New Entry's farmer library has hundreds of resources on sustainable farming, marketing, and operating a successful small business. Our physical library at our office in Beverly, MA contains books, CD's, DVD's periodicals, pamphlets, and videos in English, Spanish, Hmong, and Khmer. You can also search the directory below for downloadable digital resources, helpful web sites, and online farming videos.
Please visit or email us at nesfp@tufts.edu if you can't find what you're looking for here. Sometimes we are out in the field, so it's best to let us know if you're planning on stopping by.
Training presentation put together by the University of Arizona's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, outlining the basics of recordkeeping, cash flow forms, and sample transactions.
The Unlocking MA Money for Your Farm: Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) Grants and Financial Assistance Programs webinar, is part of the Investing in Your Farm: Accessing Grants and Loans for Growing Your Businessworkshop series, hosted by the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project.
In this webinar, instructors share knowledge/understanding of MDAR grants and funding programs for agricultural projects. Topics covered in the workshop include:
MDAR Farm Viability Programs (FVEP, IVP, MEGA), grant process, classes and other grants.
Urban agriculture, Food Venture, Mass Food Trust.
Grant reciepients experiences.
For additional information please reach us out at: nesfp@tufts.edu
Use this book to help keep track of pesticides sprayed on your farm. Note that Massachusetts applicators should also record the purpose and method of application. To be in compliant with the 2017 EPA Worker Protection Standards, you should also record the start and end time of the application.
Use these resources to help you determine if you are covered by FSMA's Produce Safety Rule and how to comply. These resources will also help you to improve your farm's food safety protocols and to help you develop a food safety plan.
This tool can be used in any setting where marketing is taught and where farmers would benefit from learning which vegetables are most familiar to most American-born customers. This tool can be incorporated into an existing lesson on marketing, used while CSA shares are being packed, while farmers are in production planning, or at market stands.
Guide from the National Young Farmers Coalition to help farmers address the challenges to organic certification and explore the decision of certification on their own farms. Certification can help beginning farmers as they start their own operations by boosting marketing and helping them connect with larger potential customer bases. The guide includes a history of organic certification, an overview of certification, a step-by-step guide with tools and examples, and further reading and sources for seeds and materials.
This tool is designed for beginning farmers who want to learn vegetables names in English. This lesson includes activities for farmers to identify vegetables by reading, writing, listening, and seeing photos.
The University of Wisconsin developed this spreadsheet as an intuitive system for data organization for diversified vegetable farms. It is an excel based spreadsheet with three input pages and three output pages. Expenses are entered on the first spreadsheet page, and sales information on another. A third sheet requires growers to allocate detailed expenses to each crop including production labor hours. The spreadsheet uses the data from the input pages to calculate each crop’s cost per pound ($/lb), breakeven price, and gross margin by market channel.
