Sixteen people participated in the 2-day hands-on solar-powered water pumping workshop held on April 7^th and 8^th, 2022 at Virginia Tech’s Shenandoah Valley AREC - McCormick Farm in Raphine, Virginia. Eighty-eight percent of the workshop evaluations were returned. One-hundred percent of respondents anticipated sharing, or applying, the information learned through this workshop with others.

All of the respondents indicated that they would attend this type of workshop in the future or recommend this workshop to a friend. Additionally, 100% of respondents had identified specific actions they plan to take as a direct result of this workshop, including: develop a well with a solar-powered pumping system; to research which pump companies my contractors work with and if they have worked with solar; experiment with building solar pumps to get water to pasture; use alternative methods for livestock watering systems; incorporate solar pumping for a food forest; evaluate alternative power sources for remote well; develop solar-pump educational demo for outreach events; adapt conservation financial incentive programs; implement solar watering systems for rotationally grazing cattle; encourage more use of solar pumps for producers running livestock; bring this knowledge to my district to try to incorporate it in our livestock waterer program; among other areas.

The figure below describes selected workshop evaluation results on a 5-point scale (1 = low, 5 = high). The figure summarizes respondent feedback regarding how their: knowledge of solar powered water pumping system design considerations increased from 2.1 to 4.2; knowledge of solar powered water pumping system components increased from 2.1 to 4.1; awareness of solar powered water pumping project experiences increased from 2.0 to 3.9; and awareness of informational and program resources related to solar powered water pumping 2.3 to 4.0. Overall, participants rated the session as a 4.6 out of 5 in terms of their amount of learning. - John Ignosh