Farmer Joel Salatin to Speak in Raleigh at “Film Feastival”

Farmer Joel Salatin will headline a panel discussion at a special showing of the independent film Fresh, The Movie, on Tues., March 9, 7-9 PM, at Meredith College for the 3^rd Annual Film Feastival.

This is big, folks. Salatin has sort of “rock star” farmer status in terms of returning to traditional farming methods that are good for animals, good for food and good for the Earth. Many know him from the documentary Food, Inc., Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and the film Fresh, which the Western Wake Farmers' Market screened last summer at Yes! Solar Solutions.

Following a screening of Fresh, Salatin and fellow panelists will hold a thought-provoking discussion and share their perspectives on sustainable farming. Among the panelists are:

• Harry LeBlanc of Beausol Gardens, one of our farmers' market vendors;
  
• Katherine Andrew, MPH, RD, LDN, director of nutrition, Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, whom with the market partners;
  
• Nancy Creamer, PhD, professor, NCSU Dept. of Horticulture Science; Executive Director, Center for Environmental Farming Systems; Member of NC Local Food Policy Council;
  
• Debbie Roos, Chatham County Agricultural Extension Agent

The Film Feastival is designed to help people recognize the environmental impact of their food choices. What can you take away from this special event? A chance to look at where foods comes from these days and fresh way of thinking about what we eat.

Tickets are $7 each, and proceeds benefit the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, which focuses on recovering perishable food items to feed the hungry with nutritious foods. Complete details and online tickets sales are available.

Vegetarian Cooking Class at Whole Foods Market of Cary

Join Katherine Andrews, MPH, RD, LDN, Director of Nutrition for the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle, on Wed., Feb. 24, at 2 pm or 4 pm at Whole Foods Market of Cary. She will kick of the store's new Healthy Eating Series with a talk on vegetarian cooking. A $5 donation to the Food Shuttle and pre-registration at customer service gets you in for a short lecture on nutrition, a tour of the store and a cooking demonstration and food tasting. Space is limited, and non-vegetarians are welcome too!

Appreciation: Farmers at Work

It's really a treat to visit local farmers at work and in their environment. What they are doing, in all kinds of weather, to be sure that we have fresh, local food is just amazing. They are tough and hard-working and incredibly resourceful. A few rainy Fridays ago, Operations Manager Jennifer Gibbs and I visited two farms in Pittsboro: Garden Gems, which was at market last year, and Beausol Gardens, one of our new vendors for 2010.

Despite a bone-chilling cold, rainy morning and deep mud all over the farm, Gertrude Jones at Garden Gems (at right) showed us where she is growing thousands of flowers for the season. From tulips to lilies, from snapdragons to zinnias and countless other varieties, she is nurturing seedlings and bulbs in the hoop houses on her farm until it's time to put them in the ground. We also saw the fields where her asparagus is growing. It takes three years before a good asparagus crop produces, so it's a real farmers' market treat this spring.

Beausol Gardens, which was once home to a cotton farm, will bring a variety of flowers to market this year as well, along with edamame, lettuce, greens, peas, beets, tomatoes, eggplant, squash and much more. Harry LeBlanc has been farming full-time since 2003 and is focused this year on keeping the unused land on his farm in full production. Farming organically, he is experimenting with jicama and tomatillos this year, so keep your eye out for those at market. Harry is in the photo at left with Katie, who will be selling at the market this year for Beausol Gardens. Katie, a Cary resident, left her job to work full time on the farm and is passionate about the foods grown locally.

This rainy, unseasonably cold winter has been a challenge for North Carolina farmers. Using greenhouses and hoop houses, like the one at Garden Gems (right) helps the farmers deal with extreme temperatures and conditions. The young plants in this photo have undoubtedly grown quite a bit in the weeks since we visited the farm. Warmer days are coming, and along with it, beautiful spring flowers and produce. We are getting closer to the April 3 market opening!

“Naked Chef” Dishes on Local Food for Health

Jamie Oliver, known as “The Naked Chef,” recently dished up criticisms of what has become an unhealthy American food system and said that basic food education is needed in this country, for kids on up to adults. Oliver said that government needs to get passionate about food education because they owe it to us. “You can't scream about bad health on one hand and then strategically feed them crap on the other,” he said in an interview with CNN.

