The upcoming Journeyperson course is now available AT NO COST! Due to some timely grant funding, we can offer this in-depth farmer training for farmers in years 3-7 with no associated tuition fee! The course consists of monthly cohort meet-ups and 2-3 in-depth workshops, plus mentorship!

In addition, a select number of participants will also receive matched FUNDS for your farm savings account (Savings Incentive Program) and money to spend on a professional development opportunity of your choosing! Want to attend a workshop on livestock management? OGS will contribute towards that fee! Are you saving money for a farm asset? OGS will contribute up to a certain amount to that investment.

The Journeyperson Program is for farmers who have been independently farming for three or more years and are serious about operating farm businesses in the Southern Appalachian region.

For the past 30 years, the Organic Growers School Spring Conference has served as a gathering place for growers in Appalachia to connect, learn from one another, and deepen connections to land and community. The Spring Conference began as an entirely volunteer-run and free event and has expanded to support an organization of ten staff with year-round programming. As we have grown, we have experimented with different approaches to keeping the event affordable and accessible while also working on compensation for our speakers and supporting our growing staff. We encourage you to check out our recent blog post exploring this in more depth. This year, we are excited to be experimenting with sliding scale ticket pricing for the first time, and we wanted to take some time to explain how this works and why we decided to implement it this year.

Looking beyond scholarships

Over the past several years, we have started implementing different scholarship options. We have set aside around $3000 in our internal budget for scholarships, and we have increased our outreach to other groups in the area who have funding to support individuals to attend conferences. We also offer work-trade opportunities for people who are interested in helping out with our event in exchange for attendance. We have around 100 work-traders access the conference each year through these opportunities, but we have never used up our entire scholarship fund for the event. We know that there are many individuals in our community that we are not reaching through our scholarship opportunities. We began to wonder if scholarship applications were creating a barrier to participation and started researching other options, landing eventually on sliding scale as our preferred model.

How alternative pricing models address accessibility

The sliding scale model, which offers the opportunity for participants to select a price to pay for their ticket, meets several of the parameters we were looking for in an accessible pricing model. Most importantly, it is a seamless way for attendees to access the price that meets their needs. So many things are means-tested in our society, and it can be exhausting to justify why one needs a more affordable price point. While many of our community members need financial support, there are also members of this community who have more than enough to share and are excited about supporting their fellow co-learners. These attendees can select the higher end of the sliding scale, which will be set at a price to offset the lower price paid by other attendees. We trust our attendees to select the option that best works for them while also considering how their selection would affect the ability of other participants to access a lower price point.

Accessibility is a priority for OGS, and implementing it is a risk for us as a small non-profit, given that we rely on our large events like the Spring Conference to support our year-round programming and staff salaries. This will certainly be an experimental year, and if we are not able to secure enough income through sliding-scale registrations, we will have to rethink our approach to pricing. We trust that our community will be thoughtful in thinking about the value that this conference has to them and about what they are able to pay for at this time. Thank you for being on this journey of discovery with us!

The upcoming Journeyperson course is now available AT NO COST! Due to some timely grant funding, we can offer this in-depth farmer training for farmers in years 3-7 with no associated tuition fee! The course consists of monthly cohort meet-ups and 2-3 in-depth workshops, plus mentorship!

In addition, a select number of participants will also receive matched FUNDS for your farm savings account (Savings Incentive Program) and money to spend on a professional development opportunity of your choosing! Want to attend a workshop on livestock management? OGS will contribute towards that fee! Are you saving money for a farm asset? OGS will contribute up to a certain amount to that investment.

The Journeyperson Program is for farmers who have been independently farming for three or more years and are serious about operating farm businesses in the Southern Appalachian region.

For the past 30 years, the Organic Growers School Spring Conference has served as a gathering place for growers in Appalachia to connect, learn from one another, and deepen connections to land and community. The Spring Conference began as an entirely volunteer-run and free event and has expanded to support an organization of ten staff with year-round programming. As we have grown, we have experimented with different approaches to keeping the event affordable and accessible while also working on compensation for our speakers and supporting our growing staff. We encourage you to check out our recent blog post exploring this in more depth. This year, we are excited to be experimenting with sliding scale ticket pricing for the first time, and we wanted to take some time to explain how this works and why we decided to implement it this year.

Looking beyond scholarships

Over the past several years, we have started implementing different scholarship options. We have set aside around $3000 in our internal budget for scholarships, and we have increased our outreach to other groups in the area who have funding to support individuals to attend conferences. We also offer work-trade opportunities for people who are interested in helping out with our event in exchange for attendance. We have around 100 work-traders access the conference each year through these opportunities, but we have never used up our entire scholarship fund for the event. We know that there are many individuals in our community that we are not reaching through our scholarship opportunities. We began to wonder if scholarship applications were creating a barrier to participation and started researching other options, landing eventually on sliding scale as our preferred model.

How alternative pricing models address accessibility

The sliding scale model, which offers the opportunity for participants to select a price to pay for their ticket, meets several of the parameters we were looking for in an accessible pricing model. Most importantly, it is a seamless way for attendees to access the price that meets their needs. So many things are means-tested in our society, and it can be exhausting to justify why one needs a more affordable price point. While many of our community members need financial support, there are also members of this community who have more than enough to share and are excited about supporting their fellow co-learners. These attendees can select the higher end of the sliding scale, which will be set at a price to offset the lower price paid by other attendees. We trust our attendees to select the option that best works for them while also considering how their selection would affect the ability of other participants to access a lower price point.

Accessibility is a priority for OGS, and implementing it is a risk for us as a small non-profit, given that we rely on our large events like the Spring Conference to support our year-round programming and staff salaries. This will certainly be an experimental year, and if we are not able to secure enough income through sliding-scale registrations, we will have to rethink our approach to pricing. We trust that our community will be thoughtful in thinking about the value that this conference has to them and about what they are able to pay for at this time. Thank you for being on this journey of discovery with us!

Join us throughout February as we celebrate Black Legacy Month with programs and events for all ages! In addition to the programs listed below, we will have special story times and exhibits at most of our libraries.

• Bright Star Touring Theatre: African Folktales – February 1 at 4pm at the Weaverville Library (for children ages 3 and up)
• Book Club: Jazz by Toni Morrison – Thursday, February 2 a 3pm at the Weaverville Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – Tuesday, February 7 at 6pm
• Book Club: The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict Tuesday, February 14 at 1pm at the Leicester Library
• Book Club: Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland – February 16 at 2:30pm at the Skyland/South Buncombe Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – February 21 at 7pm at the Fairview Library
• Black Experience Book Club: The Furrows by Namwali Serpell – February 23 at 6:30pm at the Noir Collective, co-sponsored by the East Asheville library

Drop by your local library and check us out. Email or call if you have any questions.

Our librarians have also put together a Black Legacy Month reading list for all ages.

Black Legacy Month Reading List 2023

Books for Adults

Adult Fiction

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library edited by Glory Edim
• What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harries
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers
• How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemison
• Deacon King Kong by James McBride
• Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
• Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall
• The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
• Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
• Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

Adult nonfiction

• Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho
• Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black women in Popular Culture by Zeba Blay
• The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
• Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby*
• The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
• All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
• Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson*
• You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin*
• Counting Descent by Clint Smith
• The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
• Here For It by R. Eric Thomas*
• Koshersoul: the faith and food journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty

*especially good on audio because the authors read their work!

Picture books for families to share

• My Heart Flies Open by Omileye Achikeobi-Lewis
• Only the Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe by Kate Messner
• My N.C. From A to Z by Michelle Lanier
• Shhh! The Baby’s Asleep by JaNay Brown-Wood
• Curls by Ruth Forman
• Fly by Brittany J. Thurman
• Opal Lee and What it Means to be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth by Alice Faye Duncan
• Build a House by Rhiannon Giddens
• Bright Brown Baby, A Treasury by Andrea Davis Pinkney
• Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson

Chapter books for older kids

• Isaiah Dunn is My Hero by Kelly J. BaptistBlended by Sharon Draper
• Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
• Tristan Strong Trilogy (Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, Tristan Strong Destroys the World, and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching) by Kwame Mbalia
• From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
• Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood edited by Kwame Mbalia
• Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson
• Operation Sisterhood by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
• The Door of No Return by Alexander Kwame

Books for teens

• Quincredible by Rodney Barnes
• The Legendborn Cycle (Legendborn and Bloodmarked) by Tracy Deonn
• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
• You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
• Survive the Dome by Kosoko Jackson
• Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon
• Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds
• Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi
• On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
• Okoye to the People by Ibi Zoboi

For the past 30 years, the Organic Growers School Spring Conference has served as a gathering place for growers in Appalachia to connect, learn from one another, and deepen connections to land and community. The Spring Conference began as an entirely volunteer-run and free event and has expanded to support an organization of ten staff with year-round programming. As we have grown, we have experimented with different approaches to keeping the event affordable and accessible while also working on compensation for our speakers and supporting our growing staff. We encourage you to check out our recent blog post exploring this in more depth. This year, we are excited to be experimenting with sliding scale ticket pricing for the first time, and we wanted to take some time to explain how this works and why we decided to implement it this year.

