WSJM October 26, 2005 Great Lakes Expo
This is Al Gaus the Berrien County Extension Educator for fruits and ornamentals reporting from the MSU Extension office in Berrien County. A key upcoming meeting is the 2005 Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable, and Farm Market Expo that will be held at The DeVos Place Convention Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan on December 6th through the 8th.
This joint meeting of the Michigan State Horticultural Society and the Michigan Vegetable Council is one of the biggest of its kind in the Eastern U.S. It will attract close to 3000 individuals and 250 exhibitors.
Educational talks will be presented in 21 sessions. There will be talks dealing with the major fruit and vegetable commodities, farm marketing ideas, and organic production. Other key parts of this meeting include pesticide recertification credits, session summaries, poster presentations, the Michigan apple queen pageant, apple cider contest and tasting, and a Great Lakes – Great Taste reception of Michigan’s agricultural industry with many products to sample.
The fruit sessions include apple, peach and plum, cider, blueberries, cherry, wine grapes, juice grapes, and organic production. The vegetable sessions include peppers, asparagus, pickling cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, sweet corn, celery, snap beans, vine crops, and carrots. There will also be several workshops on Thursday. The farm market sessions will include topics such as a bakery workshop, cross-cultural marketing, and enterprising your farm market.
Preregistration is requested by November 8th. Those wishing more information can contact the Berrien County MSU Extension Office at 944-4126 or the Expo’s web site at www.glexpo.com. That web site again is www.glexpo.com.
That is all for today. This is Al Gaus for Michigan State University Extension in Berrien County.