financing land.

It's like, oh, all of a sudden I'm like I'm gonna need some, probably some pretty good records from my first three years of farming to convince anyone to sell me more land, so.

- [Lynn] Yes, and this may help and like say the proforma budgets within the ag alternatives could also help you out in that respect also.

- [Carrie] Awesome, thank you so much.

- [Lynn] And we do cover quite a few vegetable crops within that article, a series of articles.

- You bring up a good point, Carrie, about business planning.

I don't know if Linda, Jay, or Chris you wanna talk about what extension?

So we won't be talking about creating a business plan in this particular series but we do have a ton of other resources for you guys.

- [Lynn] Yeah, within that ag alternatives article series.

There's a publication in neuron on business planning.

So you know, that that's a good place to start.

There's also a sample business plan titled, oh let me think.

AMB nursery.

And it's for a, basically a container-based nursery operation.

However, it's, you know, you can see what all's involved in an extensive business plan.

It's something that I wrote quite a few years ago and probably should go in and update that.

But it's been around that article has been around for quite a while still being used.

So like say, you know you can look at that and see what I consider to be a full-scale business plan would be but I'll tell you this.

Majority of the business plans are 10 pages or less but like I say, we do have an article one in there on business planning.

So, and probably in maybe a year we will have an online course coming out on business planning.

- Yeah, Gladys, I think you asked the question about pricing.

Are we gonna get into discussing price specific price levels for landed rural versus urban or organic versus conventional land?

I don't think that any of our kind of curriculum tomorrow through Thursday will cover specific prices for what land like what our current market rates for land in those conditions.

I think though if you're able to make next Thursday's breakout session and get into any of those regional rooms I think the panelists that we'll have there which will include land preservation folks or realtors or farmers that are in that specific area might be able to give you a little bit more insight on what the market rates look like right now.

Oh, hey Aspers, nice to see you just saying hello to Justin there.

- Then we will you be addressing easements at all?

- [Lynn] That will probably be in, in next Thursday night.

- Yeah, we have a couple of folks that are on the panel for next Thursday night that are either farmland preservation directors or work with different conservation easements.

So we will have some experts here that we'll be discussing those topics.

But we will be kind of touching on them a little bit throughout our presentations as we go.

- I just wanted to jump in Justin Harnack you wrote in the last bit of your comment was will there be info on buying land for tree funds and all of the information that we're gonna be going over for this whole series is applicable to any type of agricultural endeavor.

Any type of land that you're gonna be purchasing for whether it's vegetables, livestock, or tree farms.

- Yeah, Justin, I think if at all possible, if you can be on the call in on Thursday for central Pennsylvania, I know.

So we'll have a realtor we'll have a farmer named Matt Harsh who works his farm called 78 Acres which is just across the line and in Smithsburg Maryland as well as Lynn and land preservation Adams County Land Preservation, County staff person.

So I think if there are any questions specifically about tree farms that's the place to make sure that we get those answers.

- I also just wanted to mention here folks within the Google drive and the one drive folder that we shared.

You'll see those three sections here on finding land, leasing, land, purchasing land as well as the information from this introductory section for tonight.

But there's a document, that's a standalone that's called Land Access Series Extension Resources List.

And that has many of the links that we dropped into the chat tonight from our Extension website.

They're all in that collective list between the alternatives, business plans all that kind of stuff.

So don't feel like once this chat goes away that these things are gonna go away for you.

We're gonna be sharing these things multiple times.

And like I said we're also gonna be sharing the folder links every night of this week.

So that way you have it, if you didn't already save it.

So don't worry.

- [Ben] Hi, y'all, oh, sorry to interrupt.

Hi, I'm Ben I'm living in Central PA.

It sounds like I was wondering specifically if y'all were going to talk about any trends particularly in terms of Pennsylvania, just in terms of like we have older farmers and just like the landscape will be changing or if that's something more for the discussion groups also considering the impact of our current situation with the coronavirus.

- [Lynn] One of the best ways to find that information out Ben is to go to the National Ag statistics Service site.

And usually it's listed in 2012, 2017 comparisons.

So you can start to make some of those types of comparisons there and, you know, you can and if those stats are by individual state or by the United States.

So you can kind of get pick up that information in that area.

But as we all know the generation, the average age of farmers is getting older each time they do a statistical analysis to a statistical survey.

So, you know, but we do need that next generation coming on.