Looking beyond scholarships

Over the past several years, we have started implementing different scholarship options. We have set aside around $3000 in our internal budget for scholarships, and we have increased our outreach to other groups in the area who have funding to support individuals to attend conferences. We also offer work-trade opportunities for people who are interested in helping out with our event in exchange for attendance. We have around 100 work-traders access the conference each year through these opportunities, but we have never used up our entire scholarship fund for the event. We know that there are many individuals in our community that we are not reaching through our scholarship opportunities. We began to wonder if scholarship applications were creating a barrier to participation and started researching other options, landing eventually on sliding scale as our preferred model.

How alternative pricing models address accessibility

The sliding scale model, which offers the opportunity for participants to select a price to pay for their ticket, meets several of the parameters we were looking for in an accessible pricing model. Most importantly, it is a seamless way for attendees to access the price that meets their needs. So many things are means-tested in our society, and it can be exhausting to justify why one needs a more affordable price point. While many of our community members need financial support, there are also members of this community who have more than enough to share and are excited about supporting their fellow co-learners. These attendees can select the higher end of the sliding scale, which will be set at a price to offset the lower price paid by other attendees. We trust our attendees to select the option that best works for them while also considering how their selection would affect the ability of other participants to access a lower price point.

Accessibility is a priority for OGS, and implementing it is a risk for us as a small non-profit, given that we rely on our large events like the Spring Conference to support our year-round programming and staff salaries. This will certainly be an experimental year, and if we are not able to secure enough income through sliding-scale registrations, we will have to rethink our approach to pricing. We trust that our community will be thoughtful in thinking about the value that this conference has to them and about what they are able to pay for at this time. Thank you for being on this journey of discovery with us!

Join us throughout February as we celebrate Black Legacy Month with programs and events for all ages! In addition to the programs listed below, we will have special story times and exhibits at most of our libraries.

• Bright Star Touring Theatre: African Folktales – February 1 at 4pm at the Weaverville Library (for children ages 3 and up)
• Book Club: Jazz by Toni Morrison – Thursday, February 2 a 3pm at the Weaverville Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – Tuesday, February 7 at 6pm
• Book Club: The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict Tuesday, February 14 at 1pm at the Leicester Library
• Book Club: Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland – February 16 at 2:30pm at the Skyland/South Buncombe Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – February 21 at 7pm at the Fairview Library
• Black Experience Book Club: The Furrows by Namwali Serpell – February 23 at 6:30pm at the Noir Collective, co-sponsored by the East Asheville library

Drop by your local library and check us out. Email or call if you have any questions.

Our librarians have also put together a Black Legacy Month reading list for all ages.

Black Legacy Month Reading List 2023

Books for Adults

Adult Fiction

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library edited by Glory Edim
• What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harries
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers
• How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemison
• Deacon King Kong by James McBride
• Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
• Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall
• The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
• Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
• Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

Adult nonfiction

• Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho
• Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black women in Popular Culture by Zeba Blay
• The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
• Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby*
• The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
• All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
• Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson*
• You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin*
• Counting Descent by Clint Smith
• The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
• Here For It by R. Eric Thomas*
• Koshersoul: the faith and food journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty

*especially good on audio because the authors read their work!

Picture books for families to share

• My Heart Flies Open by Omileye Achikeobi-Lewis
• Only the Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe by Kate Messner
• My N.C. From A to Z by Michelle Lanier
• Shhh! The Baby’s Asleep by JaNay Brown-Wood
• Curls by Ruth Forman
• Fly by Brittany J. Thurman
• Opal Lee and What it Means to be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth by Alice Faye Duncan
• Build a House by Rhiannon Giddens
• Bright Brown Baby, A Treasury by Andrea Davis Pinkney
• Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson

Chapter books for older kids

• Isaiah Dunn is My Hero by Kelly J. BaptistBlended by Sharon Draper
• Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
• Tristan Strong Trilogy (Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, Tristan Strong Destroys the World, and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching) by Kwame Mbalia
• From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
• Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood edited by Kwame Mbalia
• Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson
• Operation Sisterhood by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
• The Door of No Return by Alexander Kwame

Books for teens

• Quincredible by Rodney Barnes
• The Legendborn Cycle (Legendborn and Bloodmarked) by Tracy Deonn
• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
• You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
• Survive the Dome by Kosoko Jackson
• Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon
• Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds
• Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi
• On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
• Okoye to the People by Ibi Zoboi

The upcoming Journeyperson course is now available AT NO COST! Due to some timely grant funding, we can offer this in-depth farmer training for farmers in years 3-7 with no associated tuition fee! The course consists of monthly cohort meet-ups and 2-3 in-depth workshops, plus mentorship!

