Video Project to Bring CASFS Farm & Garden Teaching Online

December 23, 2020

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CASFS instructor Christof Bernau teaches students at the UCSC CASFS Farm.

In 2021 CASFS has a unique opportunity to greatly increase the reach and impact of our educational programming by expanding remote and online instruction through video production. With the CASFS Farm and Chadwick Garden closed to students, faculty and staff, and to the general public due to COVID-19 restrictions, we plan to film the core farming and gardening instruction that typically would be presented to in-person audiences and make the footage available to our audiences. 

Videographers are working with the instructors to document techniques for specific skills like planting and pruning fruit trees, sowing seeds and transplanting seedlings, irrigation set up, tillage equipment use, and much more. As the year progresses, new demonstrations will be filmed along with seasonal footage to show progress of plants or fields. Some videos will be short how-to videos and others will follow a specific crop through the season from seed to harvest.

Watch a video with more information on the project below or at https://vimeo.com/491830824.

The videos will be used as they are produced, for online courses, workshops, and internships. Additionally, some of the videos will be avaiable on the CASFS YouTube channel, making farming and gardening knowledge and skills accessible to the public and reaching new audiences for CASFS. We plan to provide closed captioning for the videos and to translate videos into Spanish to further expand accessibility.

The resulting video library will provide a lasting teaching toolkit for online and in-person instruction through undergraduate classes and internships, the Apprenticeship, workshops, short courses, and visitor education at the Cowell Ranch Hay Barn and during site tours. Our long-term objective is to create an online learning center with videos linked to corresponding content in other existing instructional materials, such as the units in our training manual, Teaching Organic Farming & Gardening.

Help support the Farm & Garden Video Project!  

We are seeking funding for the video producer and videographer, CASFS instructors and other presenters, Spanish translation, and the creation of the online video library. To donate to this project please visit secure.ucsc.edu/s/1069/bp18/interior.aspx?sid=1069&gid=1001&pgid=780&cid=1749&dids=1062.