Small Farms at Risk Due to Legislation

Senators are debating S.510 in May. This food safety legislation treats small farms, organic agriculture and local food businesses the same as giant corporate food companies. If passed, such legislation would destroy the local food movement, small farmers and farmers' markets like this one.

Fortunately, North Carolina Senators Kay Hagan and Richard Burr have listened to concerns from market shoppers. Sen. Hagan is co-sponsoring amendments that will dramatically strengthen protections for small farms and food businesses from one-size-fits-all safety rules.

Please join us in thanking her at 202/224-6342. Please also thank Sen. Burr, (202/224-3154) for his work on the issue and ask him to join Sen. Hagan in sponsoring the Tester amendments. For more information, contact the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.

Treat Yourself: Local Food and Drinks – You Deserve It!

Treat yourself to a special evening that showcases the flavor and freshness of delicious, local foods artfully prepared by Scott Crawford, Herons' award-winning executive chef! FRESH, A Celebration of Local Harvest will be held Friday, May 21 from 6-8 PM at the Umstead Hotel & Spa, and proceeds will benefit the Western Wake Farmers' Market's education and hunger prevention initiatives.

Mark your calendars because we know you won't want to miss this event. Tickets are available for sale online and at the Market starting this weekend. What does your ticket buy at the standing reception?

• Cocktails, wine and beer
• Hors d'oeuvres
• Carving station
• Specialty cheese and bread display
• Seafood presentation
• Assortment of desserts with seasonal fruit

Plus you will enjoy great music from guitarist and songwriter Michael George Gonzalez and time to visit with farmers and artisans from the market who will provide their local foods for the event.

Come talk with the farmers and find out why they farm the way they do and why they take the time to bring their foods to Western Wake County for us. The market is open 34 Saturdays this year, and most of our vendors will come to Cary each week with the freshly-picked ripe produce, their meats, fresh fish and shellfish from NC waters, eggs, artisan cheeses, breads, desserts, wine, coffee and much more. Spend time with them and find out what they are all about!

We will also hold a silent auction during the evening. Many businesses in our community already have donated fantastic products and services, such as salon packages, jewelry, pottery, beer home-brewing equipment and much more. If you would like to donate an item or service to the auction, please contact Lisa Flanagan. All donations are tax-deductible.

We're looking forward to seeing you at FRESH, A Celebration of Local Harvest!

Creating a More Sustainable Society

How can green architectural designs, local food production, efficient transportation, and conservation and renewable energy practices help our society achieve long-term sustainability and energy independence? Join Elon University Professor Dr. Andy Angyal on April 13 at 7 PM at West Regional Library for a special presentation, "Green Design and the Quest for Sustainability," to glean some answers.

Many modern American building and transportation designs grew out of the period of cheap fossil fuel energy during the 20^th century. However, with the emergence of global warming and climate change, Peak Oil, increases in fossil fuel prices, and projections of rapid population increases in the state, we will have to find ways to design a more efficient and sustainable culture.

Join Dr. Angyal as he examines how local food production, improved public transportation and more sensible land use planning practices can contribute to the creation of a more sustainable society. Adults and teens are invited to this presentation. Advanced registration is required; call 463-8500 to sign up.

Talking Food on TV This Week

Set your DVR this week and tune into a couple of shows that are sure to get you thinking. First, celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver is talking about a revolution, a food revolution that is, in his new series that premieres this week on Friday at 9 pm on ABC. In this reality show series, “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” Oliver visits Huntington, W.V., to kick off a national initiative to get people eating healthy, and he starts with school lunches.

Then Saturday and Sunday, Discovery’s Planet Green will air What’s On Your Plate?, a documentary that follows two 11-year-old girls as they take a close look at the food system. The girls address questions about where the food they eat comes from, how its grown, how many miles it travels to reach their plate, how it’s prepared, and more. They visit supermarkets, fast food chains, and school cafeterias, but they also explore community supported agriculture programs, farmers’ markets, farms and green markets to learn more about sustainable food systems.

I sat down one Sunday afternoon in February to watch this when it first aired, and my 8-year-old and 6-year-old kids were extremely interested! I was surprised how quickly they tuned in and wanted to know more about these girls and what they learned. What’s On Your Plate? airs at 10 PM on March 27 and 2 pm on March 28.

Get Out and Get Local: Tours and Good Eats on the Farm

There are a lot of opportunities beyond the farmers' market to get to know local farmers in North Carolina and enjoy their farm-fresh produce, meats, eggs and more. Here are some of the ways you can get out of town and onto the farm to learn more this spring!

CEFS Spring Farm Festival, May 8, 10 AM-2 PM, Goldsboro, NC

This festival include educational booths and activities, workshops, tours, kids' activities, a farmers' market, local food and live music all day!

Farm to Fork Picnic, May 23, 4-7 PM, Breeze Farm, Hillsborough, NC

Join Piedmont cooks and farmers for an evening of food, live music and fun activities for the entire family! In a unique collaboration, the region's most acclaimed cooks will pair with Piedmont farmers to present a picnic-style feast that celebrates our local foods and the people who grow and prepare them. Advanced tickets are required — this event often sells out, so buy now!

