Addressing his class recently, it didn’t take Eric Lambert long to utter a phrase familiar to any student.
“For your homework for next week,” he began, before describing a couple of worksheets and reading assignments. Among the subjects: insurance, taxes and legal issues.
This wasn’t a typical classroom setting. The group gathered in a small building at Clark County’s Public Works Operations Center. And it wasn’t a typical class. The students included people of all ages and backgrounds, but each shared at least one thing in common: a healthy interest in farming and agriculture.
“We’re all kind of excited about the work that goes into it,” said Jess Romano, who moved to Clark County last fall. “It’s not just a job. It’s a passion. It’s a lifestyle.”
Welcome to Agricultural Entrepreneurship and Business Planning, a class the Washington State University Clark County Extension has offered since 2009. The 10-week course aims to teach young and aspiring farmers in a profession where knowledge is often gained through experience and inherited knowledge.
The course doesn’t teach students how grow vegetables. Rather, it teaches them something just as important but sometimes overlooked in agriculture: how to run a viable business.
“This class teaches a lot of things that people that want to get into farming don’t necessarily want to focus on, but are still vital to their success,” said Lambert, coordinator of the WSU extension’s Small Acreage Program.
Students hear from a different guest speaker each week, often local growers. Last week’s lesson on marketing included a presentation from Erin Harwood, co-owner of Garden Delights Herb and CSA Farm in Hockinson. At one point, Harwood described the persistence it took to get her herb blends and other products on local store shelves. Eventually, it paid off, she said.
“Rejection is hard. It sucks,” Harwood said. “But soldier on, because the next one may say yes.”
Romano, who recently moved to Clark County from New Hampshire, said she’s worked in farming off and on for about 10 years. She hopes to someday have her own operation — perhaps back in New England — and called the class a “textbook fit” to become better prepared.
Vancouver resident James Fulper, another student, came to the class with a different interest in mind. He’s grown grapes and made wine as a hobby for years, and wants to take his interest to the next level. Fulper said he hopes to establish a vineyard on property he and his wife own in the Fern Prairie area outside Camas.
“Things have done really well,” Fulper said of his earlier ventures into wine-making. “The next logical step in the progression is to scale up a little bit.”
He’ll get a chance to put his ideas in writing. As a sort of final project for the class, students will be asked to develop and present their own business plan. And Fulper knows wine is a long-term investment.
“It’s not something you can do overnight,” he said. “It’s going to be a development over the course of five or six years.”
Focusing on the business side of farming better prepares growers for the challenges of it, and gives them a realistic idea of what they can expect, Lambert said. That was one of the goals of the class from the start, he said. Any grower has to be adept at record keeping, marketing, communications, risk management and other skills, he added.
“When you’re a small farmer in this day and age,” Lambert said, “you’ve got to wear a whole lot of different hats.”
