Join the experts on Thursday, July 30, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., for a workshop on Women and Our Woods, an informative and interactive program dedicated to empowering women woodland owners to steward our forestlands. Thanks to generous support from workshop partners, the cost is $40 for Midcoast Conservancy and MOFGA members, and $45 for others, including meals and materials. Scholarships are being offered as well.

This all-day event will educate and encourage women on stewardship considerations and business aspects of woodland management and ownership. The goal is to increase the number of women woodland owners who are aware of the options for caring for their forestland.

Women will practice setting woodland objectives, and determining the steps needed to realize them; learn about the roles of landowners, foresters, and loggers; observe actively managed stands at Midcoast Conservancy’s Hidden Valley Nature Center (HVNC) in Jefferson, and review real forest management plans. But more than that, participants will build relationships with other women managers and forestry professionals.

The workshop will be held at HVNC. The American Tree Farm System named HVNC, together with co-founders Bambi Jones and Tracy Moskovitz, Maine’s 2014 Outstanding Tree Farm. The group will have a tour of HVNC’s forests and practices.

Instructors will include district foresters from the Maine Forest Service and Mid-Maine Forestry, Midcoast Conservancy staff members, and other qualified forestry professionals. However, students will learn as much from one another as they will from the instructors. Attendees should bring their forest management plan if they have one as well as their own experience and questions.

Partners for the workshop include MOFGA, Maine Farmland Trust, Women Owning Woodlands, the Forest Stewards Guild and Capital for Opportunity and Change and the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.

For more information or to register, visit www.midcoastconservancy.org, or contact us at news@midcoastconservancy.org or 207-389-5150.