Sunday, June 22, 2025, 2 p.m.
at St. Michael’s Farm Preserve, Hopewell, NJ
(Detailed directions and parking information will be sent to registrants prior to the event)
Your donation of $10 per person contributes to the care
of the land by D&R Greenway Land Trust.
Learn how you can become a sustainable and effective gardener by using hand tools. This workshop will cover the basic tools of agriculture, and some specialized adaptations like the wheel hoe(hoe) and scythe(knife) to make your gardening work more efficient. Their use in cutting vegetation of different kinds, tillage, planting, and cultivating will be demonstrated with hands-on opportunities as field conditions allow.
Farmer and workshop leader Rob Flory has been practicing agriculture for 40 years with tools ranging from pre-contact Indigenous tools made of wood, stone and bone, village and industrial-level animal-drawn tools, to use of tractors and adaptations of basic tools to animal and tractor power. He applies human and tractor-powered tools of many types in his work at the Native Seed-Sharing Garden at D&R Greenway’s St. Michaels Farm Preserve.
A few other methods will be demonstrated, like solarization and occultation, and fire will be discussed but not practiced, especially Indigenous uses of fire. This workshop is appropriate for gardeners, farmers and land stewards.
About Presenter Rob Flory: Rob formerly worked as a farmer and internship coordinator at Mercer County’s Howell Living History Farm. He partners with D&R Greenway Land Trust to provide educational programs on agriculture and crops. At St. Michaels Farm Preserve, he is growing native corn from indigenous seed to share with the Lenape people, and he is growing crops for donation to Aunt Chubby’s Project and the Stoutsburg-Sourland African American Museum,
