Small Farm Conference Notes

A few Oryana staff had the privilege of attending this year’s Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference hosted by our community partner Crosshatch Center for Art & Ecology. As a co-sponsor, we decided to see what all the fun and learning was about so Luise and Steve from the Marketing team headed over to Grow Benzie in Benzonia where the conference was based. It was great to see many familiar farm faces and catch up with folks we’ve known a long time.

The conference consisted of farm tours/visits, roundtable discussions, hands-on workshops, and classroom presentations. Both recipients of the 2024 Oryana microloan, Z & N Farm and Bluebird Farm and Gardens offered tours of their beautiful farms. We had time to visit one farm and attend several afternoon workshops. There were so many good workshops offered, it was hard to choose. But here is a brief recap of one interesting workshop, Small Scale Seed & Nut Oil Production by Bevin Cohen. Bevin is an author, herbalist, seed saver and host of the popular Seeds & Weeds podcast. He lives and works at Small House Farm with his family on their homestead in Sanford, Michigan.

This informative session covered a number of oilseed crops that can easily be grown on the homestead or farm for small-scale oil production. Bevin discussed the ins and outs of growing, foraging, harvesting, and processing various seeds and nuts and also explored the interesting topic of seed/nut oil presses. He first started out in 2013 after purchasing an oil press that he saw in an ad in Organic Gardening magazine. He pressed a few bags of sunflower seeds, bottled the fresh oil, and opened up shop at a local farmers market where they sold out immediately every week. His oil was so popular he decided to scale up and sell online, which took the operation away from his home into a larger production facility. Although the fresh oil business continued to grow and even exploded after he won a Good Food Award, Bevin actually decided to scale back down to a manageable home scale to stay within Michigan’s Cottage Food Law.

Here are some interesting things we learned about oil pressing:

• Grape seeds contain very little oil and require a lot of heat to process
• Oil must stay below 122 degrees to be considered ‘cold pressed’
• Grocery store oils are at least 6 months old
• Chemical extraction of oils uses hexane, which is a solvent and neurotoxin
• Humans have been using oil presses for more than 5,000 years
• The seed material leftover from the oil making process makes excellent compost and animal feed
• 10 lbs of sunflower seeds will make 1 gallon of oil
• 1 acre of sunflowers will make 200 gallons of oil
• Hemp oil is extremely nutritious; it has an ideal ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids

Steve paid a visit to Laughing Linden Farm for a session called “Succeed in Perennial Plantings for Abundance and Resilience.” There he learned about permaculture guilds, effective ways to plant fruit trees, and spent a delightful morning on a small farm that focuses on sustainability and working within natural systems. Learn more about Laughing Linden Farm from a previous visit we made HERE.

Other sessions we attended included “Regeneration with Living Algae,” “Small Farm Fertility Management” and “Alternative Economic Models Through Farm Collaboration.” We also had the opportunity to visit the Fiber Shed at Grow Benzie, a sewing studio and marketplace exchange for all things fiber. The Fibershed hosts many workshops and activities each year that are designed to bring community together in a safe environment to have fun, and share inspiration and knowledge, while at the same time transforming discarded items into beautiful handmade and repurposed creations. 

We highly recommend the Northern Michigan Small Farm Conference. You don’t have to be a farmer to attend; it’s for anyone who has gardening or orchard aspirations, and it’s an excellent place to meet like- minded folks and make connections. For news and information about upcoming conferences you can subscribe to Crosshatch’s newsletter list.

Heartwood Forest Farm, pictured above, hosted “Women in Agriculture – A Feminine Approach to Farming”