And that's where we're, that's why we're trying to do.

One of the reasons we're doing this series is to help that next generation or the new farmers to gain access into that land or maybe make the connection between existing farmers and potential farmers that the potential the existing farmers could say, hey, I have some land here, does anybody need land to lease or, you know I don't have anybody coming on.

And the next generation is anybody interested.

And tomorrow night, yeah, tomorrow night I believe we'll cover a good bit of that with PA farm link.

There are one of our partner in this webinar series.

And that is their main goal is to link potential producers with existing landowners.

So there may be some information in there coming down the road that'll be beneficial for, to you.

- [Ben] Excellent.

- And Ben, I'm gonna put a link in a chat.

So to save you from having to dig into the statistics website, though if you're interested in digging into statistics, Linda, put that link in the chat.

And if you're really down with that, then by all means, please do dig.

But here is a link.

This is National Young Farmers Coalition a report that they created in 2019 that did basically what Linda said compared to 2017 to 2012 numbers on PA.

And that might give you a little bit more useful context.

(indistinct)

- Its okay Linda I was just gonna say Jim Caston put a question in the chat about looking for NFL on long-term leases for Christmas tree farms and Wednesday will be all about leasing then that's your baby for this series.

So that's, you're definitely gonna wanna tune in or watch the recording for Wednesday for leases in particular.

- [Lynn] Yeah, and as I put in the chat there, Christmas trees and fruit trees are, would be very similar when it comes to leasing because you can't do that on a year to year lease.

It's gotta be quite a bit longer.

You know, Christmas trees are eight to nine year depending on species eight to nine years to market fruit is man, you better have that or that land for at least 15 years.

Because if you, especially, if you're the one paying for the trees and the trellis system, you're gonna sink a boatload of money into that to get started.

And you know, the longer you can spread that investment out the better off you are.

- Okay, it looks like someone had asked a question about how does PA Farm Link work.

So actually we have two ladies from PA Farmland that are going to be presenting with Megan and I tomorrow evening during our finding land presentation.

So you'll have a snippet of who the people are that work for farmland, what they do and how to use their land database on their website.

So you will have firsthand exposure to them tomorrow.

And if you can't join as always you'll be able to see the reporting and check back on that later.

- [Lynn] Yeah, I agree Carrie it's and that's part of writing the lease, you know, right.

If you can get the landowner to buy the trees because they technically, once you put them in the ground they belong to them, you know, especially a fruit tree or a Christmas tree, you can kinda you can bag and ball them, but it's going to take both a lot of work and, you know to move them to another part of the land area, but for trees once you put that thing in the ground, you're it's there and you're not taking that tree out and going and taking it down the road and planned it someplace else.

So there's gotta be a lot of trust and a lot of understanding.

And in my opinion, it's got, there has to be there have to be lawyers and attorneys involved in writing something for a lease like that.

- We did have a question on where we covered the land use for greenhouse production, multi high tunnels.

- [Lynn] Yeah, greenhouse there a permanent structure high tunnels are theoretically a movable structure.

Once you have them up many people are gonna move them though.

But you know, here again, it's gotta be a more than one year or a longer term lease issue.

- [Carrie] And it seems I'm going through a lot of issues with zoning for putting up a high tunnel in the city of Erie where my urban farm is.

So I've been talking to a lot of farmers all over the place about similar issues, and it seems like high tunnels greenhouses, things like that, like zoning is different.

Every place you go and you have to be really careful to navigate that so that you don't end up having to like, take down a tunnel you just put up because you didn't do the permitting right or whatever.

- Yeah, Carrie that's exactly right.

That those specifics, I think when we were trying to plan to, we were trying to figure out how we make sure that urban agriculture urban agriculturalists people that are interested in urban ag get something out of this training.

Everything that we're gonna talk about really does apply to urban ag, but then there are additional challenges, complications, and extras just like the zoning you're talking about which is just gonna be more complex and less acquainted to agriculture in an urban setting.

I wonder, Carrie, if you, that's your sounds like a relevant topic for the Erie County Food Policy Council to be aware of or take up and maybe that advocate for I wonder if you're already connected with them and if they could provide any support.

- [Carrie] I am very well connected with them.

I actually had to get the zoning changed in area in order to start my urban farm and (indistinct)

was one of the kind of residual things that happened after the urban farming ordinance was passed here and they are working on it.

