Northeast Georgia Locallygrown CANCELED this week

Hi Locavores,
We hope you are all staying warm and enjoying the beauty of the snow this morning. We have three inches or more here in Tiger.
At this time more snow is predicted for tomorrow afternoon.
Even though the main roads may be cleared we are aware that many people have difficulties with steep driveways and secondary streets that may be dangerous for driving.
For this reason we have decided the best and safest course is to cancel the market for this week.
Be safe and we will look forward to next weeks market.

Locally Grown - Availability for February 25th, 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

This last week was pretty exciting! First, there were lots of questions from both farmers and customers about whether we would carry on with Locally Grown in the freezing cold ice and snow. The answer was Yes! As long at the roads aren’t horribly dangerous we keep the Local Food moving from the farm to your fridge to your bellies nearly every week all year long. We do REALLY appreciate it when everyone works with us the way you did this past Wednesday by picking up in just a one hour time frame so we weren’t freezing to death. We had 100% support on that and we really THANK YOU. Everything went well and hopefully you enjoyed getting good fresh local food in the dead of winter.

There were some other exciting developments this last week. The first I’ll offer as a teaser. Andrew and I went to visit a farm that’ll be joining Locally Grown in just a few weeks that will have some excellent BEEF, PORK and EGGS produced on a farm that just relocated to north Hall County. It was a frigid day on our visit, but we were very impressed with what we saw and can’t wait to welcome a new MEAT producer to the market. Since they’ll be joining us soon enough I’ll save lots of other details including their name for their grand entrance coming quite soon!

Georgia Organics had their huge annual conference this past weekend in Athens (about 1,000 in attendance) and Chuck and Andrew and I had the privileged opportunity to go down and give a presentation on the role of FARMERS NETWORKS in building Local Food Systems as one of the conference sessions. Many of you may not yet be aware of the Georgia Mountains Farmers Network (GMFN) that we started back in January 2012 and how important that has been in creating regional collaboration amongst sustainable farmers. To give you an example of how important, the GMFN is the reason that Locally Grown expanded to Gainesville this past year. Our little group would vote every year on our top priority projects to collaborate on, and every year COLLABORATIVE MARKETING to get more products to more customers was voted as a top priority. The more we discussed how to do it, we realized that 1) We wanted to reach URBAN customers to increase our sales potential and; 2) We wanted to continue to sell RETAIL (as opposed to Wholesale). We discussed many ways to accomplish that goal, and eventually discovered that expansion of the Locally Grown market to Gainesville was our best possible opportunity.

It’s taken a lot of effort, but our collaborations have paid off in just the 3 years that GMFN has been around. We have a board of directors, our FARM TOUR (mark your calendar now for June 27-28) is a huge event promoting local food farms regionally with over 500 people attending last year. And in less than a month our little group (it’ll be about 50 people) will have our annual meeting at Harvest Habersham, enjoying a really good meal of food grown from their own farms to discuss what we want to accomplish in 2015 and onward.

Rather than try and re-give the whole talk here, feel free to take a look at the SLIDESHOW

If you’ve got an hour to kill and would enjoy plugging your headphones into an MP3 describing how our local farming community has grown over the last 3 years here’s the AUDIO from the talk.

That’ll do it for this week. Our item count is a little low this week. Obviously the coldest week of the year stifles the growth of fresh veggies, but order big of what we do have and get ready. We are just days away from the beginnings of spring crops. I can feel the excitement in the air.

EAT WELL,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for Feb. 20

Good Evening Locavores
Your market managers and volunteers want to thank everyone for coming to pick up your orders early this past Wednesday. It was a blessing to finish the market earlier than usual and get out of that brutal cold and wind.
Be safe this weekend and stay warm.

Locally Grown - Availability for February 18th, 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Baby it’s cold outside. We’re getting the tail end of winter this week. Please be kind and pick up your orders as early as possible this week to keep our market managers from standing in the cold any longer than they have to (the low on Wednesday is predicted at 6 degrees, YIKES!).

That said, the warm spot of your week could and should be picking up some good Local Food. We have a special guest FARM on the market this week, LoganBerry Heritage Farm from up north of Cleveland are featuring their SOY FREE pastured eggs. We don’t see LoganBerry listed here often so show them some love and order an extra dozen this week. Give some to a friend as a way to let ‘em know you’re thinking about them. I think if anyone gave me a dozen fresh eggs, I’d know instantly that they really, really care.

This week we’d like to ask all of our CUSTOMERS to do a small something extra that will HELP US ALOT and should turn around and GIVE RIGHT BACK TO YOU.

