Discovering Resilience: A Legal Workshop for Farmers and Ranchers

Friday, March 3 – 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Wondering how to write an effective, comprehensive lease? Curious whether you should form an LLC, S corporation, or neither? Worried about the legality of hosting interns or working with volunteers? Farm law affects everyone, especially our most innovative, direct-to-consumer farmers. Unfortunately, legal answers aren’t always easy to come by—and they can be boring and difficult to understand.

Enter: Farm Commons, a nonprofit organization specializing in collaborative, accessible approaches to learning farm law alongside farmer-peers.

Cultivating Your Legally Resilient Farm

Their Discovering Resilience workshop isn’t taught by a bunch of suits rattling off difficult-to-understand legal lingo. It’s led by Rachel Armstrong, a law expert with dozens of farm law workshops and webinars under her belt. The workshop is interactive and informative. It empowers farmers and ranchers with helpful resources to resolve legal vulnerabilities in land use and leasing, farm financing, agritourism, diversification, farm events, value-added production, business structures, insurance, sales contracts, and food safety liability.

Nearly 90% of farmers plan to make changes to their operation as a result of this workshop. Previous attendees have had this to say about Discovering Resilience:

“Plain-spoken, good real world examples. Very comprehensive.”

“Way more approachable than expected! I feel like I can actually do this stuff the right way!”

“This was the best workshop I’ve ever attended. And I’ve attended a lot of them!”

Framed around the 10 steps every farm needs to take to build legal resilience, you’ll leave this workshop with a personal action plan for your own farm. In today’s difficult farm climate, we need all the resilience we can get. This workshop provides exactly that.

Event Details

The event will be on Friday, March 3 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District office (1404 Goodale Blvd #100, Columbus, OH 43212).

Registration is $65 for non-members and $50 for members. Catered lunch provided.

Included in this price is a one-year membership to Farm Commons (a $99 value). The Farm Commons membership provides access to live workshops, farm law resources, and community connections.

Registration for this event is now closed. Due to limited seating, walk-ins will not be allowed.

Questions: Contact the Begin Farming program online or by calling (614) 947-1633.

This event is made possible in part thanks to the Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District. This program is also supported by NIFA USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (2019-49400-30033).