Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for Aug. 8

Good Evening Locavores,
Finally we are getting some much needed rain at Mill Gap Farm in Tiger and hopefully it is widespread across North Georgia. This will give a nice boost to late summer crop production and help to keep vegetables sweet and tender for this weeks market.
Have a great weekend and enjoy fresh local food.

Locally Grown - Availability for August 6, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

It has to be a short and sweet message this week.

The three things I want to plug this week is tons and tons of garlic from many of our growers, whole chickens from O’hana Farms (love the artwork too), and carrots from Shade Creek Farm. That’s it! Told you it was simple.

We hope you’ve been enjoying and will continue to enjoy this summer’s fine offerings of fresh food. Enjoy it while it’s here!

EAT WELL,

Justin
Chuck
Teri and Andrew

Northeast Georgia Locally Grown Availability list for Aug.1

Good Evening Locavores,
Many of your summertime favorites are available this week. From squashes and beans to tomatoes and meats for the pot or grill.
If you enjoy BBQ make plans to be at the 18th Annual Dillard BBQ and Blue grass festival. The festival began today but Saturday is the big day for fun, food,and music from 10:00am to 8:00pm.
This is the KCBS Georgia State Championship with local as well as international BBQ Teams competing.
The festival is at the grounds of Dillard City Hall in Dillard, Georgia.
Have a great weekend, be safe and enjoy fresh local food ,and BBQ!!

Locally Grown - Availability for July 30, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Ayla and I are sitting here writing the message tonight. That is to say, I’m pecking one handed while she sort of dozes intermittently on my shoulder, and momma tries to get a half hour nap before next feeding.

I’m having a ball with my new family. We took grandma and grand aunt blueberry picking today and ate tons of tomato sandwiches, fresh salads, squash casserole and other tastes of the season over the weekend. The highlight for me was using Promised Lands hickory wood to smoke some pork. Been wanting to try that since it was offered and it made a mighty fine flavor. I highly recommend it as a gift for your grilling men out there. It’ll make them feel their primal selves a little more deeply.

Last week was a record breaking week for Locally Grown, in sales that is. And we had some great new volunteers in Gainesville, Cale, Hildreth and Ron. Huge thanks to them and all our volunteers that make market possible. We had so much stuff that I’m guessing I couldn’t have fit more than 30-40 lbs more in my vehicle!

We like to let you know about little things (and big things) we’re considering adding or changing to help grow and improve the market. It looks like a TRAILER for both hauling and possibly storing stuff may be in our near future. In fact, I added a trailer hitch to my vehicle last week just in case its sooner rather than later. We thought we’d mention it just on the off chance that any of you knew of a trailer that could be bought for a bargain. Needs to be no bigger than 5×8. Could be open or enclosed but as light as possible. We’ll keep you posted. We’re enjoying the challenge of hauling more local food!

Well that’s it for tonight. Baby duty calls. Thanks for shopping and…

EAT WELL,
Justin
Chuck
Teri & Andrew

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for July25

Good Evening Locavores,
Time has swept upon us again this week and it is market time.
Tomorrow is the 3rd Annual Garlic Festival at Simplyhomegrown Farmers Market in Clayton. The market and festival are at the Covered Bridge Shopping Center in Clayton, beginning at 9:00am until 1:00pm. Stop by for some great garlic and garlic products.
Northeast Georgia is now open for orders.
Have a safe weekend and enjoy fresh local food.

Weblog Entry

Hey Local Food Lovers,

This is a very interesting week at Locally Grown in every way I can imagine. For those of you who have been customers for awhile you are probably really, really excited to see Split Creek’s amazing goat cheeses and other goat dairy products listed this week. This is a rare treat that has been a part of our Locally Grown market almost from the beginning. Split Creek is a dairy in South Carolina located right between Clemson and Anderson on Hwy 85. Even though its just a bit far away, one of our market managers in Clarkesville Teri Parker offered to pick up orders from Split Creek on special occasions years ago and those of us who have enjoyed their products all this time have been incredibly thankful.

Thanks to the rapid rise in enthusiastic customers after last week’s Gainesville Times article (last week was our biggest sales week in Locally Grown history at almost $2,500) my wife, Ching-Yu thought this would be the perfect time to have a special offering of Split Creek cheeses, called them up, talked them through re-listing and offered to pick it up on Wednesday. This is the first time since last November we’ve done a Split Creek run. Ironically, Ching-Yu ended up popping out a baby at 3am Sunday morning and won’t be able to do the pick-up (the baby is fine and beautiful by the way). FORTUNATELY, to everyone’s good fortune Teri, who started our whole Split Creek thing in first place has offered to do the pickup for us insuring a very tasty week indeed.

