Locally Grown - Availability for May 13th , 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Hope everyone had a Happy Mother’s Day! For our family we had lots and lots of fun things to eat for this….our first mother’s day. It all started on Friday with the thawing of two pork chops from Wauka Meadows while we went for a quick jog before the thunderstorm came through. Once thawed I did my favorite pork chop preparation which is simply chopped fresh thyme and rosemary (it’ll be mainly the rosemary that carries through) rubbed on the chops with a little olive oil and then some fresh ground pepper. I let them sit that way for a half hour to let the flavors soak in. Then onto the grill for just a minute or so on high to sear the meat on both sides, then down to low for a nice long slow cook.

As a side we tried something new. We had beet greens from Trillium Farms (those came from the Clarkesville Farmers Market not Locally Grown, we like to get around to all the local food we can find if you know what I mean), beets from Mountain Earth, and oranges from …..o.k. from the grocery store….but what did you expect…..we can’t grow oranges around here. I had a vague idea of beet orange salad but had never had one. It’s so simple and beautiful it’s perfect. First, everyone should know how to properly roast a beet, and I don’t mean bake it to death where it’s all dried out. I learned this from Alice Waters. You simply take a baking dish or pan and put just a little bit of water in the bottom, enough to cover the bottom of the pan (.25 inch let’s say or a little more) then add the beet roots, then put foil over the top, bake on 400 for about 45 minutes. Beets will come out tender to the fork. You can peel if you like. I just ran cool water on them to cool them down fast chopped them up in a bowl, then parboiled the beet greens (that just means flash boil them for about a minute), chopped them up and added them. Then I zested an orange, peeled it, broke it into sections and actually I just pulled it apart into pieces (you could chop it just as easy). It all went in a bowl and got chilled for 20 minutes. Boom, beet/orange salad. You can add a fancy vinegar like a champagne vinegar, but we went without and it was great just simple.

Then for desert we had strawberries, wonderful strawberries. We ate them raw, then we also cut them into pieces and sprinkled with vanilla extract and sugar and let them sit. Then after 20 minutes some of those went into a blender with a few scoops of ice-cream and some milk to make a really good milk shake. The rest went into homemade popsicles. Half the popsicle was the strawberry/vanilla/sugar mixture with yogurt mixed in. The other half of the popsicle was mango mixed with mint and green juice (which is a vegetable and fruit juice blend).

As you can see it was a tasty start to the weekend. Also this weekend we had Leah Lake collard greens, some BG farms bacon, and lasagna made with BG farms beef, and a combination of beet greens and spinach. Sounds strange …..tastes amazing! And of course more strawberries.

Spring is my favorite time of year for eating local.

I hope it becomes your favorite time as well.

Two big announcements before I go.

We’re looking for some very important volunteers to help us with a few projects this year. And even if you don’t have the time I hope you’ll help us spread the word on these two great activities we have coming up.

The first is a brand new project for us. While we have FORUM communications helping us for two more months developing a wide range of marketing tools, we came up with the idea to begin compiling our own RECIPE BOOK with Locally Grown items, and dishes made by YOU GUYS our customers, also dishes by our FARMERS and even some CHEFS. If you would like to be involved in helping us compile recipes, collecting them from some of our friends, and possibly even taking photographs and other interesting tasks, we’d like to find one or two volunteers to help with this project. We will have a template for making the recipes look attractive so we can start to circulate them as we collect them. The long range goal though is to come up with enough (at least 40 or more) to compile into a Book, which should help to entice even more people to EAT LOCAL.

If you’re interested in such a task just send Andrew an e-mail Andrew.NGLG@gmail.com and let us know why you’re interested, and what skills, talents or interests you think you might be able to lend.

The second VOLUNTEER effort is helping out on some of our Locally Grown farms, and playing Farmer for a day. When polled farmers agree, the single biggest way that we could help them and make their lives easier (other than eating their food every week) would be to come out and put in a few hours of work during the crunch time of the season. We’ve never organized an event like this before and we’re pretty excited about being able to lend a hand. Details are still getting nailed down but the week of June 22-26 we’ll be helping at least one farm in a very significant way. In exchange you can get a pretty big discount (over 30% off) on your purchase of a FARM TOUR pass. More important than that, you’ll likely learn a lot about what organic farming looks like, skills that you can use in your own gardens. If you’re interested, please add “CropMob2015!” volunteer day to your cart this week. It doesn’t obligate you to anything….and it doesn’t cost anything. But it’ll give us an idea of how many folks are interested in lending a hand. And we can also coordinate the best dates and times based on who is most interested.

Thanks to you all for supporting Locally Grown foods in all the ways that you do. There are more opportunities every year!

Eat well,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew

Locally Grown - Availability for April 29th , 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Just a quick reminder to get you some good Local Food this week. The asparagus has folks attention, but you gotta order fast to get it. It’s fun to see some of these specialty seasonal items get gobbled up.

