Locally Grown - Availability for Novemer 28th, 2012

Hey Local Food Lovers,

I hope everyone had a marvelous Thanksgiving! We were able to take a special trip to Charleston, SC for the holiday and attend their Saturday farmers market. What a fantastic event! There were hundreds of people there, probably a dozen or more farms, another 10 food, coffee and juice vendors, and then 20 or more other arts or processed foods booths. There was a stage with music, and people had dogs (and even cats) on leashes roaming the park. It was a glorious day and I couldn’t help but wish we had a similarly grand market here. Then I remembered…. our farmers markets in the mountains are awesome and getting more awesome all the time!

Just a few weeks ago Simply Homegrown had a Doggie Dress Up day in celebration of Halloween. Here at Locally Grown we are similarly working to make market days more fun and exciting. Just last week every market customer got to taste the latest fruit to bloom on the land, the wondrous Asian Persimmon. I was amazed how quickly folks took to them, and we sold every last one, even though we’d only intended to have folks take one home.

This week is an even bigger treat. At the Clarkesville Pick-Up location, on an every other week schedule we’ll have a FEATURED FARMER actually working the market. They’ll be gathering your items for you like we always do, and I’m sure have time to tell you a bit about what’s going on at the farm as well. We’re really looking forward to having their help over the winter. I think this week will start with Brooks Franklin from Leah Lake Farms. If you’ve eaten lettuce or other greens from Locally Grown this year you’ve very likely eaten Brook’s products. This week alone he has 48 products listed. WOW! Seriously 48 products. That’s almost 30% of all the products listed this week. So we encourage you to come to market this week and MEET YOUR FARMER. I know he’s excited about meeting his customers as well and may ask you some questions too.

I also wanted to mention this week that we’re excited to have a returning farm. Productive Organics is an aquaponic farm in Hall County. They define aquaponic farming as “the merger of fish and vegetables, we feed the fish the fish feed the plants through nitrates that nourish plants, the plants cleans the water for the fish and the cycle start all over.” They are listing buttercrunch lettuces this week from their aquaponic greenhouses. We’re excited to see this new style of farming coming together and hope you may enjoy some as well.

We’d like to hear your ideas as well. Our farms will be getting together in just over a week to brainstorm for next year. We’ll be wanting your feedback sometime after that on everything from crops you’d like to see more of, to other market related improvements we could make. We’ll be asking you fill out a short survey at some point soon, but don’t hesitate to share your ideas while they are fresh. Because Fresh is Best!

We hope you enjoy your fresh veggies this week and …

EAT WELL,

Justin in Habersham
and
Chuck in Rabun