One reason I give this backstory is to let folks know how grass rootsy this little market is. We’re not a business I assure you, we’re more like a community project run by some people very dedicated to good food, from good people, to good people. I also wanted to emphasize how GOOD Split Creek Dairy is and how special it is to get to try some of it. I had my first jar of feta in oil probably back in 2006 as a customer of the Athens Locally Grown, and I’ve had maybe 2 dozen jars since then. I’ve licked every jar clean, dipped my bread in the oil, made the best squash casserole of my life, placed the cheese on homemade toast with figs, basil and honey, and dozens of other ways that stand out as great, great memories. So, since this might be the last time for a good long while (or it might not, you just never know), order some Split Creek this week and I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.

Ok, now that I’ve oohed and ahhed. There’s just so much to ooh and ahh over. Mainly my first kid that’s napping a few feet away, but I won’t go into that (she’s not edible, but fortunately the hospital is located exactly two blocks from Two Dog Cafe in Gainesville, so I’ve been walking there for meals the last two days).

Sweet Corn! That’s an exciting new item this week. It’s sold out by the time I wrote this, but those who got it will love it I’m sure. O’hana Farms is back this week after a short break with lots of delicious and unique pork options. Sah-Ka-Na-Ga Gardens is offering some great herbal and oil remedies. My dog gets hotspots and I can’t wait to try their homemade remedy. It’s the kind of medicine my dog doesn’t mind getting because it soothes immediately and smells good to me. The Farm Boxes from Baird Farms and Wild Earth Gardens & Herbals have been beautiful. We love to see the creativity and the representative diversity of what’s growing that week on the farm in a beautiful display that is also quite a discount if you were to buy all these items individually. The Princess Feathers Flower six pack from Mountain Earth Farms is a bargain for those seeking to fill their gardens with beautiful and abundant flowers, not just this year but in future years. Give them a try. And potatoes, cucumbers, and squash are at their peak. Enjoy these treats while their at their freshest. Tomatoes are also super abundant. And Sweet potato leaves are awesome if you’d like to try something a bit different.

I love scanning the weekly list of fresh food. I love that there’s people willing to grow it. I love buying it, I love picking it up, and I love planning my meals around it. I love cutting it up and cooking it, and I love eating it and sharing it with family and friends. I also love learning more about all of it, from each individual who grows it, to the origins of what they grow and how it tastes best. It’s July 20, pretty much the height of summer. It’s a good time to love all these things. And this week of this year is a great time to enjoy local food! So enjoy! And…..

EAT WELL,

Justin in Gainesville this evening
and
Chuck in Rabun
and
Teri and Andrew

PS – Habersham Harvest restaurant in Clarkesville opened this weekend. It’s a farm to table restaurant and we absolutely loved it. The crimini mushrooms in a sage / wine / butter sauce blew my mind. If you’re up that way you’ve got to pay them a visit. When you do you’ll eat much of the food you find on this website, only prepared by a master chef. Go eat there if you enjoy the elegant delivery local food!

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for July18

Hi Locavores,
Short and sweet tonight. Enjoy the cool weather and fresh local food.
The market is now open for placing orders.

Locally Grown - Availability for July 16, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

We have lots of new curious customers checking out the market this week on the heels of the Gainesville Times excellent article in Friday’s paper about our recent expansion.

If you haven’t seen it you can read the article by clicking here

Before I give a quick intro of the market for all the newbies let me put in some plugs for some brand new products this week. We’re beginning to get some items in huge abundance and tremendous variety. Take beans for example. We have 5 different beans from 5 different farms, including some real rarities like the beautiful red noodle bean. Potatoes have recently been dug, and one of our farms specializes in potatoes providing their seasonally popular red, white and blue mix (perfect for around the 4th of July), which features a unique blue potato called Adirondack Blue that you can also buy by itself if you want to surprise your friends. I just added some to my cart to put some color on my plate this week.

It’s also cucumber time and even though the straight up pickling cucumber is my favorite I love to see the lemon cukes (they look like round lemons), marketmore and other unusual varieties are beautiful and delicious. We just had some mediterranean food this weekend and I’ve been saving some dill from my garden to make tzatziki which is just a peeled, seeded, chopped and squeezed cuke, with plain greek yogurt (I drain the whey), dill, lots of garlic, and a bit of olive oil and lemon. It’s delicious as a dip with pita chips or drizzled on a salad. It’s the sauce you add to gyros of course.

Before I get on a long tear on what I ate good this week (Mill Gap chanterelle mushrooms in a homemade alfredo sauce), let me welcome those who are finding us for the first time and try and explain who we are.

Locally Grown is a collaboration of farmers all over the North Georgia Mountains. Believe it or not just 4 years ago we didn’t all know each other that well, but thanks to this market (we started in 2010) and the Farmers Network we started in 2012 (which hosts the Farm Tour from two weeks ago) now we do and we’re collaborating to get more local food to more customers who want it.

Locally Grown accomplishes two things for farmers and customers. First, this brilliant website designed by our friend Eric Wagoner in Athens, GA allows us all to post what items we have available every week to a central ordering place. It also consolidates the orders, lets us know, and even generates these nifty little labels that we affix to every item so we know who gets which order. Second, we all live kind of far apart and even further from the customers we’d like to sell to. This market allows us to distribute food all over the place with two simple shuttles driven by our market managers.

Each week on Wednesday several hours before customers get to market, farmers drop off their orders at two locations (whichever is closest to them) one in Tiger, GA (outside Clayton) and the other in Clarkesville, GA. At each of these locations farmers gently place their orders in one of three sets of coolers, those headed to Tiger, those headed to Clarkesville and those headed now to Gainesville. After all their orders are sorted they get a check and get to head back home. Then the market managers drive the first shuttle between Tiger and Clarkesville and do a great big swap. Once that is done, the final shuttle from Clarkesville to Gainesville is driven. And that’s how food picked way up in the Georgia mountains (and barely into North Carolina) on Tuesday or Wednesday morning can make it Gainesville by Wednesday afternoon without each farmer driving it all the way down there.

The system has been working well for 4 years, and has been growing steadily each year. We’re also open 12 months of the year which is a little unique (lots of farms have greenhouses now), so you can eat fresh healthy food all year long. And our farms are required to follow chemical free standards, as well as other important practices like grass-fed livestock. We encourage you to check out our standards on the GROWERS page in a document at the top called GUIDELINES FOR GROWERS. As you’ll see if you shop here for a long time, we’re constantly trying to improve our standards as well requiring more and more local ingredients in all our various food products, because one of our goals is to build a local food economy that sustains beautiful and functional landscapes.

Before we go we wanted to ask EVERYONE to help us with a small task. We are looking for a couple of VOLUNTEERS at our GAINESVILLE location who might be willing to help us distribute food beginning just before our market hours between 4:45-7pm. Individuals could volunteer each week or an every other week schedule. Each volunteer would receive a delicious local food stipend (you can choose what you want right from the website) that would keep you eating well in exchange for a couple of hours of service. If you or someone you know is interested please send an e-mail to me at soque@windstream.net or send them this PDF . This might be perfect for college students, or really anyone that would like to learn more about local food and farms and get involved in a great new community effort.

We’re really enjoying expanding Local Food to Gainesville. It’s going great so far and new items keep popping up every week.

Thanks for supporting us and EAT WELL,
Justin in Habersham
Chuck in Rabun
and Andrew and Teri

Northeast Georgia Locallygrown Availability list for July 11

Good evening Locavores,
There are lots of those yummy summer vegetables coming into the market now. Blackberries and blueberries for dessert and sweet snacks. Melon Head farm is living up to their name by bringing the first watermelons to market this season. Expect more sqaushes and tomatoes each week.
Have a great weekend and enjoy fresh local food.

Locally Grown - Availability for July 9, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Welcome back from the 4th of July! Hope you had a tremendous holiday. The weather could not have been better.

Summer’s bounty is rolling in. Mountain Earth has blueberries this week! All kinds of beans are rolling in from Promise Land, Wild Earth Gardens, Liberty Farms, Oakcrest, and Taylor Creek. If you’re a bean lover try two from different farms. Also cukes and tomatoes and basil are here which means the summers best salad is ready to be made. If you haven’t peeled and seeded a cuke, diced a tomato and shredded basil and mixed in a bowl with balsamic then you haven’t had the most refreshing salad you can eat.

Lots of eggs this week so order extra. The dewberry/blackberries from Hill Manor were awesome last week. Only 3 left as of this writing. Let’s leave ‘em with 0. Garlic galore is coming on from Promise Land, Leah Lake and Mill Gap. The first of peppers started last week and there are more varieties this week.Taylor Creek’s purple islander pepper is a beauty. There are over 400 products this week. That may be a record.

Last week was also our highest sales week of all-time. Thanks to everyone who is digging in this summer to make Locally Grown a staple part of your diet. We think the FARM TOUR promotions probably helped drive sales up a bit. We’re inching closer and closer to $2k in sales each week. If we could do that every week of the year (since we’re a year-round market) that’d be $100k a year. That’s a decent chunk of local economy.

Thanks again for supporting the FARM TOUR a week ago. We have two things to share with you to help us wrap up this great event.

The first is a request for all FARM TOUR ATTENDEES to take our quick SURVEY! This really helps us brainstorm new ideas to make the tour better each year. Hopefully you’ve seen some of your comments reflected in the tour over the years.

If you came to the TOUR just click on this link. The survey should take only 1-3 mins.

FARM TOUR SURVEY
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2014_FARM_TOUR

As a reward for attending the event (and taking the survey) we want you to enjoy this year’s FARM TOUR VIDEO. Andrew Linker created this work of art that really captures the spirit of our collaboration amongst farmers throughout the mountains to produce local food, in the case of Locally Grown…distribute local food, and in the case of the FARM TOUR promote local food.

Even if you didn’t attend we think this video will inspire you.

FARM TOUR VIDEO
http://vimeo.com/99583620

HUGE THANKS to all the FARMERS whose hardwork produces the great food and the great culture we all get to enjoy.

EAT WELL,

Justin in Habersham
Chuck in Rabun
and Teri and Andrew too!

(the list below is for quick reference only – click on the website link and sign in to order)