Locally Grown - Availability for January 7th, 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Welcome back to Locally Grown after what feels like a very long break! My fridge is nearly empty of local food which is downright painful. Time to stock it back up!

We are bringing in the new year in style with the first of what will be numerous exciting changes and improvements to Locally Grown in 2015. I’m sure all of you have noticed the change in the appearance of the website. While everything functions exactly the same (please let us know if you found something that isn’t working properly), the site should look and feel just a little bit nicer. We also want to point out a very cool new logo designed by Andrew Linker. Very well done! Many of our Gainesville customers have already met Andrew, but you’ll be seeing a lot more of him in 2015 as he’ll be taking my place (Justin) as the full time manager at Gainesville. I’ll definitely be stopping by from time to time, but will be concentrating more energies in some of the logistics of growing the market this year.

I’d like to mention a couple of other things as we bring in the New Year. Locally Grown is supported by a huge fleet of volunteers and way underpaid managers. Since we’ve expanded to 3 locations now I thought I’d slow down long enough to mention all of our crew that makes the market possible.

Here’s how the LOCALLY GROWN CREW breaks down:

Justin and Chuck are co-managers of the whole market
Amy is the Tiger market manager
Teri is the Clarkesville market manager
Andrew is the NEW Gainesville market manager
Bruce King starts as our Shuttle Driver between Gainesville and Clarkesville this week!
Brooks is an occasional shuttle Driver between Tiger and Clarkesville
Lynn is an every other week Clarkesvillle volunteer
Crissy is an every other week Clarkesville volunteer
Annaclair is a substitute Clarkesville volunteer
Ron and Hildreth are our every other week Gainesville volunteers
Anne is an every other week Gainesville volunteer
Sue and Carrie are our substitute Gainesville volunteers

That’s a whole lot of people, and I apologize as I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few. We also have lots of farmers that help coordinate order deliveries between farms to try and cut down the driving time for everyone.

If you get a chance, please thank these individuals for giving so much of their time and energy to make this market possible. Each year that the market has grown we’ve had to expand our base of volunteers to help make sure we could continue, and each year, the right people have been there at the right times and we are very thankful for them. We have a great crew!

Maybe one day soon I’ll describe the history of the market again, and how we are organized by a farmer led non-profit called Georgia Mountains Farmers Network. But tonight I have a few other announcements to make.

Here are some of the things to look out and prepare for in 2015
New Farms are joining and will continue to join Locally Grown this year. We want to welcome The Veggie Patch at Bouchard Farms this week. The farm is certified organic, located in Commerce, GA, and has an incredible mix of greenhouse grown goodies (to keep us stocked up all winter) and a whopping 15 acres of field grown veggies that’ll come on strong for the spring and summer. We’ve posted a photo of Michelle Berzack the Farm Coordinator at The Veggie Patch showing off their greenhouses on a tour we took right before Christmas.

A Gainseville Farmer Drop Off Site will be coordinated sometime in the next 3 months, likely somewhere at the History Center pickup location. We’re in the process of looking at all the logistics now to make it as smooth as possible. What this will mean to you the customer is that we’ll be able to expand the number of farms and food vendors that can sell to the market, by adding a location that is closer for them to deliver to. This should greatly increase the diversity of products offered through the market. We could use your help. If you know of farms or food producers (that also meet our market standards) that would like to sell and are located within a 30 min drive or so from Gainesville, please let us know or let them know or both. Our focus is on food producers so we’re not encouraging other locally crafted goods at this time.

We’re working on our first ever Marketing Strategy with a great group of folks at FORUM COMMUNICATIONS in Gainesville. We’re very excited about this process and reaching new people in 2015. We believe with some creative approaches to engage more people with Locally Grown food, people could eat better, and farms will have a solid and growing customer base every month of the year. We also have found that quite a few of you are more than willing to talk us up. We thank you for that. With a few new cool tools and resources we think we could make it even easier to make Locally Grown look irresistible to people. That’s our aim, to become irresistible! And we look forward to engaging all of you in that process.

Before we wrap up tonights message, I just want to let each of you know that we consider everyone who buys food from the market, or reads these e-mails on a regular basis, or just keeps up with what we are doing to be a very important part of our Locally Grown team. Up until this point the success of our entire little market has been because of word of mouth from folks just like you who like good food, and like learning about sustainable farms, and then supporting those farms. We love the deep conversations we have with customers on market days about everything from how to cook jerusalem artichokes, to the benefits of probiotics, to how to plant, harvest and cure sweet potatoes successfully. It’s fun, it’s educational, it’s about building community around the things we love and above all else it’s about eating well. So THANK YOU for making 2014 our best year yet, and thanks in advance for your help in making 2015 …..well let’s just say it’s gonna be BIG!

So EAT WELL this week and here’s to the beginning of a GREAT NEW YEAR!

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew
in Clarkesville, Tiger and Gainesville

will be working on some other Locally Grown