It's just, unfortunately everything takes forever to forever to get the initial ordinance passed and zoning change so that I could start my farm.

And then, you know, now it's, you know I assume it's gonna be another year and a half or two years before the city makes any real changes in terms of allowing high tunnels on certain properties.

So it's a little slow for my liking now that I'm in business and I need to get it done but they are working on it though.

- It sounds like you're the trailblazer there.

- [Lynn] Back probably 20 years ago, 15 to 20 years ago I started doing some urban farm work in Philadelphia.

And at the time the ordinance on the books said that it was illegal to grow or produce any crops to be sold.

However, the parks and rec department was actively out trying to get people to start urban farms.

And I said, these two things do not match.

And they said, oh, we're working on changing the ordinances.

So like I said, the parks and rec department of the city of Philadelphia was actively seeking farmers.

While the ordinance on the books said, you can't do this.

- [Carrie] The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

- [Lynn] Exactly, exactly, anytime you get into local government, that is, that's very much the case.

And I mean, I've been working less (indistinct)

about the last month with a lady in, I believe pike or Bradford County in a rural area that is having issues with a greenhouse trying to put a greenhouse up with our local zoning.

So it's not just the, it's not the cities.

It's the lower areas too, that, which, you know my suggestion and any new farmer is once you find land, before you do anything go to the zone to your, to the local township and find out if what you wanna do is allowable on that land, because if you're buying land and it's not zoned for production you've got an uphill battle from the word go.

- Better to walk away from a property that isn't zoned correctly.

It may never be zoned correctly.

You can always make the inquiry about what it's like to change zoning laws in your municipality or borough or wherever the land is but it's never a guarantee not something you should pursue financially unless you know that it can be changed could only be to heartache.

- [Lynn] Last thing you want is a piece of land.

It's virtually a paperweight.

- Not funny but funny.

- [Lynn] Exactly.

- I found that Sandy had put a question in the chat.

Are you going to discuss development pressure on farmers?

I was wondering Sandy, if maybe you could expand on that or if any of our other cohorts have thoughts already on that subject.

- [Sandy] Hi, okay, I'll try and expand on that.

Because at one point I was involved with a farmland preservation activity in Ohio.

So in Pennsylvania, I don't know if there's as much development pressure as there is in Ohio but particularly in the Eastern end of Lake County and parts of (indistinct) County where there has been a lot of horticulture.

A lot of that land was getting basically scooped up and turned into, you know, residential housing.

And we were trying to help the family farmers keep their farms.

So there was some state funds there was a pad program and so on and so forth.

So I didn't know if that was going to come up for discussion, but I mean, it was one way to help people out here.

- [Lynn] Pennsylvania does have an ag land preservation board on through the Pennsylvania department of agriculture.

And most counties have an ag land preservation department.

There's also ag security areas, but it depends on the area whether you have encroachments or not.

I would say where Megan and Christi are that Southeast region of Pennsylvania.

There's an even South central area.

There's quite a bit of encroachment into agricultural land but sometimes in a town that's North of me I'm kind of between where Jay is and I am a town called (indistinct) and it's become it's very long route 81 goes right through the middle of it.

And, you know, there's, it's become also known as warehouse city, but realistically the land they're building those warehouses on really isn't all that good for agricultural production.

That's what it was in before.

But when you can see boulders the size of a Volkswagen beetle sticking out of the ground in a lot of fields that's just not good ag land in my opinion.

And maybe the best use of that land is for warehouses.

But, you know, I would sooner see them build there then on fertile land in Adams County or New York, Lancaster or someplace like that.

I can speak to the South Central area but I mean, yeah, like say if you're in Potter County, which is North central Pennsylvania or even up where we're Linda is Wyoming County there's, I mean the development pressure there is not near as much as what it is in Southern Pennsylvania, because the land is in South Central Pennsylvania tends to be worth more tends to be a little bit more fertile, you know some better land.

And for some reason, I think they think that's where they need to build the houses on the best land.

I will say the only place I've ever seen anybody tear down a house and plant grass is on the Gettysburg Battlefield.

You usually don't see that any place else.

- [Carrie] And there you go, gotcha.

Thank you.

- And then do you know a site talks about the top soil fertility and the best fertile land in Pennsylvania?

- [Lynn] There is a.

Yeah, let me look that up.

- I have one in the office, but it's an actual map, so.

- [Lynn] There is a national search soil survey through the, Megan, what's it called?

- Yeah, so we're actually gonna be talking about that tomorrow night.

I'll take the groups through web soil survey so that you guys will understand how do you get that soils information from that online database.

- (indistinct) tomorrow.

- [Lynn] Megan is our soils expert that's what I ask for the questions.

- I but I would love to see this map that you're talking about also, is that based on the crop?

What does it call?

I always forget the acronym.

- Then like the one I just put into chat.

- [Lynn] Let me.

- Okay thanks (indistinct) into the chat.

And that'll tell you about sort of the origins of the soil but not necessarily the fertility.

So we'll thank you for that.

That is still a really great map, I love that.

- It looks similar to this, but again, land has to be for growing crops.

There are other things we can use land up in my area there's a lot of livestock or more so than any crops.

- Justin, your question about the Pennsylvania laws regulations around septic systems.

I have no idea.

I don't know if even Lynn has an answer on that.

Maybe he does, but if not Brooke Duer is our kind of our legal expert.

We'll be having a Q and A session next Thursday on the eighth.

And so we'll make a note of all the questions that come in, that are kind of related to statewide laws and regulations.

And then we'll just pepper him for 30 minutes and in kind of a quick form.

So if you have more locked questions kind of law specific questions it's good to note those and save them up for next Thursday or put them into the chat.

And we'll do our best to keep a running list and try and make sure that all those kind of legal specific questions get answered next Thursday.

Lynn, do you know the ins and outs of Pennsylvania state septic codes?

- [Lynn] There is, you know, you can still you can actually still put in a traditional septic system more times and not now they're going for, going to sand mounds either way.

The EPA Environmental Protection Agency in Pennsylvania has basically regulated that every septic tank in Pennsylvania will be pumped out every three years, but that most of the townships at least in our area have adopted that.

Not all of them have yet, but if they haven't it's coming.

So, but Brooke would may have a better handle on that than I do.

- So I've started collecting the questions that people put into the survey, the correct survey.

And we'll look through the chat to see if there's any that we missed cause they were coming in at various times.

It's sometimes harder than you think to check them if we did miss your question, we apologize you're welcome to put it in again.

But if we didn't answer it, then we'll go through and make sure that we answer sometime this week or during the live session too, if it's legal.

- I think someone had their hand raised.

You had a question?

- You can unmute your mic.

- [Jay] Maria did, yeah.

- [Maria] Yes, I have a question I don't know if you have information about how to get access to a community land.

- Can I ask a clarifying question Maria?

Like when you say community land, do you mean like community gardens, like a group plot or kind of land that would be used by multiple groups or individuals, house or household is that what you're asking - [Maria] I know it's some community land for farmers, they provide water and sometimes greenhouses or (indistinct)

I know there is one in (indistinct)

but I don't know Miami.

- Do you think maybe a community land trust?

- [Maria] Probably.

- The other thing that comes to mind is a farm incubator.

Maria, where are you located?

We do have a few in Pennsylvania.

- [Maria] Currently I'm in Burke.

- Oh, okay in Burke.

So we do have a firm incubator program.

It's not, well, I don't know where you are, but there's one called the seed farm.

That's in Lehigh County.

And it's a great situation for people who, you know maybe are just starting farming or don't quite have the capital yet to purchase or to purchase land.

And so it's a really low barrier cost-wise to get into farming and at the seed farm they let you rent all the equipment.

They let you rent the high tunnel, like you were saying as well as the land to farm on.

And so that's definitely something to look into for what you're talking about Maria.

I know Sir Rafael, if you're still here.

Raphael was talking about his startup farm.

That's on a farm incubator as well.

- I was wondering Rafael, what's the name of the incubator you have?

If you don't mind sharing (indistinct)

- [Rafael] It's Hilltop urban farm.

- [Lynn] Oh, you're in Pittsburgh.

- [Rafael] I am in Pittsburgh, yes.

- [Lynn] Yup, yup.

- [Rafael] It's my first year of farming there but they've had a long history.

It's my second experience in an incubator not farm specific, but I can tell you for sure that they vary in terms of like how well you can start off from having not much capital.

Hilltop has definitely grown a lot more from when it started, how it started.

I know friends from the industry who also participated years back and they were like, they didn't have much of a good experience to say the least.

But personally I think for myself and my startup business I've never had an opportunity where almost immediately I have resources available.

I can literally farm on top of the sweat equity that they have to invest.

I can literally farm this year having no background in farming at all.

- Yeah, I was, I visited that Hilltop farm when they were still in the, they had as far as I know they had the land but they were still in the planning stages.

And I'd like to come back again and see it now since they've been around a little bit longer I've done some work with some of the people that are running that farm but I've never, like I say it's been several years since I've been out there to see it.

- [Rafael] Yeah, I think, I mean, honestly, change visible change is so gradual and slow.

I don't think you would see anything substantial.

On a business perspective I can tell you for sure it allows aspiring farmers, especially with someone who has no background to really have a headstart.

In terms of how their program has advanced.

I think they've gotten better that way.

Another key thing to just take note deep usually entities like these are very, are spread very thin.

So even though I'm trying to sponge off as much from them they're sponging as much for me as well.

I am sure that, so I think coming into an incubator you should lower your expectations.

And I mean that in the most respectful point of view.

I hope that helps and not discouraging because I really do think that this is incubators that are more advanced and grown are very valuable and definitely useful.

- [Lynn] There's one locally here in your County that has been around for probably 10 years.

And they are very, very far along and have been doing very well.

- [Rafael] There should be a network existing that connects these because I never would have imagined PA of all.

I mean, I know it's a farming community and state but to know, I didn't know that there were actually incubator farms other than Pittsburgh.

So it, I think it would be a good way to really jumpstart if you want to really influence farmers to grow that media and you should totally connect those incubator farms.

I don't know who will do it.

I don't know how to, not me for sure.

- [Lynn] I tend to agree.

There should be a way to have a listing of that.

There's no question about that.

- Yeah, I wonder that's just such a great question and suggestion, Rafael, and I think that's exactly how we can better hear what stakeholders are saying their needs are and respond with programming.

So, you know, in the back of my mind that is now considering like, well, could we have a panel discussion with representatives from the, from all that incubator farms in Pennsylvania and just say, who are, you know, just put on an event or, you know.

No one thing is really gonna solve all the problems or connect with everybody.

But I think there's an opportunity for some programming there.

Thank you.

I'm not aware of the list of incubators in Pennsylvania.

Is there anybody else?

- [Lynn] No, I just, I know the ones that I've worked with other than that that's it.

- I did find a link that has kind of it says it's a national incubator map but it doesn't seem fully correct.

Cause it doesn't have a couple of those farms that we just talked about.

It doesn't have the horn farm on their own, but so it's there's resources out there but I don't know how they're being maintained exactly.

So, yeah, but that too what Jay was talking about you know, that's a good point and your feedback helps us to think of things different things to help deliver to people.

- Thank you for putting that link out there, Christi.

- [Lynn] And there's the link to the web soil survey.

- Thank you, Lynn.

- [Lynn] I had to find the right article page to pull that out of.

I knew where it was.

I just had a bit of a time finding it.

Again, I know where to go to find the answers.

I just don't know all the answers.

- Well, I'm sure once you start to (indistinct)

through the materials that are in those folders the number of questions will go up instead of down.

So we encourage you to take a look through that print or go online and start your folders on your laptop or on your phone.

However, you're doing it.

If you need us between now and tomorrow evening, my email is lxr6@psu.edu.

If you are not able to get into the chat right now.

Please feel free to get in touch with me and we'll make sure that you have it.

I think we might've had another comment in chat.

I'm not sure.

Did we get any another in chat.

Okay, again if anyone else joined late, reach out to me and I'll get you hooked up between now and tomorrow evening.

Again, we'll start at six o'clock tomorrow night.

If there's any other questions we'll take them now before we adjourn, if not we'll pick up tomorrow evening.

Again, six o'clock start roughly an hour hour and 15 hour 20, whatever, something along those lines then we'll take a quick break and we'll come back for Q and A just like we're doing now.

So those that wanna stay and ask questions than hanging there are welcome to do so.

Anybody?

- At least clarify.

- Do you mind every single night.

Good question, Catherine.

Same Zoom, like every day this week and next week.

You don't wanna make things complicated.

As you can see, we already have a lot of links out there so we keep the same Zoom.

Well, thank you all for joining us and we'll see you six o'clock tomorrow night.

- Thank you.

- [Man] (indistinct).

- Excellent, thanks everyone.

Thanks Linda.