Protect & Preserve Your Most Important Tool: You!

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Register Now

Winter is the perfect time of year to step back, reflect and learn how to better care for our physical and mental health. Join this unique, virtual series for woman-identifying farmers to connect and learn together on key elements of body mechanics. Back by popular demand -- the pilot for this series sold out in 2023.

This peer learning series consists of three back-to-back daily 90-minute sessions. Led by and for women farmers, these sessions serve up a combination of practical information, movement and connection with other women sharing similar experiences.

Registration will open in Mid April, 2024

Key Topics

  • Building flexibility & strength
  • Understanding muscles & joints
  • Preventing & managing injury
  • Dealing with chronic pain & conditions
  • Cultivating rest & recovery

This series takes a proactive and positive approach to aging:  We’re all on the journey of getting older, whatever age we may be at now.  Let’s celebrate the bodies and abilities we have and learn together how to best care for ourselves to keep our hands in the soil for as long as we choose.

Attendees will identify benchmarks and develop a personal action plan to best prepare and protect that most important tool -- ourselves! -- for the next growing season and beyond.  Everyone will also have the opportunity to connect with women sharing similar experiences, from farming while pregnant to self care during menopause or managing chronic illness.

All women-identifying farmers are welcome, wherever you are on your agriculture journey.

Presenters

Laura Fredrickson-Gosewisch with crate of vegetables

Laura Fredrickson-Gosewisch

Laura is a NCBTMB Board Certified Massage Therapist practicing 12 years as well as a Minnesota-based vegetable farmer and Executive Director of West Side Farmers Market in Minneapolis. With a specialty in managing chronic pain, injury recovery, and prevention, she brings a passion for supporting women farmers in understanding and taking charge of proactively caring for their body.

 

Ellen Petrick

Ellen Petrick and goats

Ellen recently moved full-time to her Wisconsin farmstead and following her dream of a diversified homestead complete with goats, chickens and an abundant garden and orchard. Ellen brings a deep professional background in body mechanics to her new role as farmer, with over 25 years working as an exercise physiologist, health coach, and fitness educator.  She is a certified Exercise Physiologist with the American College of Sports Medicine and has a Masters Degree in Exercise with physical disability and chronic disease, something she personally manages, too.

 

Lisa Kivirst with cucumbers

Lisa Kivirist

A national advocate for women in sustainable agriculture, Lisa is the author of the award-winning book, Soil Sisters: A Toolkit for Women Farmers and leads the Soil Sisters project at Renewing the Countryside. She is the co-author with her husband, John Ivanko, including Homemade for Sale, Farmstead Chef, Ecopreneuring and Rural  Renaissance. For over twenty five years, Lisa and her family have run Inn Serendipity Farm and B&B in Wisconsin.

Register for the Winter 2025 Series Now! 

Monthly Learning Circle Discussions

On-Going Learning Circles are planned for after the retreat as optional check-ins for attendees to learn more and share collaboratively.  They kick-off in September and continue monthly through May.  More details to come!