In addition, a select number of participants will also receive matched FUNDS for your farm savings account (Savings Incentive Program) and money to spend on a professional development opportunity of your choosing! Want to attend a workshop on livestock management? OGS will contribute towards that fee! Are you saving money for a farm asset? OGS will contribute up to a certain amount to that investment.

The Journeyperson Program is for farmers who have been independently farming for three or more years and are serious about operating farm businesses in the Southern Appalachian region.

For the past 30 years, the Organic Growers School Spring Conference has served as a gathering place for growers in Appalachia to connect, learn from one another, and deepen connections to land and community. The Spring Conference began as an entirely volunteer-run and free event and has expanded to support an organization of ten staff with year-round programming. As we have grown, we have experimented with different approaches to keeping the event affordable and accessible while also working on compensation for our speakers and supporting our growing staff. We encourage you to check out our recent blog post exploring this in more depth. This year, we are excited to be experimenting with sliding scale ticket pricing for the first time, and we wanted to take some time to explain how this works and why we decided to implement it this year.

Looking beyond scholarships

Over the past several years, we have started implementing different scholarship options. We have set aside around $3000 in our internal budget for scholarships, and we have increased our outreach to other groups in the area who have funding to support individuals to attend conferences. We also offer work-trade opportunities for people who are interested in helping out with our event in exchange for attendance. We have around 100 work-traders access the conference each year through these opportunities, but we have never used up our entire scholarship fund for the event. We know that there are many individuals in our community that we are not reaching through our scholarship opportunities. We began to wonder if scholarship applications were creating a barrier to participation and started researching other options, landing eventually on sliding scale as our preferred model.

How alternative pricing models address accessibility

The sliding scale model, which offers the opportunity for participants to select a price to pay for their ticket, meets several of the parameters we were looking for in an accessible pricing model. Most importantly, it is a seamless way for attendees to access the price that meets their needs. So many things are means-tested in our society, and it can be exhausting to justify why one needs a more affordable price point. While many of our community members need financial support, there are also members of this community who have more than enough to share and are excited about supporting their fellow co-learners. These attendees can select the higher end of the sliding scale, which will be set at a price to offset the lower price paid by other attendees. We trust our attendees to select the option that best works for them while also considering how their selection would affect the ability of other participants to access a lower price point.

Accessibility is a priority for OGS, and implementing it is a risk for us as a small non-profit, given that we rely on our large events like the Spring Conference to support our year-round programming and staff salaries. This will certainly be an experimental year, and if we are not able to secure enough income through sliding-scale registrations, we will have to rethink our approach to pricing. We trust that our community will be thoughtful in thinking about the value that this conference has to them and about what they are able to pay for at this time. Thank you for being on this journey of discovery with us!

Join us throughout February as we celebrate Black Legacy Month with programs and events for all ages! In addition to the programs listed below, we will have special story times and exhibits at most of our libraries.

• Bright Star Touring Theatre: African Folktales – February 1 at 4pm at the Weaverville Library (for children ages 3 and up)
• Book Club: Jazz by Toni Morrison – Thursday, February 2 a 3pm at the Weaverville Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – Tuesday, February 7 at 6pm
• Book Club: The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict Tuesday, February 14 at 1pm at the Leicester Library
• Book Club: Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland – February 16 at 2:30pm at the Skyland/South Buncombe Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – February 21 at 7pm at the Fairview Library
• Black Experience Book Club: The Furrows by Namwali Serpell – February 23 at 6:30pm at the Noir Collective, co-sponsored by the East Asheville library

Drop by your local library and check us out. Email or call if you have any questions.

Our librarians have also put together a Black Legacy Month reading list for all ages.

Black Legacy Month Reading List 2023

Books for Adults

Adult Fiction

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library edited by Glory Edim
• What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harries
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers
• How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemison
• Deacon King Kong by James McBride
• Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
• Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall
• The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
• Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
• Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

Adult nonfiction

• Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho
• Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black women in Popular Culture by Zeba Blay
• The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
• Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby*
• The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
• All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
• Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson*
• You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin*
• Counting Descent by Clint Smith
• The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
• Here For It by R. Eric Thomas*
• Koshersoul: the faith and food journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty

*especially good on audio because the authors read their work!