I picked my first asparagus a little over a week ago, and i scooped out some of the soft innards of a stalk to let my 9 month old little girl have her first taste, just a few minutes after it had been cut from the ground. She loved it. So I let her hold the spear and chew on the end like a teething toy. Now that’s what life should be like. Not plastic teething rings, but fresh organic asparagus spears, dangling from babies mouths, getting them used to the taste and nutrition of locally grown food. I think letting her dig into a hard boiled pastured raised egg is coming up soon as well.

Promotions for the 2015 Georgia Mountains Farm Tour is now in full swing. The event is in exactly two months and you can order a weekend pass now from our website www.eatwellbuylocal.org

The proceeds from our Farm Tour is what our local farmers use to fund all our collaborations throughout the year including visits to each others farms, an annual farmer dinner, and this year we’re planning a few technical workshops that we’ll open to the public. Farmers collaborating is what made it possible for Locally Grown to exist, and its what allows farmers to exchange information and grow the local food movement stronger. If you or your business would like to SUPPORT the local food movement and our farmers network in particular we are currently looking for a small handful of SPONSORS for the farm tour. If you think you or your business would like to become actively involved in helping farmers, this small contribution would be a huge and direct help, and help to promote your business. Donations are tax-deductible. Click here for details

And if you have other suggestions of potential sponsors, please let us know when you attend market this week.

One of the most exciting things we’re adding to this year’s farm tour, and was one of the most requested areas that farmers wanted the Network to help support them, is the organization of some CROP MOBS, which are basically days that volunteers can come out and play farmer for a day, and really help farms catch up on some projects as well. Andrew is organizing some dates and locations for those currently. If you’d really like to help a farmer out with some simple bending over work for a few hours sometime in early June send Andrew an e-mail. It should be a great way to really BECOME a part of the Local Food movement in North Georgia!

Another great way to get involved is to eat local food. So we hope you order from Locally Grown this week and EAT WELL!

Justin and Teri in Habersham
Chuck in Rabun
Andrew in Hall

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for April 17

The market is now open for orders.

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

Locally Grown - Availability for April 8th , 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

The Northeast Georgian newspaper in Clarkesville just gave Locally Grown some great press over the last week or so. One was a short column that I wrote. It had been almost four years since I’d written about local foods for the paper and a lot has happened since that time. Here’s the column. Hope you all had a great EASTER WEEKEND and we hope to see some of you at market this week!

Local Food getting easier to find

When I moved back to Clarkesville in 2009 local food was hard to find. While the normal thing to do is to eat the food that the grocery store sells, I’d had a few experiences that convinced me that fresh local food was better. And that’s a hard lesson to ignore once learned. Local food just tastes better. Scientists have proven it’s better for us nutritionally. And I just like knowing who grows my food. Farmers are interesting, generous, and good people. Each week when it comes time for me to make decisions on how I fill my belly, there are a hundred reasons why I’d like to fork over at least a portion of my money to a local farmer rather than a supermarket.

But in 2009 that was still hard to do. There were a few farmers markets around, but some were a little too far away, or they were small. Slowly but surely small farmers all across the area started talking to each other. And in April 2010 a little experimental website farmers market got going called Northeast Georgia Locally Grown. A year after that, the Clarkesville Farmers Market got started, then a nearby dairy opened, and a fruit and berry farm, and a honey farm, and a fella started growing mushrooms. And before I knew it, I was eating real good, and year-round.

Here we are about five years later, and a lot has changed. For one, if I want to eat local food now, it’s easy. Right now in my fridge I have local eggs, meat, milk, chard, spinach, lettuce, onions, butternut squash, potatoes beets, fig jam, and carrots. Those items come from about five or six different farms located near Toccoa, in Clermont, in Dahlonega, in North Hall County, and of course here in Habersham County. I know the farmers names. They are Nick, Scott, Tony, Ronnie, Larry and Brooks. I’ve been to all their farms. I’ve shared a meal with all of them, and hope to share many more.

But that’s not all that has changed in the last few years. School children here in Habersham and also up in Rabun County have eaten some of these same foods, from some of these same farms that I have. I’ve watched kids eat turnips and kale for the first time and tell me they thought it tasted good.

Last June over 500 people attended a tour of many of the small local food farms in our area. That’s a lot of people coming to the area because of their interest in fresh local food in the mountains.

Some change is slow and some change is fast. Some change is good and some change is bad. But watching local food becoming part of the culture of our rural area again is a welcome and beautiful thing.

We choose the things we value in life and local food represents values we all relate to, the health and well-being of our children, our relationships to community and to the land, our desire to learn more about the earth and our own health, and the joy of a good meal.

Last summer, farmers collaborated in getting more local food to our nearest urban neighbors in Gainesville, making local food easier to find there as well. Each of these steps, these relationships, these new farms that arise, or the expansion in their production, they seem so small when examined individually. But change is happening. It’s happening fast, and it’s the good kind of change. The kind that results in people valuing the important things in life, like eating well.

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew