Webinar Schedule and Participant Guide
Live instruction for 2026 will begin on Wed Jan 14 with our first webinar at 6:30pm Eastern. All webinars will be recorded and posted here in your online classroom to watch anytime. Once enrolled in this course, you will retain access to all materials indefinitely and may return to participate in future live offerings of the course as well.
Week 1: Jan 14, 6:30-8pm Eastern - Eli Roberts
Tonight will be about welcoming and orienting you to this course, as well as diving into the course content. Silvopasture is among many practices that involve trees and animals on farms. We will set the boundaries of silvopasture for this course, with understanding of related practices. We will check out a few examples of Silvopasture and why they meet the three criteria: trees, grass, and rotating animals. Together we will understand the range of silvopastures and some interesting examples.
Week 2: Jan 21, 6:30-8pm Eastern - Eli Roberts
This week we'll continue our journey down the Silvopasture rabbit hole! Silvopasture can be categorized in many ways: by tree arrangement, pattern, etc. Different systems will satisfy different types of goals, and many variations within them. Join us again for some more engaging and thought-provoking presentation and discussion.
Week 3: Jan 28, 6:30-8pm Eastern - Eli Roberts and Betsy Bihn
This week we'll cover tree planting establishment choices: site prep, planting stock, planting method, tree protection, weed control, and water. These details are the key to thriving trees!
We will be joined by guest speaker Dr. Betsy Bihn, from the Cornell Department of Food Science. She will talk about creating a food safety plan for a farm, with a focus on potential issues that might arise in silvopasture systems.
Week 4: Feb 4, 6:30-8pm Eastern - Eli Roberts and Karen Hoffman
This week we'll look at converting existing forest into grazeable acreage, understanding the relatively high bar of management required, and the levels of scale/intensiveness involved. We will apply the goal-setting framework discussed earlier in the course to potential forest conversion projects and look for green or red flags.
We will be joined by Karen Hoffman from NRCS-NY, who will discuss the particularities of working with NRCS on silvopasture projects.
Week 5: Feb 11, 6:30-8pm Eastern
One of the most exciting and underexplored aspects of silvopasture is the use of tree leaves as nutritious forage to add to a grazing rotation. Together we will discuss the potential and limitations, and potent research questions for tree fodder systems.
Week 6: Feb 18, 6:30-8pm Eastern
Silvopasture can be designed to solve problems. With all we have learned, we can plan for the size and location of silvopastures on specific farms to address particular concerns. You will be able to design on-farm experiments to inform future silvopasture development.