But Angelic Organics sets itself apart from conventional farms in another key way: Year round, its nonprofit Learning Center teaches others to follow in the farm’s eco-friendly path through an array of classes.

Kicking off in April, the spring semester offers a range of one-day courses that are open to the public—from those that just make you think, like the Understanding Our Place in Nature series, to hands-on classes, such as a cheese-making workshop. Many classes also get a jump on the looming snow melt, like “Planning Your Organic Garden” (on Saturday 23) and “Build a Raised Garden.”

Open since 1998, the Learning Center charges between $10 and $90 for the classes, which last two to eight hours. Students meet in the farm’s pumpkin-colored Learning Center building or at its Chicago outpost—a facility at Hyde Park’s First Presbyterian Church (6400 S Kimbark Ave). A separate purpose of the Learning Center is community service: Its grant-aided Urban Initiative projects train Chicago and Rockford residents to grow food in communities that lack grocery stores, and a Farmer Training Initiative helps educate the next generation of sustainable agriculturalists. Program coordinator Deb Crocket calls the Learning Center “a partnership that makes the whole farm better.”

Participants come from as far away as Alabama and California to the farm, which boasts 154 acres of lush crops—including spinach, lettuce, Swiss chard, scallions, cabbage and turnips. On-site classes teach students to garden organically, compost, build sustainable architecture and make goods from animal by-products. Occasionally they also come to study the ways of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher who made a system of rules for what’s called biodynamic farming, a holistic agriculture method that Angelic Organics practices.

Additionally, this semester, the Learning Center welcomes a handful of special instructors who are foremost experts in their fields. Internationally known beekeeper and biodynamic farmer Gunther Hauk will teach Saving the Honeybee. Noted green architect Roald Gundersen—who forged the Learning Center’s plaster-and-straw-bale walls that are held up by whole, unmilled trees—will teach a few classes on sustainable building design.

Each session begins with a tour of the inner workings of Angelic Organics’ farm—students come face to face with Scottish Highland cows and friendly milk-bearing goats; a barn for tractors, veggie-washing-and-packing facilities; a gated area with egg-laying chickens and an excitable watch dog; a bevy of honey-making beehives; and a Gundersen-designed picnic shelter surrounded by a tree grove. Then the teacher holds class in the appropriate area—“Planning Your Organic Garden” takes to the crop fields, and the soap-making workshop heads to the goat pen, where goat milk provides the base for gentle natural soaps.

Crockett says that some students are casual participants, and they walk away with skills to use in their work or family lives. Other times, students leave with the knowledge they need to start their own business. One soap-making student was inspired to purchase a goat, and now sells the soap through her company, Pine Row Farm. Either way, Crocket says, “People that come are universally excited and inspired.”

For more information, see Angelic Organics.