New Entry's Farm Business Planning Course is an 8 week course held in Lowell, MA designed to help beginning farmers develop a comprehensive farm business plan. The links and resources that are included in this series pertain to specific topics covered in each week's class.

Before the Course commences, we draw our beginning farmers' attention to a few broad-topic resources that we highly recommend:

• The EMass CRAFT listserve is a very active community of farmers in Eastern MA who bounce ideas off of each other, ask questions, and hold educational on-farm workshops for each other. It is very valuable way to build your farmer-to-farmer network and expand your knowledge.

• The Beginning Farmer Network of Massachusetts (BFN/Mass) hosts a website with a resource finder, referral network, educational blog posts, and a comprehensive list of upcoming events throughout the area.

• The NOFA/Mass Beginning Farmer Mentorship Program pairs beginning farmers (defined as those who have been farming for 10 years or less) with experienced farmers. By pairing mentees with experienced growers who are not their employers, the program enables aspiring farmers to gain farming experiences, skills, and perspectives that they otherwise wouldn't get in their day-to-day work.  The application deadline is December 15th each year.