It’s a 2015 CUSTOMER survey! This is the best way for us to get a read on what products each of you would like to see more of in the year ahead. Farmers can peruse this list and grow more of the items that they see are in high demand. The SURVEY also asks a few questions about other ways to improve LOCALLY GROWN and if there are ways you’d like to get more involved and help the market grow.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5ZTGCKH

The survey will be open for the next several weeks, but please TAKE IT TODAY! Cold weather is good for dreaming of spring and summer’s bounty. The sooner we know what’s in demand, the quicker we can start planting it in the field.

Locally Grown also has several new VOLUNTEER opportunities open for the right people.

The first is an “early market helper” at our Clarkesville Location to help us receive goods from farmers on Wednesday’s starting at 1:45pm until around 4:30pm (and they could stick around for customer pickup if desired). This individual needs a strong back as work would involve pulling coolers from our shed and once full from farm deliveries loading them onto a truck. It’s a fun job as it involves interacting with all the farmers during delivery. The volunteer will receive a small food stipend. If you or someone you know would be interested send an e-mail to soque@windstream.net.

The second is one or more people who’d be willing to help put together some BASKETS that we’ll fill with Locally Grown products for submission in several Hall County charitable SILENT AUCTIONS as a way to promote the market. We’re hoping someone with a creative flair would be willing to make these really zing giving Locally Grown a great impression around town. Here’s a photo of something we like, but feel free to bring your own creative ideas. E-mail Andrew if interested at Andrew.NGLG@gmail.com

That about does it for tonight. Stay warm. Enjoy the snow if we get it. And don’t forget to….

EAT WELL,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for Feb. 13

Good Evening Locavores
Arctic temps,wind chill, snow and ice Oh My! What a week we have ahead. At least we can all plan to spend more time indoors this week and what better way to beat the winter chill than with comfort food, hot and savory from the stove.
The market offers all the ingredients needed to beat the winter blues; from fresh vegetables to meats, eggs, baked goods, and prepared foods. And don’t forget those power packed micros and sprouts from Baker Springs.
You can indulge your sweetie all week with mountain honey and sweet treats from biscotti to cakes.
Have a great Valentines Day and warm your heart with someone special.

Locally Grown - Availability for February 11th, 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Next weekend in for Lovers, or as they like to say on the Holiday Calendar, Saint Valentine’s Day. Since virtually nothing is known about the real St. Valentine, and the holiday celebrating “romantic love” in his name was a poetic invention by Chaucer the Father of English Literature, I’m going to take creative license and tell my own story of Saint Valentine and the holiday we all know and love.

Saint Valentine, though having pledged his life to the priesthood, found himself one day ridiculously in love with aura of a young lady farmer. Each day he did most of the gathering of food in the market to be served for the other priests, and for special occasions, an errand he most deeply appreciated as he enjoyed the smells of fresh harvests from the field, the best chicken freshly plucked, and the fine breads and cheeses made by the artisans of the village. But above them all he was entranced with the young lady who seemed to do it all. At her stand she had every vegetable known in the village, but the best grown, without a blemish. She stacked them all in a rainbow palette that caught the sunlight as he walked forth. She cut fresh herbs and instructed each passer of what they were and how to use them in cooking. Her very hands smelled of the rosemary cut that morning. Fresh flowers adorned her farm, her stand and her very hair which always had the most recently bloomed flower tucked behind her ear, reminding one of the season, and the beauty of the season.

Since Saint Valentine was wed to the church he decided to express his love by loving what she loved, the beauty, bounty and abundance of the living Earth, carefully studied and cultivated so that others may live and enjoy it more deeply. And so Saint Valentine engaged every farmer at the market and learned what special skill they had and good morsel they produced that might enrich his meal and his life.

As he fed this newfound love, he found it grew quickly. There was the farm of the Mountains and the Earth that grew fine fields of fresh Spinach that were exquisite in a soup. Their swiss chard always harvested young and tender were bright and pretty as spring flowers but grew in the wintertime. The O’shanna Fofanna farm known for their lettuce and pork would occasionally bring fresh Parisian Cookies with white chocolate and strawberry jam which always made him feel more sophisticated than he actually was when eating them (and his typical sneeze after eating baked goods was absent as well).

The freshness of the eggs spoke for themselves as the days he didn’t arrive at the market super early, he found every last egg had been sold.

In the month of February when the dreariness of Winter needed some cheer he would sweeten his life with Honey in his tea in the mornings from a sweet mountain bee keeper, and each evening a stick of hot cocoa would go in a tall glass of milk. For breakfast he’d have blueberry or fig jam on his biscuit from the farm with the shady creek to remind him that these fruits would begin to grow again soon. After dinner a vegan apple pecan cake

As a way to thank the Lady Farmer that had spurred this new and profound love, Saint Valentine would occassionally bring a small gift. He knew of an amazing chef up in the mountains who had written his own cookbook, that included recipes that had been cooked with her very fruits of the field. So he brought her a copy and with it a soup he had made with her own jerusalem artichokes, a specialty of her farm. She knew not what to think so rarely being thanked in such a generous way. He did not linger too long at her table, but she forever noticed his love too for the people and the food that came from the Earth. This very particular piece of Earth, that thankfully had people who lived and worked on it, showing that the Earth provides when cared for.

So this is the true origin story of VALENTINE’S DAY. If Chaucer can have a go at it why not we!

Eat Well our Dear Friends! And be in love!

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for Feb.6

Good Evening Locavores
We have had another week with some very cold morning temperature. Despite this your locally grown farmers have many vegetables available for your enjoyment.
Recently I asked Brooks Franklin, owner of leah Lake Farm how his Hoop house vegetables were faring with low in the teens. with a chuckle he said "Hey it is what it is, when it freezes one set of vegetables we plant another. We just keep planting.
It is only by such an optimistic and positive attitude in the face of adversity that your local farmers are able to offer fresh vegetables in February.
The cold also challenges Sylvan Falls Mill. Mike and Linda Johnson grind corn and wheat weekly in a frigid drafty water powered mill to supply fresh milled products, if the water wheel is not totally frozen over with ice that is.
The point is that this is a challenging time of year for all and we should all be especially appreciative for the extra effort that goes into making your Wednesday market pick up possible.
Thanks for supporting your local farmers and have a great weekend.

Locally Grown - Availability for February 4th, 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

We want to welcome a new grower to the market this week. Staci Sprayberry and Jeffrey C. Baker are Baker Springs Farm located in Lula, GA. This week they started out with just a few of many items to come, radish and mung bean sprouts and hydroponic lettuces. We’ll be featuring many farms in the coming year and going into lots of details about their operations, specialty items, and some of their motivations and passions for producing wholesome local food.

I’m keeping tonight’s message short and simple.

Hope everyone has a great week and don’t forget to

EAT WELL,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability List for Jan. 30

Good Evening Locavores,
Your Market is now open for orders.
Have a great weekend and enjoy healthy, local food.

Locally Grown - Availability for January 28th, 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

A good bunch of the growers for Locally Grown gathered this weekend to break bread together and evaluate how our 2014 year went and lay plans for 2015. The potluck lunch we all shared was as you might have guessed, delicious (one of the best meals I eat all year), the company about as good as it gets, and the discussion exciting!

Locally Grown grew a lot this year, with sales increasing by over 65% from the year before. We also had 8 new producers join the market adding new products. I’m not sure exactly how many customers joined in 2014, but we have a total of 827 people who receive these e-mails once a week. Right now that breaks down to 457 of you in Clarkesville, 255 in Tiger, and 115 in Gainesville. Gainesville is very much still in the startup phase, but we don’t anticipate that lasting long. We’re beginning to organize some pretty big plans to let folks in and around Gainesville know we are there in time for Spring and Summer.

Part of those plans are to begin attending some special events in and around Gainesville to meet people and pass out business cards and explain who we are, how it works, and how cool it all is. A few of you have already offered to volunteer to help represent us, and give your own testimonials about your experience shopping and eating from Locally Grown. Having local folks in Gainesville talk us up will be key so don’t be shy. We’re trying to come up with a fun term to refer to our crew of LOCAL FOOD LOVERS.

The Buy Local Safe and Green EXPO is the first big opportunity to do this and it’s coming up on Thursday February 5th. Let us know if you’d like to help at that, or other events and give us ideas of how to get folks attention. Chuck and Amy refused to dress up as a giant talking Sweet Corn and Snow Pea. They said that those veggies aren’t even in season at the same time so it just didn’t make sense.

We’ll be looking for other events to attend too, and may occasionally ask some of you to go and attend for us. This is a great way to not just eat the food, but become a part of the growth of the local food movement. We’re open to creative ideas.

Start thinking about what types of veggies and other products you’d like to see more of in 2015 and any other tweaks or improvements in the market you can think up. Sometime in the next several weeks we’ll be making a survey available that will help us to evolve as best we can to some of your ideas and suggestions.

I could tell you more about all our technological advancements behind the scenes, but we’ll save that for another night.

Thanks for eating good all winter long.

EAT WELL and BE WELL,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew