Locally Grown - Availability for July 2, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

It’s a late message again this week, but that’s because we wanted to take the time to share some of the highlights of the FARM TOUR this weekend.

Attendance was bigger than ever with approximately 350 people coming for the weekend (up from 250 last year).

If you weren’t able to make it (or even if you were) here’s some PHOTOS of some of the farms and what they looked and felt like. Hopefully this link will work!

2014 Georgia Mountains Farm Tour

If the link doesn’t work, visit the tour website at
http://georgiamfn.blogspot.com/

We want to thank all those who attended. In another day or two we’ll have a survey to get your feedback on things you liked most about the Tour, and ways we can improve upon it in future years.

We had visitors from all over the state attend the TOUR which was exciting. Obviously we live in a pretty area, and people enjoy touring around and learning about the culture of local food we are rapidly building here. That’s probably the major purpose of the tour to help to build a culture around local food here in the Mountains. Locally Grown is a very important part of that culture. As we’ve mentioned here before, most farms from Rabun, Habersham, White, Stephens and other surrounding counties didn’t even know each other until we started collaborating through Locally Grown. I think it’s safe to say, we wouldn’t have organized our first FARM TOUR if Locally Grown hadn’t helped to demonstrate the benefit of collaborating together.

Ironically, we probably wouldn’t have expanded to Gainesville this year if we hadn’t received a call about year and half ago from a woman in Buford interested in us delivering to the giant sub-division she lived in. We weren’t prepared to make the move at that time, but after giving it some thought we realized expanding the area that farmers sell their food in makes a lot of sense. And North Georgia has a rapidly growing population of people looking to EAT WELL. Gainesville struck us as the best step in that direction because there’s already a relationship between that community and our own. Heck, I can remember that before 2006, if you wanted to go to the movies or hit a big hardware store you had to drive to Gainesville. After all those years of depending on Gainesville for a few staple items, it’s exciting to reverse the flow a bit and start sending fresh, diverse farm products from the mountains down there.

Since most of the farms on the FARM TOUR are also featured on Locally Grown I want to mention a few of them.

Those who have noticed the milled products from Sylvan Falls Mill and their baked goods as well, may not realize what a treasure this Mill truly is to preserving and expanding our agricultural heritage. First, there are only a handful of working water wheel grist mills left in the state. And meal and flour ground with water power are said to have a better flavor because the stones don’t generate excessive heat which can actually cook the meal as it’s being ground. Lots of conventionally milled grains have been heated by the friction of a grinder that works all day long. Another thing I often forget is that the Johnston’s that own and operate the mill only purchase local corn from farms that do not spray their crops, thus creating a market for organically grown corn. Many families in Rabun are growing corn selected from the best ears from nearly 100 years of corn growing in the area. That means they select corn that is bug, disease, and rot resistant. That also means that this selection process eliminates the need for them to spray chemicals. These are families who follow a long, long tradition, and folks who seek their corn products help to preserve these traditions.

Other farms on the tour that sell to Locally Grown regularly were Melon Head Farms (their rhubarb / strawberry jam on vanilla ice-cream was the tastiest treat of the Tour for us), Mill Gap Farms (Chuck and Amy have a story behind almost every item they sell), Leah Lake Farm (if it weren’t for Brooks most of us wouldn’t eat lettuce all Summer, Spring, Fall and Winter), Taylor Creek Farm (which just started selling to LG year and already are consistently the 2nd or 3rd top sellers). Quite a few farms sell to LG now and then such as Liberty Farms (the only folks that have ever sold okra through LG by the bushel), Shade Creek Farm (who specialize in lots of root crops) and LoganBerry (who are so popular they can usually sell everything they grow off the farm but occasionally list their bumper crops such as asparagus and tomatoes).

It’s really nice to have these mental images of the various farms when you put a bite of delicious food in your mouth.

Since we can’t see everything that happens on these farms all the time, we try and write about as much as we can here, and post photos too. If you have PHOTOS from this weekend’s tour that you’d like to share please send them to us at

soque@windstream.net

We’ll add them to our FACEBOOK page and to the FARM TOUR website. We really love the involvement of the whole community in sharing an appreciation of the farms and foods that make our area special. Your unique viewpoints are a valuable contribution, just like that lady in Buford inspired us to expand our whole market, you might inspire something too.

We hope you order lots of good food this week and keep spreading the word!

THANKS for the Support and
EAT WELL,

Justin in Habersham
Chuck in Rabun
and Teri and Andrew too!