Love for Food and Earth-friendly Solutions Leads to Farming

Thanks to Kirsten Lechner of A Simple Focus for this story and photo.

“I love food, which is definitely one of the reasons I farm,” says Kathleen Smith of Farm Front Gardens, who originally majored in Spanish and Literature at Chapel Hill. During college, Kathleen spent six months traveling in Peru and Columbia – a transformative adventure that led her into sustainable farming. While traveling, she saw first-hand how American consumption uses up natural resources abroad and leaves poverty in its wake. And, she recalls, "it seemed crazy that I wasn't able to accomplish the basic tasks of existence such as growing my own food."

So, she left UNC to work at a sustainable farm in Florida. Kathleen was hooked. She transferred to Appalachian State University's sustainable development program, where she met Ben Berry, a life-long gardener with an interest in finding bottom-up, local solutions to life’s food and energy questions.

Now Ben and Kathleen farm on land they rent in a hidden corner of Wake County that has been designated as part of a land conservancy. They keep chickens for eggs, and when we arrived they had just received a shipment of fuzzy baby chicks in a variety of colors. Their diversity will produce the artful eggs that range from browns to greens and make cooking less of a chore and more of a therapy.

The tour took us to their greenhouse, where their worms are happily making compost, and it ended in the field where they are tirelessly tilling row after row with pitchforks rather than tractors. They’re making fertile soil from Carolina clay. I can’t wait to taste the fruits of their labor!

Visit Market Farmers during Piedmont Farm Tour

If you haven't been out to some of the small-scale farms in our area yet, this is your chance! During the 15^th Annual Piedmont Farm Tour (April 24 and April 25, 1-5 pm), you can visit the farmers, tour their beautiful farms and learn about local, organic farming. Among the 40 or so farms and vineyards participating in the tour are a number of WWFM vendors, including:

• Beausol Gardens
• Coon Rock Farm
• ECO Farm
• Fickle Creek Farm
• Benjamin Vineyards & Winery

Sponsored by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and Weaver Street Market, the tour offers you a way to see local, sustainable farming in action and to get to know the people growing your food.

Printed maps will be at the market this spring, but you can preview a map of all the tour farms and purchase your ticket ($25 per carload, or free if you volunteer on the tour one day). A few notes: bring a cooler if you want to purchase local foods from the farms, and pets are not allowed on the tour. See you on the tour!

Need an App to Find Local Food? Got It

NC/SC Farm, a new app for iPhone users in North and South Carolina, is your source for local food access. Developed in partnership with the Carolina Farm Steward Association (CFSA), NacreData L.L.C.'s new app enables iPhone users to find the closest farms, farmers' markets, restaurants and other businesses that offer local foods.

Search by category or keyword via the built-in GPS, zip code or city, and filter results by method of sale, such as wholesale, direct to consumer, u-pick farms, community supported agriculture (CSAs), online sales and mail order. It is available for $3.99.

Hoop Houses Are Sexy, and Other Insights

I didn't think a discussion on local food could be so entertaining, but last night's panel discussion following the screening of FRESH at Meredith College was just that. I really enjoyed all the panelists, their views, their experiences, their sense of humor and their suggestions for how to keep moving local, sustainable farming forward.

Joel Salatin, a farmer from Virginia who is featured in FRESH and Food, Inc., expresses himself in a way that is so engaging, thought-provoking and entertaining that you simply want to know more. I left the event feeling like I know him a little bit, and that I would really like to get to know him better. In addition to his opinion that hoop houses, which extend growing seasons, are sexy, here are a few key points he made last night:

• “The fact that I'm considered an activist shows how far our food system has removed itself from normalcy. This is not normal. Young people think it's normal, but this is just a blip in history, and pasture-based multi-pasteurization will return.“
  
• You can't learn anything from reading a food label any more.
  
• A quiet revolution has been going on in farming. A revolution in which technology is making real positive changes for farmers, such as composting, electric fences, better mechanical seed placement, UV stabilized plastic, hoop houses and season extenders. If the same amount of creativity, money and energy had gone into this quiet revolution as has gone into industrial agriculture, we would be producing more food without having destroyed the earth.
  
• If you think something is bad, opt out of it. Just quit. You have control over what you eat.

What Can You Do?

Salatin was joined by a panel of local experts who also shared great information on what is happening in our area and what each of us can to do to keep promote local, sustainable farming. Local farmer Harry LeBlanc of Beausol Gardens, a new vendor at our market, encouraged the roughly 600 people attending to let our elected officials know if we don't want them to get in the way of our eating local food. He was referring to national legislation that is pending right now that could seriously impact small-scale family farms.

Chatham County Agricultural Extension Agent Debbie Roos, who works with local farmers on a daily basis, said that regulations are a major concern for local farmers. They are meeting with FDA officials with the hope that its new regulations will be scale-appropriate so that they don't put these farms out of business. Roos also highlighted local farmers' biggest challenges: the cost of labor, getting health insurance, and access to land and capital.

Nancy Creamer, Executive Director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems and a member of the new NC Local Food Policy Council, discussed a new statewide “Buy Local“ campaign that will soon kick off. Creamer said that if every person in the state spent 10% of their food dollar on local food, it would mean $3.5 billion for the local economy. Stay tuned for details on that campaign!

Katherine Andrew of the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle encouraged attendees to get involved with community gardens as a way to help low-income families who do not have access to healthy foods. The Food Shuttle now has a 3-acre farm in Raleigh and two community gardens, while work will soon begin on two more community gardens. About $2,500 was raised for the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle last night through the screening.

See the Food Movies

If you haven't seen FRESH or Food, Inc., check them out. Food, Inc. is on DVD, and FRESH has screenings around the country on different dates (one in Winston-Salem next week). You can even request a copy for your own screening.

Both films provide an overview of the industrialized food system we are now subject to, but they also show how a number of amazing people around the country are making changes, one farm and one garden at a time, so that we have access to food that is safer and healthier for us, the animals and our land. Plus I think you'll get a flavor of what Joel Salatin's all about, and I bet you might want to know him better too.

March 13: Plant a Row for the Hungry Kick-off

If this week's warmer weather has you itching to get outside and get into the dirt, join the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle at Logan's One-Stop Gardening Shop this Saturday, March 13 from 9am-5:30pm for the Plant a Row for the Hungry Kick-off! Plant a Row (PAR) is a national program that encourages garden communities and individual gardeners to donate fresh vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers to people in need. Inter-Faith Food Shuttle is the Triangle’s PAR partner, distributing your produce to local food pantries, shelters, and other hunger-relief organizations.

Logan's is giving seeds and compost away on Saturday (while supplies last) to anyone who wants to participate in PAR, plus Logan's will hold a couple of workshops:

• Veggie Gardening, Part I: The Basics: 10 am
• Veggie Gardening, Part II: Beyond the Basics: 2 pm
• Learn to Grow: Bring kids of any age by to learn how to grow a watermelon from seed. 10 am-2 pm

The Food Shuttle's own Chef Terri Hutter will do a culinary demo on Saturday at Logan's too.

Even if you don't have a garden, you can still participate in PAR by container gardening on your deck, your front steps, or just about anywhere! You can also participate by volunteering at a community garden. On Saturday, you can join the Food Shuttle's Farms and Gardens Crew, which will be on site at Mayview Community Garden for anyone who wants to see the garden or volunteer that day. They will be leveling ground between beds and filling the ditches inside the garden space, as well as harvesting greens and planting a new crop of spring produce.

The Mob Does Good — The Crop Mob, That Is

What do you get when you bring together a group of people who care about community and who don't care if their hands get dirty? Well, a Crop Mob, of course. A recent New York Times article featured this volunteer group that is making a difference for small, sustainable farms in North Carolina. In a single afternoon, they lend a much needed hand at these farms, which are significantly more labor-intensive than large, industrial-sized farms because they do not use fertilizers and pesticides. And that's part of what brings these volunteers out to local farms. They have a real desire to connect with the land and the people who are growing their food.

A few days after the Times article ran, an even larger group of about 80 Crop Mobbers gathered at Edible Earthscapes, one of the new Western Wake Farmers' Market vendors, to help farmers Jason and Haruka Oatis make rice paddies in a large, dry field. (Photo above by Debbie Roos, Chatham County Agricultural Extension Agent.) See more pictures of the day's activities and learn about how the Crop Mob helped with this project. And if you're looking for a great way to be part of the local food movement beyond shopping the farmers' market, check out Crop Mob's web site.

A New Generation of Farmers

Thanks to Kirsten Lechner of A Simple Focus for this story and photos.

We’ve come full circle. A decade or so ago the only news we heard about farming was how many more small farms had closed because the kids weren’t interested in inheriting the hard labor, low pay, and often dangerous work. Plus the small farms couldn’t compete with the large-scale agribusinesses that compromised quality. But as more and more people are looking for fresh, nourishing food for their families, there is a new demand for the old-fashioned local farm. And there’s a new generation of farmers who are eager to get their hands dirty and deliver a beautiful bounty, minus the chemicals.

I recently visited Ben Shields of Ben’s Produce with Market Manager Kim Hunter at his greenhouses on Kildaire Farm Road. Inside were long rows of wooden shelves going the length of the greenhouse. These flats are home to winter lettuces and new seedlings that will soon produce cucumbers, eggplants, corn, squash, peppers, tomatoes and broccoli rabe. ”Broccoli rabe is actually a member of the turnip family,” Ben tells us.

Ben grew up on a dairy farm in Massachusetts, so he’s not afraid of hard work. And although he studied international development and engineering in college, in the end he returned to farming. His favorite vegetables to harvest are carrots, “because you never know what they’re going to look like when you pull them out of the ground." he said. "Sometimes they’re odd shaped or sometimes you get three-legged ones.” But for eating, Ben likes winter lettuce. “It’s really buttery - not bitter at all.”

Come try Ben's Produce at the market in April and choose your own favorites!