Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for Oct. 17

Good Evening Locavores
The market is now open for orders. We hope you will find all of your favorites on the market.
Have a great weekend and enjoy fresh local food.

Locally Grown - Availability for October 15th, 2013

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Fall is in the air, and the leaves are just beginning to change. After a wee cold snap last weekend, it looks like we still have quite a few farms with peppers and squash and other items that either were up on hill away from the frost, covered, or in a greenhouse. Yes, believe it or not we got frost up here in the mountains. Thank goodness for farmers who baby their plants late into the season so we can continue to enjoy warm weather crops usually up until the really cold frosts in November. But enjoy all you can now. We’re just weeks away from colder weather.

We’ve got a brand new FARM to introduce to the market this week. They are called Mountain Sweet Honey and they are based out of Toccoa, GA. If you can’t guess from the name, they MAKE HONEY. Or the bees make the honey that is, and they collect it so you can eat it on your biscuits. I’ve noticed over the years, that if I put on the counter both jam and honey for biscuits in the morning, my wife goes with the honey every time. Then sometimes the second biscuit gets jam.

Buy some Honey this week. We always like our new growers to feel nice and welcome. They have 4 different sizes, ranging from 16oz all they way up to 5lbs.

Also look out this week for Smart Chick Farms who has some new pork listed. We may have to call them Smart Chick and Piglet Farms. Also, Jumpin Goat Coffee is back after a break. Drink something warm on these windy chilly days ahead.

Well, that’ll do for this week. Hope everyone has a terrific week. And don’t forget to….

EAT WELL,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for Oct. 10

Good evening Locavores,
This week you will find a sweet new addition to the market. Mountain Sweet Honey of Stephens County is offering their wildflower honey for your enjoyment. Julie and Ray Civitts believe that healthy hives and strong bees are the best way to sustain a colony without the use of chemicals and use only natural organic controls around their bees.
Wildfower honey is derived from the nectar of many different flowers including blackbery, sourwood, etc.
Julie and Ray do all they can to keep their sales of honey, nucs, and beeswax as local as possible and we are certainly happy to have them on Northeast Georgia Locallygrown.
Check out their description on the ‘Growers’ page and their website.
One of my favorite uses for honey is to mix 3 TBLS honey, 1 TBLS raw apple cider vinegar, and 1 tsp sea salt in one quart of water. Sipping this throughout the day keeps electrolytes charged and my energy level up all day. Try it but be careful, it can really grow on you.
Try Mountain Sweet Honey in your favorite recipe and share that recipe with the rest of us.
Have a great weekend and enjoy fresh local food.

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability for Oct 3

Good evening Locavores
The evening is cool and fall is coming in a big way this weekend. Here in Tiger we are expecting a low temperature of about 37 Sunday morning.
Located at the head of Bettys Creek and lower slopes of Pickens Nose Mtn, Leah Lake Farm is preparing for a low of 34 degrees. Leah Lake is taking this week off from the market to prepare hoop houses for frost and also plant garlic and winter crops. We will miss their greens but, they will be back next week.
The cool temperatures will make the greens a little sweeter as well as wild delicacies like persimmons and fox grapes. This would be a good weekend for some hiking and wild foraging.
Put a blanket on the bed and enjoy the weekend, starting with foraging on Locallygrown.

Locally Grown - Availability for October 1st, 2013

Hey Local Food Lovers,

There is a real elegance to a well made meal with simple ingredients. I’m eating for dinner some perfect little zephyr squashes from Shade Creek Farm with mushrooms (oh how I miss Orchard Valley Farm oyster mushrooms don’t you), sweet potato greens sauteed with just a tad chicken bouillon flavor, and tofu (that’s my wife looking out for our protein) then the whole thing over rice. Oh, I must admit there’s a pretty good beer on the side. So simple. Chopsticks and little bowls of course. I know I’m a bit lucky to eat this way so often (mixing of the cultures is so a perk of modern life). But for those who don’t eat with chopsticks, I feel like I’ve described very similar simple meals, but from a slightly different season, and with a more American twang. Cornbread rather than rice, and roasted beats with a cilantro lime sour cream sauce, with beet greens sauteed with garlic. Oh wait, and the cornbread was actually cheddar mini muffins with two different kinds of corn. That was really YUMMY! Oh heck since I made this whole meal before and posted all the photos and recipes I’ll just give you a link to go see if it looks and sounds good. And the good news is we actually have cornmeal for sale right now. Beets? Coming soon?

Should be pinned right to the top
https://www.facebook.com/NGLGmarket

I just had an idea. If you’re enjoying cooking Locally Grown food and have a camera of some kind (and we know that you do) send us a picture of any meal you cook, via e-mail or best to post it on our FACEBOOK (and bonus points if you include a recipe), and we’ll give you $1.00 off your next purchase. Wow, we just made this whole idea up right here and NOW this minute.

You heard right, a 1 BUCK awesome local food COUPON in exchange for a photo of your meal. On average there’s about 60 of you who buy from Locally Grown each week, so if all 60 of you post in the next lets say 4 weeks, we’d be happy to pump some bucks of love back at you. Cause we do love that you buy local food from US, and this may just be the best coupon idea ever! Don’t forget these little steps 1) Cook a meal, 2) Take a pick, 3) Post or e-mail your pic, 4) Then come to pickup (easy to forget that part, oh and first you should order food to pickup of course), 5) Get your food, 6) And remind us, "Hey I posted an awesome food pic and you guys have a COUPON thingy-o!. Then we’ll say Great. You cook good! Maybe I could invite myself over for dinner some time. We don’t come up with great ideas often around here, but this seems kind of great.

Don’t forget to cook folks. Just like you can’t forget to pick okra (even if it’s like 5 days late), and water the plants. It’s dry out there folks.

Ok, two items to plug before signing off.

AMY’S FLAN. It’s under Ethnic/Specialties, which was kind of the them for this e-mail right.

MELONS, WINTER MELON. This is one that folks really need to learn how to cook. I’ll let my wife post a photo and recipe. Here that Ching-Yu, I’m calling you out to earn your BUCK COUPON.

Seriously folks, don’t be shy, MAN or WOMAN UP and fly your LOCAL FOOD FLAG high and strong. Cook something good, don’t forget to mail a picture (post it FB better), get a coupon, participate, enjoy, share.

EAT WELL,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew

E-MAIL
soque@windstream.net

POST
https://www.facebook.com/NGLGmarket

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for Sept.26

Good evening Locavores
The leaves are beginning to turn but, there are still 124 listings for vegetables available on the market.
Sylvan Falls Mill has updated their products with lots of their stone ground organic grains.
Stock up on the summer crops while they last.
Have a great weekend and enjoy fresh local food.

Locally Grown - Availability for September 24th, 2013

Hey Local Food Lovers,

This week’s message is coming at ya a little late. But hopefully a reminder that you’ve still got close to 12 hours of shopping left will help you get a yummy order in this week. Before I get into what kind of stuff we’re into behind the scenes this week, let’s talk about what’s to eat on the market.

Okra is everywhere. From three different farms and two different colors. My father in law has been doing the cooking the last few weeks and I love how he cross cuts the okra into these beautiful artistic long pieces that are easier to grab with chopsticks. There are some gorgeous peppers coming through the market these days. I love the variety of sizes, colors and flavors. You can add peppers to almost any meal to punch it up. Peas are also flowing. You can spot the pea lovers out there as many of them have already stocked up on several pounds of peas. Just think of that shelling time as a form of deep meditation. You can hum, peas are good, peas are good. It’ll make you sleep better.

Before I go this week I want to mention something that we hope to mention more in the months ahead. One of the goals of Locally Grown is to get more good food to people who want it, including those who find it difficult to afford. That’s why earlier this year we applied for and received an EBT machine that accepts SNAP payments (used to be called food stamps back in the day). We only have one machine for our Clarkesville location right now, but are in the process of applying to receive a second one at our Gainesville Location. We stay so busy around here we have not done a great job of promoting this program. If anyone is willing to help us over the next several months in identifying ways and places to get the word out to those who receive SNAP benefits, this is a program we’d like to see grow.

We’ll let you know when the Gainesville EBT is received and working, but in the meantime, our Clarkesvillle Location is ready right now today!

We may try and have a program too to offset the membership costs for EBT users. Perhaps a sponsor or two of this program would do the trick. If you have an idea of a sponsor, please let us know. We’ll be sure and give them appropriate credit for such a good deed.

Well, that’s all we have time for this week. We hope you enjoy this week’s local food offerings and …..

EAT WELL,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for Sept. 19

Good Evening Locavores
Your Locallygrown market is open for orders. What a great opportunity to excercise your right to choose and enjoy fresh healthy food.
As you shop for your favorites you may also want to try some new and different.
Have a great and safe weekend.

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

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for Sept. 12

Good Evening Locavores,
This is another great week for shopping local products. The summer vegetables are still abundant and now is the time to savour them before cool autumn weather replaces them with fall crops.
There may be a record high number of meat selections on the market this week.
After a short break Lynda
Brady,BG Farms has restocked and updated her listings of beef, pork, and chicken. Lynda was the first meat provider for Northeast Georgia Locallygrown and through hard work and persitence she has been a real market mainstay from the beginning. Thanks Lynda for being there for us.
Have a great weekend and enjoy fresh local food.