Locally Grown - Availability for April 15th , 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Me oh my! Things are cranking up! Locally Grown just bought our first piece of property. It’s a 5×8 enclosed trailer with a side door! That’s right, your food will now be traveling down the road in style. There’s even a big fat sticker in red white and blue that says PATRIOT! And shouldn’t it be patriotic to be eating local food from local farms!

Ok, I know the 4th of July is too far away for the flag waving but we are proud at how far we’ve come. Locally Grown started in 2010 as an experiment between two communities and about 10 or 12 farmers. Farmers in Clarkesville and in Clayton had very small markets at the time and everyone was looking for a way to reach new customers. That’s when Chuck Mashburn had the idea to bring the Locally Grown model (invented in Athens) to the mountains.

It was amazing, is amazing how quickly it began. And how quickly farmers we didn’t know found us. In fact it still works that way today. Both Waukau Meadows and Homegrown Products LLC (who just joined us this week by the way) found us and gave us a call just in the last several months.

Growth was slow. The first 3 years sales were under $40,000 and were only growing by a bit of a %.

Then last year. POW! Growth! The move to Gainesville helped. But sales were up, way up at our original locations too. In fact, today, Clarkesville is by far our biggest location. We expect Gainesville to catch up and pass them soon, but way to go Clarkesville! For such a small town we have a lot of dedicated local food eaters. Most of them come every week, and many have been there since almost the beginning.

As things change we hope to retain everything that Locally Grown has always been, a laid back, fun-loving way to help farmers distribute food to more people, while ALSO becoming some new things as well. For example, we hope we’re getting better at communicating who are farmers are and why they are special. This year we have a featured farmer calendar and as each farm comes up we hope to share with you some of the things that we LOVE about the farms, the farmers, their products, and what inspires them to produce this wonderful food!

The whole point of the FEATURED FARMERS is for you to get a chance to meet some of these folks. Just imagine having a mental image of the face of the farmer behind almost every meal you eat. That’s possible now!

Well, that’s all the time I have tonight. Really want to encourage folks to check our newest growers Tara and Russ Grindle at Homegrown Products. They are egg producers and soon to be lots of veggies in the weeks ahead. Their website link is on our FACEBOOK and under our GROWERS section. Pay their site a visit and order some eggs this week and in the weeks ahead!

Thanks to you all for your dedication and EAT WELL,

Justin and Teri in Habersham
Chuck in Rabun
and Andrew in Hall