Picture books for families to share

• My Heart Flies Open by Omileye Achikeobi-Lewis
• Only the Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe by Kate Messner
• My N.C. From A to Z by Michelle Lanier
• Shhh! The Baby’s Asleep by JaNay Brown-Wood
• Curls by Ruth Forman
• Fly by Brittany J. Thurman
• Opal Lee and What it Means to be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth by Alice Faye Duncan
• Build a House by Rhiannon Giddens
• Bright Brown Baby, A Treasury by Andrea Davis Pinkney
• Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson

Chapter books for older kids

• Isaiah Dunn is My Hero by Kelly J. BaptistBlended by Sharon Draper
• Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
• Tristan Strong Trilogy (Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, Tristan Strong Destroys the World, and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching) by Kwame Mbalia
• From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
• Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood edited by Kwame Mbalia
• Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson
• Operation Sisterhood by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
• The Door of No Return by Alexander Kwame

Books for teens

• Quincredible by Rodney Barnes
• The Legendborn Cycle (Legendborn and Bloodmarked) by Tracy Deonn
• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
• You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
• Survive the Dome by Kosoko Jackson
• Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon
• Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds
• Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi
• On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
• Okoye to the People by Ibi Zoboi

For the past 30 years, the Organic Growers School Spring Conference has served as a gathering place for growers in Appalachia to connect, learn from one another, and deepen connections to land and community. The Spring Conference began as an entirely volunteer-run and free event and has expanded to support an organization of ten staff with year-round programming. As we have grown, we have experimented with different approaches to keeping the event affordable and accessible while also working on compensation for our speakers and supporting our growing staff. We encourage you to check out our recent blog post exploring this in more depth. This year, we are excited to be experimenting with sliding scale ticket pricing for the first time, and we wanted to take some time to explain how this works and why we decided to implement it this year.

Looking beyond scholarships

Over the past several years, we have started implementing different scholarship options. We have set aside around $3000 in our internal budget for scholarships, and we have increased our outreach to other groups in the area who have funding to support individuals to attend conferences. We also offer work-trade opportunities for people who are interested in helping out with our event in exchange for attendance. We have around 100 work-traders access the conference each year through these opportunities, but we have never used up our entire scholarship fund for the event. We know that there are many individuals in our community that we are not reaching through our scholarship opportunities. We began to wonder if scholarship applications were creating a barrier to participation and started researching other options, landing eventually on sliding scale as our preferred model.

How alternative pricing models address accessibility

The sliding scale model, which offers the opportunity for participants to select a price to pay for their ticket, meets several of the parameters we were looking for in an accessible pricing model. Most importantly, it is a seamless way for attendees to access the price that meets their needs. So many things are means-tested in our society, and it can be exhausting to justify why one needs a more affordable price point. While many of our community members need financial support, there are also members of this community who have more than enough to share and are excited about supporting their fellow co-learners. These attendees can select the higher end of the sliding scale, which will be set at a price to offset the lower price paid by other attendees. We trust our attendees to select the option that best works for them while also considering how their selection would affect the ability of other participants to access a lower price point.

Accessibility is a priority for OGS, and implementing it is a risk for us as a small non-profit, given that we rely on our large events like the Spring Conference to support our year-round programming and staff salaries. This will certainly be an experimental year, and if we are not able to secure enough income through sliding-scale registrations, we will have to rethink our approach to pricing. We trust that our community will be thoughtful in thinking about the value that this conference has to them and about what they are able to pay for at this time. Thank you for being on this journey of discovery with us!

Join us throughout February as we celebrate Black Legacy Month with programs and events for all ages! In addition to the programs listed below, we will have special story times and exhibits at most of our libraries.

• Bright Star Touring Theatre: African Folktales – February 1 at 4pm at the Weaverville Library (for children ages 3 and up)
• Book Club: Jazz by Toni Morrison – Thursday, February 2 a 3pm at the Weaverville Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – Tuesday, February 7 at 6pm
• Book Club: The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict Tuesday, February 14 at 1pm at the Leicester Library
• Book Club: Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland – February 16 at 2:30pm at the Skyland/South Buncombe Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – February 21 at 7pm at the Fairview Library
• Black Experience Book Club: The Furrows by Namwali Serpell – February 23 at 6:30pm at the Noir Collective, co-sponsored by the East Asheville library

Drop by your local library and check us out. Email or call if you have any questions.

Our librarians have also put together a Black Legacy Month reading list for all ages.

Black Legacy Month Reading List 2023

Books for Adults

Adult Fiction

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library edited by Glory Edim
• What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harries
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers
• How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemison
• Deacon King Kong by James McBride
• Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
• Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall
• The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
• Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
• Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

Adult nonfiction

• Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho
• Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black women in Popular Culture by Zeba Blay
• The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
• Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby*
• The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
• All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
• Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson*
• You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin*
• Counting Descent by Clint Smith
• The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
• Here For It by R. Eric Thomas*
• Koshersoul: the faith and food journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty

*especially good on audio because the authors read their work!

Picture books for families to share

• My Heart Flies Open by Omileye Achikeobi-Lewis
• Only the Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe by Kate Messner
• My N.C. From A to Z by Michelle Lanier
• Shhh! The Baby’s Asleep by JaNay Brown-Wood
• Curls by Ruth Forman
• Fly by Brittany J. Thurman
• Opal Lee and What it Means to be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth by Alice Faye Duncan
• Build a House by Rhiannon Giddens
• Bright Brown Baby, A Treasury by Andrea Davis Pinkney
• Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson

Chapter books for older kids

• Isaiah Dunn is My Hero by Kelly J. BaptistBlended by Sharon Draper
• Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
• Tristan Strong Trilogy (Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, Tristan Strong Destroys the World, and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching) by Kwame Mbalia
• From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
• Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood edited by Kwame Mbalia
• Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson
• Operation Sisterhood by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
• The Door of No Return by Alexander Kwame

Books for teens

• Quincredible by Rodney Barnes
• The Legendborn Cycle (Legendborn and Bloodmarked) by Tracy Deonn
• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
• You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
• Survive the Dome by Kosoko Jackson
• Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon
• Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds
• Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi
• On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
• Okoye to the People by Ibi Zoboi

The upcoming Journeyperson course is now available AT NO COST! Due to some timely grant funding, we can offer this in-depth farmer training for farmers in years 3-7 with no associated tuition fee! The course consists of monthly cohort meet-ups and 2-3 in-depth workshops, plus mentorship!

In addition, a select number of participants will also receive matched FUNDS for your farm savings account (Savings Incentive Program) and money to spend on a professional development opportunity of your choosing! Want to attend a workshop on livestock management? OGS will contribute towards that fee! Are you saving money for a farm asset? OGS will contribute up to a certain amount to that investment.

The Journeyperson Program is for farmers who have been independently farming for three or more years and are serious about operating farm businesses in the Southern Appalachian region.

For the past 30 years, the Organic Growers School Spring Conference has served as a gathering place for growers in Appalachia to connect, learn from one another, and deepen connections to land and community. The Spring Conference began as an entirely volunteer-run and free event and has expanded to support an organization of ten staff with year-round programming. As we have grown, we have experimented with different approaches to keeping the event affordable and accessible while also working on compensation for our speakers and supporting our growing staff. We encourage you to check out our recent blog post exploring this in more depth. This year, we are excited to be experimenting with sliding scale ticket pricing for the first time, and we wanted to take some time to explain how this works and why we decided to implement it this year.

Looking beyond scholarships

Over the past several years, we have started implementing different scholarship options. We have set aside around $3000 in our internal budget for scholarships, and we have increased our outreach to other groups in the area who have funding to support individuals to attend conferences. We also offer work-trade opportunities for people who are interested in helping out with our event in exchange for attendance. We have around 100 work-traders access the conference each year through these opportunities, but we have never used up our entire scholarship fund for the event. We know that there are many individuals in our community that we are not reaching through our scholarship opportunities. We began to wonder if scholarship applications were creating a barrier to participation and started researching other options, landing eventually on sliding scale as our preferred model.

How alternative pricing models address accessibility

The sliding scale model, which offers the opportunity for participants to select a price to pay for their ticket, meets several of the parameters we were looking for in an accessible pricing model. Most importantly, it is a seamless way for attendees to access the price that meets their needs. So many things are means-tested in our society, and it can be exhausting to justify why one needs a more affordable price point. While many of our community members need financial support, there are also members of this community who have more than enough to share and are excited about supporting their fellow co-learners. These attendees can select the higher end of the sliding scale, which will be set at a price to offset the lower price paid by other attendees. We trust our attendees to select the option that best works for them while also considering how their selection would affect the ability of other participants to access a lower price point.

Accessibility is a priority for OGS, and implementing it is a risk for us as a small non-profit, given that we rely on our large events like the Spring Conference to support our year-round programming and staff salaries. This will certainly be an experimental year, and if we are not able to secure enough income through sliding-scale registrations, we will have to rethink our approach to pricing. We trust that our community will be thoughtful in thinking about the value that this conference has to them and about what they are able to pay for at this time. Thank you for being on this journey of discovery with us!

