Locally Grown - Availability for September 17th, 2013

Hey Local Food Lovers,

You may not know it, but local food farmers are planning big things for the future. These plans come in all sizes and forms. Sometimes it’s as simple as growing a new variety of squash or carrot or potato that did especially well in a trial run. For some it means preparing new ground (believe it or not this is the time of year you start doing that for next spring). For a few, it’s constructing a new greenhouse that’ll open up a whole new way of growing, and opportunities to grow more, and for more months of the year.

These days farmers don’t just work in isolation on their own farms. They like to collaborate, trade ideas, go in together on an order of supplies. All these little efforts add up to more knowledge, better farming and hopefully more fun.

One of the things that local food farmers give more thought to than other farmers is markets. Getting food to the right customers at the right times is trickier than you might think. For one it’s gonna involve time, and it’s gonna involve driving. It’s also gonna involve telling a story.

One of the things we’ve tried to learn to do better as a group of farmers, rather than just each individual farmer on their own, is learn to tell the story of North Georgia local food farmers. It’s an interesting story and getting more interesting all the time. Our annual farm tour is a great way we’ve learned to tell our story together as a group.

Another thing happening in our story of North Georgia farms is there are more and more people interested in farming and/or producing good local food. Heck, you may even be one of these people and I encourage you to give it a try. The year that my wife and I had time to grow watermelons, tomatoes, fennel, cucumbers, beets, cabbage, squash, okra, potatoes and go hunt wild mushrooms in the woods was one of the best years of our lives, and it was the joy of going to markets and selling to people that made it so special. We were wannabe farmers for a moment (we still grow, we just hoard it for ourselves now). I guarantee that over the next 6 months you’ll see some brand new foods from some brand new faces. It’s not unrealistic that one of you reading this might decide to make that you.

I say all this because the organization behind our Northeast Georgia Locally Grown is called the Georgia Mountains Farmers Network and we’re having a meeting of our board tomorrow night. We’re pretty new, having just started back in January 2012 and formed our first board this past February 2014. Sometimes opportunity drives you to do more than you thought you would and our little group realized several things. First, that if farmers didn’t take leadership in local foods, then somebody else would. As local foods become more popular, like everything, there’s a risk of co-optation. You know how such things go. It’s happened before with conventional farms and our grocery store landscapes. It’s important, very important for FARMERS to play the central role in how Local Food Landscapes develop and grow, to insure that their needs are met.

For two years, our little farmer network identified two things as their primary needs 1) Cooperative Marketing so that more farms could get more food to more urban customers. Hoila, that’s where we got the idea for expanding to Gainesville. 2) To host public events that promoted Local Foods in our region. That’s the FARM TOUR. We can’t believe how well that’s gone. We have about $4,000 earned from our last two events to invest in our future collaborations whatever they may be. Obviously our group does a lot more than these two things. We also visit each others farms every other month 8 months of the year. That’s fun. We share food and stories and get to know each other.

We’re not really sure what’s next (ha ha, that’s only a half truth). But we do know we’re having fun moving forward. And we also know for the first time we have a bit of money to promote Local Foods in a significant way (our USDA grant I mentioned a few weeks ago – hurray!). We’ve never really done much outside of a press release here and there, a business card or flier, a few signs. But it’s time for us to get the attention a few more people. Maybe a few more hundred, maybe a few thousand. It’s hard to say. As we try and learn how to do this (we are farmers after all) we’re gonna need a lot of help. If you or someone you know wants to offer some suggestions on how to make local foods a fixture in more people’s lives, tell us. If your idea rises to the top of all ideas, we may just do it.

We’re at the very beginning of something wonderful, and challenging and exciting. But we’re working together to build the Local Food landscape that sounds good to us. We want it to sound good to you too, because after all you are the folks we count on to…..

EAT WELL,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew