Locally Grown Availability for April 16th, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Good things are afoot. As we’ve mentioned here several times recently, Locally Grown is expanding to Gainseville this year, and we’ve finally set a date for when that’s going to happen….Friday, June 6th with our first delivery on Wednesday, June 11th, almost exactly two months from now. As we rapidly prepare for this exciting change we wanted to take the time to explain some things that are going on behind the scenes to insure that it all goes smoothly.

One thing all of you who have been customers of Locally Grown for many years will be glad to hear is that we are actively recruiting new farms and food producers to join the market. This is evidenced quite well this week with two great new additions to the market. The first is JumpinGoat Coffee located in Helen, GA since 2010. We’ve been wanting to add a locally roasted coffee maker for a long time and we’re very excited to finally be making the leap this week. Jumpin Goat has been a great success story in the region. We’ll talk more about their different coffees and their story in the very near future. We also want to welcome our first Dahlonega area farm, KP farms who are bolstering the number of eggs available through Locally Grown. Those who have shopped here for awhile know, sometimes you gotta be really quick to get a carton of eggs around here. Hopefully by adding another great egg producer in KP Farms to join our other great egg producer O’hana Farms we can increase everyone’s chances of getting eggs, even after we add more customers in Gainesville.

We plan to continue to add new farms and food producers over the next several months in order to expand the diversity and the quantity of food available through Locally Grown at the same time that we are expanding the customer base for Locally Grown. As we strive for this perfect balance between supply and demand, it’ll be interesting to see how we all adjust. Those hard to get items may get a little bit harder to get in the short term, but another of our goals is to do a lot more assessment of our top market items and work with growers to find out who is willing to help meet those market demands. For instance, based on the last couple of weeks orders it’s obvious that if we had lots and lots more fresh beets and carrots that you guys would be willing to eat them. From my own experience, if I get fresh carrots one out of every three weeks that I try and order them then I really cherish them. But, I’d also probably eat them every week if they were there.

Expanding our market to Gainesville should have a highly beneficial effect on the entire market over time, not just add competition to your efforts to order carrots every week. Many farms can only expand their farms as they are certain that there are markets in which to sell products. For the last two years farmers in our Georgia Mountains Farmers Network voted Cooperative Marketing as our number 1 priority, and added that Retail Sales were the types of markets they were looking for. What does this mean exactly? Well, remember that many farms set up a table at a weekend market every week because that is where they can capture the best price for their foods. Selling the same quantity to a grocery store or other wholesale outlet would often cut the price by as much as half. The problem is that it’s difficult, costly or just plain impossible for a farmer to be at multiple farmers markets at the same time. That’s why some of our local farmers actually travel out of our rural area and into more urban areas because they are growing such a large quantity that they must be insured they can sell it all, and at a good price. Locally Grown is a very convenient cooperative because it essentially allows farmers to setup a virtual farmers market in multiple places at once (Clarkesville, Clayton and soon Gainesville) and reach customers at all three with a few clicks of the button. Then in one delivery each farmer can reach many, many customers. The market managers help to consolidate the distribution labor from all the farms into a few people in a few hours. Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.

As this collaborative grows, and our customer base along with it, so does the appeal to other farms to join. In fact, there are a few larger farms that will likely join Locally Grown after we add Gainesville, for the same reason that some farms drive their produce to the big city. They have a lot to sell, and they need to sell a lot in one place to make it pay for itself. So as you can see, growing the market will actually increase the amount of food being offered by Locally Grown and we’re very excited about expanding the network of farms participating. Getting to know other farmers has been one of the most exciting elements for those of us on the front end of the market. During the drop offs is when we talk about new practices, exchange ideas, trade secrets, and brainstorm how to grow and sell more local food.

During these changes this year we’ll need your help too. Beginning next week we’ll revert to our summertime hours for pickups from 5-7pm (rather than our shortened 6:30pm pickup in the winter). Since we’ll all be working harder than usual in recruiting farmers, training new volunteers and managers for Gainseville, promoting the market, and working with growers to grow more food, we’ll be wanting to make sure that our market duties are as efficient as possible. In the past we’ve sometimes allowed folks to pickup items after market hours. As you can imagine, having to schedule an extra time for such pickups can be taxing to our already busy schedules. In order to be fair to everyone we’ll stay true to what we’ve always posted about pickups, that if you don’t make the pickup hours we’ll donate your food and charge your account. Since the only reward to our dedicated market volunteers is a small stipend that works out to about $2.50 an hour (or less), at the end of the market we’ll let them take anything that has been left and the remainder will be donated.

Since it’s never fun to realize you missed pickup, we do encourage everyone to make sure that your account lists your up to date cell phone number as we always call customers who haven’t come to pickup yet in the last 20-30 minutes of market to remind you. If something comes up, we encourage you to have a good friend who can pickup for you. For significant emergencies we can make special exceptions, but for everything else this’ll be our standard policy.

Ok, before we go there’s two things we want to share. First is a copy of our new FLIER to help us kickoff the new and 5th season of the Locally Grown market. The kickoff is next Friday, April 18th and we’ll be getting press releases off today to remind folks that Locally Grown is here. Please tell your friends, post a flier, forward an e-mail.

Click here for a PDF link

Second, it’s EASTER and you should buy all our eggs this week to celebrate. Here’s a cool version of deviled eggs that I plan to make this week myself.

Avocado Bacon Ranch Deviled Eggs

Ingredients:
9 hard boiled eggs
1 1/2 avocados peeled and pitted
2 tbs of ranch dressing (homemade or store bought)
1 tbs of sour cream (some people prefer the mayo of a traditional recipe)
2-3 scallions chopped
The juice of one lime
Pinch of salt
4 slices of cooked extra crispy bacon
Paprika

Directions:
Place eggs in one or two pots of cold water, bring to boil for one minute.
Peal and slice eggs length wise.
Remove yolks and place in them in a bowl or food processor.
Set egg whites aside.
Add your remaining ingredients except the bacon… set that aside.
Pulse the filling until it is smooth add more ranch dressing or sour cream if it is too dry.
Use spoon to place filling into egg whites and top with bacon crumbles and paprika.

If anyone else comes up with a better deviled egg recipe, please send it to us, or post it on our recipe or facebook page, and send us a photo too. We know a lot of you are doing some great cooking out there and we want to hear about it.

Thanks for supporting Northeast Georgia Farms and
EAT WELL,

Justin in Habersham
and
Chuck in Rabun