Join us throughout February as we celebrate Black Legacy Month with programs and events for all ages! In addition to the programs listed below, we will have special story times and exhibits at most of our libraries.

• Bright Star Touring Theatre: African Folktales – February 1 at 4pm at the Weaverville Library (for children ages 3 and up)
• Book Club: Jazz by Toni Morrison – Thursday, February 2 a 3pm at the Weaverville Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – Tuesday, February 7 at 6pm
• Book Club: The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict Tuesday, February 14 at 1pm at the Leicester Library
• Book Club: Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland – February 16 at 2:30pm at the Skyland/South Buncombe Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – February 21 at 7pm at the Fairview Library
• Black Experience Book Club: The Furrows by Namwali Serpell – February 23 at 6:30pm at the Noir Collective, co-sponsored by the East Asheville library

Drop by your local library and check us out. Email or call if you have any questions.

Our librarians have also put together a Black Legacy Month reading list for all ages.

Black Legacy Month Reading List 2023

Books for Adults

Adult Fiction

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library edited by Glory Edim
• What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harries
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers
• How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemison
• Deacon King Kong by James McBride
• Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
• Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall
• The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
• Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
• Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

Adult nonfiction

• Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho
• Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black women in Popular Culture by Zeba Blay
• The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
• Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby*
• The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
• All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
• Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson*
• You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin*
• Counting Descent by Clint Smith
• The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
• Here For It by R. Eric Thomas*
• Koshersoul: the faith and food journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty

*especially good on audio because the authors read their work!

Picture books for families to share

• My Heart Flies Open by Omileye Achikeobi-Lewis
• Only the Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe by Kate Messner
• My N.C. From A to Z by Michelle Lanier
• Shhh! The Baby’s Asleep by JaNay Brown-Wood
• Curls by Ruth Forman
• Fly by Brittany J. Thurman
• Opal Lee and What it Means to be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth by Alice Faye Duncan
• Build a House by Rhiannon Giddens
• Bright Brown Baby, A Treasury by Andrea Davis Pinkney
• Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson

Chapter books for older kids

• Isaiah Dunn is My Hero by Kelly J. BaptistBlended by Sharon Draper
• Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
• Tristan Strong Trilogy (Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, Tristan Strong Destroys the World, and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching) by Kwame Mbalia
• From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
• Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood edited by Kwame Mbalia
• Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson
• Operation Sisterhood by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
• The Door of No Return by Alexander Kwame

Books for teens

• Quincredible by Rodney Barnes
• The Legendborn Cycle (Legendborn and Bloodmarked) by Tracy Deonn
• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
• You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
• Survive the Dome by Kosoko Jackson
• Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon
• Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds
• Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi
• On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
• Okoye to the People by Ibi Zoboi

For the past 30 years, the Organic Growers School Spring Conference has served as a gathering place for growers in Appalachia to connect, learn from one another, and deepen connections to land and community. The Spring Conference began as an entirely volunteer-run and free event and has expanded to support an organization of ten staff with year-round programming. As we have grown, we have experimented with different approaches to keeping the event affordable and accessible while also working on compensation for our speakers and supporting our growing staff. We encourage you to check out our recent blog post exploring this in more depth. This year, we are excited to be experimenting with sliding scale ticket pricing for the first time, and we wanted to take some time to explain how this works and why we decided to implement it this year.

Looking beyond scholarships

Over the past several years, we have started implementing different scholarship options. We have set aside around $3000 in our internal budget for scholarships, and we have increased our outreach to other groups in the area who have funding to support individuals to attend conferences. We also offer work-trade opportunities for people who are interested in helping out with our event in exchange for attendance. We have around 100 work-traders access the conference each year through these opportunities, but we have never used up our entire scholarship fund for the event. We know that there are many individuals in our community that we are not reaching through our scholarship opportunities. We began to wonder if scholarship applications were creating a barrier to participation and started researching other options, landing eventually on sliding scale as our preferred model.

How alternative pricing models address accessibility

The sliding scale model, which offers the opportunity for participants to select a price to pay for their ticket, meets several of the parameters we were looking for in an accessible pricing model. Most importantly, it is a seamless way for attendees to access the price that meets their needs. So many things are means-tested in our society, and it can be exhausting to justify why one needs a more affordable price point. While many of our community members need financial support, there are also members of this community who have more than enough to share and are excited about supporting their fellow co-learners. These attendees can select the higher end of the sliding scale, which will be set at a price to offset the lower price paid by other attendees. We trust our attendees to select the option that best works for them while also considering how their selection would affect the ability of other participants to access a lower price point.

Accessibility is a priority for OGS, and implementing it is a risk for us as a small non-profit, given that we rely on our large events like the Spring Conference to support our year-round programming and staff salaries. This will certainly be an experimental year, and if we are not able to secure enough income through sliding-scale registrations, we will have to rethink our approach to pricing. We trust that our community will be thoughtful in thinking about the value that this conference has to them and about what they are able to pay for at this time. Thank you for being on this journey of discovery with us!

This training is led by Community Food Strategies and is geared toward community leaders, educators, and folks working in the food system. We will look at how racial inequity is perpetuated by institutional and structural systems and is normalized to the extent of being nearly invisible. Simultaneously, our country’s agricultural system has an unacknowledged debt to Black, Indigenous and people of color. Together, we will build understanding around historical and current impacts of structural racism on our food and agricultural systems.

Instructors will share best practices and challenges around engaging racial equity personally, institutionally and culturally. You will leave this training with greater awareness of our shared history, of our interconnected liberation and healing, and a greater capacity to address all forms of marginalization and undo food system inequities to the benefit of all.

Lunch is provided. Space is limited to 35. Register and RSVP at dreamingstone.org/upcoming.

We will follow state regulations with COVID protocols and will keep participants informed before and after the event concerning any heightened risks, or protocol changes.

Join us throughout February as we celebrate Black Legacy Month with programs and events for all ages! In addition to the programs listed below, we will have special story times and exhibits at most of our libraries.

• Bright Star Touring Theatre: African Folktales – February 1 at 4pm at the Weaverville Library (for children ages 3 and up)
• Book Club: Jazz by Toni Morrison – Thursday, February 2 a 3pm at the Weaverville Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – Tuesday, February 7 at 6pm
• Book Club: The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict Tuesday, February 14 at 1pm at the Leicester Library
• Book Club: Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina by Misty Copeland – February 16 at 2:30pm at the Skyland/South Buncombe Library
• Book Club: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett – February 21 at 7pm at the Fairview Library
• Black Experience Book Club: The Furrows by Namwali Serpell – February 23 at 6:30pm at the Noir Collective, co-sponsored by the East Asheville library

Drop by your local library and check us out. Email or call if you have any questions.

Our librarians have also put together a Black Legacy Month reading list for all ages.

Black Legacy Month Reading List 2023

Books for Adults

Adult Fiction

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library edited by Glory Edim
• What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harries
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers
• How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemison
• Deacon King Kong by James McBride
• Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
• Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall
• The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb
• Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
• Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

Adult nonfiction

• Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho
• Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black women in Popular Culture by Zeba Blay
• The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
• Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby*
• The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
• All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
• Please Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes by Phoebe Robinson*
• You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey by Amber Ruffin*
• Counting Descent by Clint Smith
• The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
• Here For It by R. Eric Thomas*
• Koshersoul: the faith and food journey of an African American Jew by Michael W. Twitty

*especially good on audio because the authors read their work!

Picture books for families to share

• My Heart Flies Open by Omileye Achikeobi-Lewis
• Only the Best: The Exceptional Life and Fashion of Ann Lowe by Kate Messner
• My N.C. From A to Z by Michelle Lanier
• Shhh! The Baby’s Asleep by JaNay Brown-Wood
• Curls by Ruth Forman
• Fly by Brittany J. Thurman
• Opal Lee and What it Means to be Free: The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth by Alice Faye Duncan
• Build a House by Rhiannon Giddens
• Bright Brown Baby, A Treasury by Andrea Davis Pinkney
• Born on the Water by Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renee Watson

Chapter books for older kids

• Isaiah Dunn is My Hero by Kelly J. BaptistBlended by Sharon Draper
• Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
• Tristan Strong Trilogy (Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, Tristan Strong Destroys the World, and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching) by Kwame Mbalia
• From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
• Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood edited by Kwame Mbalia
• Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson
• Operation Sisterhood by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
• The Door of No Return by Alexander Kwame

Books for teens

• Quincredible by Rodney Barnes
• The Legendborn Cycle (Legendborn and Bloodmarked) by Tracy Deonn
• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
• You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
• Survive the Dome by Kosoko Jackson
• Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther’s Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon
• Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds
• Bitter by Akwaeke Emezi
• On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
• Okoye to the People by Ibi Zoboi