Agriculture and energy will be the focus of a daylong event at SUNY Cobleskill this Saturday.
And if that sounds a little bit like been-there, done-that, consider this:
Two of the facilities highlighted—one that turns hay into stove pellets and the other, a slaughterhouse and processing plant just a half-hour away—are just coming online.
“These are things that are coming full-circle,” said David Cox, Agriculture Program leader for Cornell Cooperative Extension, which is partnering with the college to host the event, 9am-3pm in Curtis Mott Hall.
“It’s really a day-long workshop format and our hope is that people will come and ask questions. ‘We’ talk a lot about ‘what could be,’ but these things are really happening.”
Paul VanDerwerken’s Grass and Wood Pellet Energy Systems went online just this week in the old Blue Seal Plant in Central Bridge.
Mr. VanDerwerken, who plans to contract with local farmers to turn hay too course for livestock into stove pellets, will be one of the speakers to talk about growing grasses for fuel.
His will be part of the 11-11:50am session.
Eklund Farms in Stamford plans to open its new, full-service USDA meat processing facility this spring.
They’ll be one of four meat processors to highlight their businesses in a 2:10-3pm session.
Others processors in that session will be Purdy & Sons, Sherburne; Van Wie Natural Foods, Hudson; and Eagle Bridge Custom Neat and Smokehouse, Eagle Bridge.
“All do things a little differently and they’ll be telling their individual stories,” Mr. Cox said.
“This has been a real bottleneck area for dairy farmers and others who are interested in making the transition to livestock,” largely because there are so few facilities that reservations for processing must be made months in advance.
“What’s realty exciting,” he added, “is that the market for custom products like these is growing.”
Also Saturday, LaMar Hill, founder and executive director for the Northeast Sustainability Institute, located at the college, will talk about farm-scale wind technology, and Eric Shelley, SUNY Meat Lab manager, and program coordinator Clint Layne will talk about upcoming courses there made possible by a grant from the NY Farm Viability Institute.
Other highlights will include a discussion of warm and cool season grasses and shrub willow and the recent results of some grass-fed versus grain-fed beef trials.
Admission to the Agriculture & Energy Day is $10/per person and $15/per family.
For more information, call Cornell Cooperative Extension at 234-4303 or email dme32@cornell.edu