2026 FIELD DAYS

Join us in the field this summer!

We’re partnering with wonderful farmers, organizations, and researchers to bring you this year’s field day series. Field days will highlight innovative practices both at working organic farms and research stations. They’ll feature farmers with creative solutions that support the diversification of crops to support domestic and value-added organic grain markets. We’ll also be joined by researchers working in breeding, crop management, and soil health.

The field days in this series are designed to provide valuable information to certified organic farmers, farmers interested in exploring the transition to certified organic production, as well as farmers interested in cover crops, soil health practices, or diverse crops and markets.

2026 Field Days

Funding for field days has been provided by the USDA’s Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP). To learn more about this program, you can go to https://www.organictransition.org/ or attend one of our field days.

Organic Cereals Field Walk

Please join UW–Madison Extension’s Emerging Crops Accelerator, Seed to Kitchen Collaborative, Cereals Breeding Program, Artisan Grain Collaborative, and OGRAIN for an informal field walk to learn more about our organic trials. We will tour the field trials and breeding projects and hear the latest about variety releases and research on regional food grade grains.

No registration is necessary. Just meet us in the parking lot to join this casual tour.

Organic Seed to Spirit Field Day

Join OGRAIN, Artisan Grain Collaborative, The Land Connection, IDEA Farm Network, Mad Agriculture, and Rodale Institute for this unique field day tailored for both farmers and distillers to learn in the field and at the distillery. We’ll spend the morning touring organic fields and seeing a small grain cleaning demonstration with Will and Dallas Glazik at Cow Creek Organic Farm. We’ll transition inside for lunch featuring a grain chain panel and delicious, local food from Maize. The afternoon will include a Silver Tree Spirits distillery tour, a buyer-seller mixer, grain quality discussion, and an optional educational spirit tasting, offering participants a hands-on opportunity to understand how environment influences flavor outcomes in distilled products. Have lingering questions or want to spend more time enjoying this great group of folks? Stick around the distillery to keep the conversation going.

This event is for organic farmers, those who are curious about organic production or the distilling market, organic grain buyers, and grain product makers. Come out to explore and network across the grain chain. This event will be held at Cow Creek Organic Farm, Silver Tree Spirits, and The Cadillac event space. Stay tuned for more details!

This event is free and includes lunch, but please register in advance to help us plan!

Thank you to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Transition to Organic Partnership Program (TOPP). Midwest TOPP supported the morning session and National TOPP supported the afternoon market-focused session. TOPP is a program of the USDA Organic Transition Initiative and is administered by the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) National Organic Program (NOP).

No Till, No Spray, No Weeds
&
Experiences in Organic

Event Schedule

AM SESSION: No Till, No Spray, No Weeds
Alternative weed control for today and the future
9 – 12
Join us for field tours of no-till research trials. Hear results from 10 years of roller crimping and see this year’s plots. Get an update on the state of herbicide resistance and what this could mean for future weed management. See a demonstration of Greenfield Robotics’ new interrow mowing robot.
LUNCH: 12 – 1
PM SESSION: Experiences in Organic
An introduction to organic field crop production and certification
1 – 3
Are you just getting into organic production or curious about what that would look like? Join us for a farmer panel and organic certification introduction. This casual session will provide a brief introduction and a chance for Q&A and discussion around this topic.

Join us for for the morning, the afternoon, or both!
This event is free and includes lunch, but please register in advance to help us plan.

UW Organic Research Field Day

This field day will feature tours and talks about the latest research in organic grains and forages, including methods for reducing tillage in corn and soybeans, using biocontrol agents to manage white mold in soybean, and an on-farm research project studying soil health in organic grain systems. Organic systems research on ecological intensification practices (i.e. adding cover crops, reducing tillage, and integrating livestock) will also be shared.

This event is free and includes lunch, but please register in advance to help us plan!

Virtual Fencing: Takeaways From Year One

Please join Iowa County Uplands Watershed Group, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, and OGRAIN to hear insights from the first year of virtual fence trialing at Seven Seeds Organic Farm. Michael Dolan will lead us on a field walk and discussion on the good, the bad, and how their farm plans to utilize this technology and perennial pastureland in the future.

No registration is necessary.