“My wish is for you to have a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, to inspire families to cook again and to empower people everywhere to fight obesity,” Oliver said in a recent speech.

Starting a Food Revolution

Oliver will take this message to national TV on March 26 when Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution premieres on ABC at 9 PM. In this reality show series, Oliver visits Huntington, West Virginia, to kick off this initiative. “The time is right for people to rediscover the sense of pride, satisfaction and fun you can get from cooking for the people you love. I want to prove that turning around the epidemic of obesity and bad health doesn't have to be boring or dull in the slightest,” Oliver said at his web site.

In the Community: Spreading the Word about the Market

Thanks to market shopper and Cisco Systems employee Carmen Rodriguez for inviting the Western Wake Farmers' Market to participate in the Cisco Black Employee Network's Vendor Fair on Feb. 10. WWFM Vice President Lisa Flanagan (at right), along with market staff and volunteers, shared information about the farmers' market with Cisco staff and other vendors from the community.

We are working to spread the word about the market's April 3 opening and the upcoming season of fresh, local foods! If you're on Facebook, check out our page there and become a fan. If you Tweet, follow us on Twitter! We appreciate your support of the market and your help in letting everyone in our community know about how we're supporting local farmers and artisans and providing a source for healthy, local food.

Let's Move!: Healthy Food Access and Fighting Obesity in Kids

This week First Lady Michelle Obama launched a new initiative, dubbed "Let's Move!", to fight childhood obesity in our country, with the support of Growing Power's Will Allen and others. Mrs. Obama began a national conversation about children's health last year when she broke ground on the White House Kitchen Garden with students from a D.C. public school. Through the garden, she brought national media coverage about the benefits of eating healthy, seasonal produce and local farmers' markets.

That discussion grew into the Let’s Move campaign, which will focus on a number of areas, including increasing access to healthy, affordable food; serving healthier food at schools; and increasing the number of farmers' markets. President Obama's 2011 budget proposes an additional $5 million investment in the Farmers Market Promotion Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which provides grants to establish, and improve access to, farmers markets.

The campaign also launched the Food Environment Atlas, which is intended to assemble statistics on food environment indicators to stimulate research on what determines food choices and the quality of people's diet, as well as to provide an overview of a community’s ability to access healthy food and its success in doing that.

Will Allen, who visited the Triangle last fall, said, "We have to institutionalize good food in our schools, and not only in the cafeteria, but in our teaching every day," according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "We also need to be able to grow food year-round where it's needed, despite the climate, the way we are doing it here at Growing Power in Milwaukee. We need to scale up these efforts, growing good soil, growing good food, growing the relationships necessary to distribute and deliver this food to people."

Tune In: Local Food Media Notes

Local food is getting a lot of media coverage these days, and we've got a few t.v. programming notes for you.

Discovery's Planet Green will premiere "What's on Your Plate?" this Sat., Feb. 6, at 10 pm, with a "Family Cook-in Broadcast" Sunday, Feb. 7, at 2 pm. This looks like it could be a great way for kids (and adults) to learn more about the food they eat and what happens before it arrives on their plate. The documentary follows two 11-year-old girls, Sadie and Safiyah, for a year as they visit farms, markets, grocery stores, restaurants and school cafeterias. Watch the trailer to whet your appetite and see what we can learn from these girls.

Food, Inc. has been nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. At the Western Wake Farmers' Market, we're pulling for a win, but even the nomination raises the profile on the importance of eating locally in terms of health, environment, family farms, land preservation and local economies! Tune into ABC on Sun., March 7. And if you've not seen Food, Inc., yet, it's available on DVD for rental and purchase. (Amazon is still selling it at a great price: $9.99, but we're not sure how long that will last.)

Dine at 1.5.0: Eating Local on UNC's Campus

If you find yourself on campus at UNC in Chapel Hill and hungry for local food, you might be surprised to know you can satisfy that craving in the dining hall. 1.5.0, Lenoir Mainstreet's newest dining location, serves foods grown within 150 miles, including organic produce, cage-free eggs and chicken, grass-fed beef and sustainable seafood. Featuring a seasonal menu, 1.5.0 seeks to meet four primary goals, and serving local and sustainable food tops those priorities. By partnering with local farmers, 1.5.0 seeks to have a positive impact on its patrons health, support a local food economy and be environmentally responsible.