113 North Road
brentwood, NH 03833
United States
This is an in-person, hands-on mini-course for farmers who know they should be keeping records, but feel overwhelmed, intimidated, or unsure where to start. Instead of leading with budgets, or projections, we start with everyday farm questions:
What should I grow more of next year? Less of?
Where is my time actually going?
What’s working on my farm — and what isn’t?
Across three interactive sessions, participants will learn how to capture useful data during the season and how to turn those notes into simple summaries that support farm management decisions. The focus is not on financial performance or accounting terms, but on building systems that feel realistic, low-pressure, and sustainable.
This course explicitly avoids financial jargon and profit pressure. You will not be asked to create a budget, forecast income, or share personal financial details. Instead, you’ll learn how to collect and organize information in a way that gives you more confidence and control over your business.
By the end of the series, you will:
Understand what information is most useful to track for your business
Create simple, flexible systems to record what happens on your farm
Know how to turn notes into summaries you can reflect on
Feel more confident making data-informed decisions about crops, markets, and how you spend your time
Session topics include:
Turning farm goals into purposeful recordkeeping
Capturing what happens in the field so it becomes usable later
How to include money and time records to add clarity
This course is ideal for diversified, direct-to-consumer farms in their first few years who are ready to gain clarity and a supportive entry point into recordkeeping. Each session includes hands-on activities and features real-world examples. A local farmer will also join the class to share what they track, how they track it, and why.
This work is supported by the Beginner Farmer Rancher Development Program, project award no.2024-49400-43622, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Caroline Beaton
Cost: FreeIf you need an accommodation to participate in our programming, please contact Caroline Beaton, caroline.beaton@unh.edu, prior to the event. Given ample time, we will make any reasonable effort to meet your needs, including language access services if requested, which will be provided free of charge.
