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Next Steps

✅ Check Your Email – You’ll receive a confirmation email shortly with event details. (If you don’t see it, check your spam or promotions folder.)

✅ Mark Your Calendar – Save the dates: March 4-7, 2025! You won’t want to miss these valuable sessions.

✅ Spread the Word – Know someone who would benefit from this training? Share this registration link with them!

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Share on social media using #GrassrootsBizTraining2025 and tag us!

📩 Questions? Email us at THteam@thriftyhomesteader.com

We can’t wait to see you there! 🎉

📅Tuesday, March 4

🕑 2 PM (CT)

Speaker: Margaret Chamas

Topic: Goat Landscapers and Targeted Grazing

What combines outreach, conservation, and profit with goats? Targeted grazing, also known as goat landscaping! Learn about the opportunities, joys, and perils of using goats for vegetation management. You’ll discover what’s needed for necessary education, skills, equipment, and livestock; the start-up costs and revenue potential; and lessons learned from nearly 7 years in targeted grazing.

📅Wednesday, March 5

🕑 2 PM (CT)

Speaker: Margaret Chamas

Topic: Have Goats, Will Travel!

Taking animals off the farm is a daunting exercise but opens doors for community engagement and a healthy profit. Learn about pricing, logistics, insurance, and risk considerations when traveling off-site with livestock and engaging with the public.

📅Thursday, March 6

🕚 11 AM (CT)

Speaker: Carol Wilson, CPA, MBA

Topic: Should Your Farm Be a Non-Profit?

A for-profit business model for your farm is not the only possible business structure. Consider the possibility of running all or part of your farm as a nonprofit organization. In this session, we’ll dive into the benefits and challenges of operating a nonprofit entity. Topics will include eligibility requirements, tax implications, funding opportunities, and operational constraints. We’ll also give real-world examples of nonprofit organizations that help people grow and eat healthy food, provide charitable assistance to people using animals, and provide compassionate care to animals in need.

Is starting a nonprofit the right choice for you? If you’re considering a nonprofit model for mission-driven farming to support education, conservation, food assistance, prevention of cruelty to animals, or other tax-exempt purposes, join this session to learn more!

📅Thursday, March 6

🕑 2 PM (CT)

Speaker: Leslie Cooperbrand, Ph. D.

Topic: Starting a Commercial Goat Dairy: What You Need to Know

Discover the pros and cons of starting a commercial goat dairy, goal setting, product development, labor needs, customer base and marketing and sales, based on Leslie Cooperbrand’s 20 years of experience operating Illinois first farmstead creamery. She will cover regulatory requirements, using Illinois’ Department of Public Health as an example and will provide a basic framework for determining start-up and operating costs. You’ll hear examples from her experiences creating and running Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery, Champaign, IL.

📅Friday, March 7

🕚 11 AM (CT)

Speaker: Leslie Cooperbrand, Ph. D.

Topic: Agritourism on a Working Dairy Farm

Learn how Leslie Cooperbrand and her husband created a successful agritourism program at Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery and how it evolved over time. You’ll learn about special infrastructure needs, insurance, biosecurity, and animal welfare concerns. Leslie will also share a simple template for determining profitability of agritourism events and activities.

Margaret Chamas

After a solid 4-H dairy goat career, Margaret pursued animal science degrees at Cornell University and Iowa State, focusing on ruminant nutrition and grazing research.  She runs Storm Dancer Farm in Smithville MO, raising dairy goats for show, crossbred meat goats and hair sheep for targeted grazing, and miscellaneous equines and poultry. She also consults for Goats On The Go after managing three territories in the Kansas City region for several years; and serves as the Livestock Viability Manager for Practical Farmers of Iowa.

Carol Wilson, CPA, MBA

Carol Wilson, CPA, MBA specializes in helping nonprofit organizations with their accounting. Carol and her business partner, Carrie Schulz, CPA, MBA, started Care Accounting Services in 2009. Shortly after, they also launched Nonprofit Accounting Academy to support online education in nonprofit accounting topics.

Carol taught nonprofit accounting at the Edyth Bush Institute for Philanthropy & Nonprofit Leadership at Rollins College from 2008 – 2020. Carol is also a QuickBooks Advanced Certified Pro Advisor.

Today Carol continues to work with nonprofit organizations on how to use QuickBooks Online to manage their finances. She also develops online courses and teaches online. Carol and Carrie offer a free nonprofit accounting blog at nonprofitaccountingacademy.com and more free resources at smart-nonprofit-money.mn.co.

Leslie Cooperbrand, Ph.D.

Leslie Cooperbrand began her professional career as an ecologist-turned-soil scientist, spending 15 years as an academic researcher focused on soil health and organic matter management. She developed and led numerous Extension workshops and published materials on composting, compost use, and building local food systems.

In 2003, she and her husband moved from Madison, Wisconsin, to central Illinois, where they purchased a small rural property in Champaign County. Over the next two decades, they transformed their landscape into a thriving perennial agriculture system, founded and managed Illinois’ first farmstead creamery—Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery—earned numerous national cheese and agritourism awards, and welcomed thousands of visitors to experience farm-to-table dining and unique agricultural adventures. Their pasture-based goat dairy was certified “Animal Welfare Approved” by A Greener World for 12 years and operated seasonally.

Currently, she and her husband own a 46-acre farm adjacent to Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery, where they are restoring the land to native prairie, wetlands, and woodlands. She consults on artisan and farmstead cheesemaking, pasture-based goat dairying, and regenerative agriculture. In addition to her consulting work, she writes a weekly Substack essay and is working on a book about her life as a dairy farmer and cheesemaker.