Whether you farming for a living or just like growing your own food, we have a way for you to get scrumptious stuff from a shady spot. You don’t need fabulous soil, fertilizers, herbicides, or even a hoe!!! Come to our workshop on Saturday, February 16 and learn how to cultivate the delicious and useful shiitake mushroom. Go to Upcoming Events for more information.

As the trend toward locally produced food continues to gain steam, we encourage you to ask your favorite restaurateurs to join in! And even if the menu says they use “local” stuff, it’s a good idea to ask more questions: “which farms?”, and “what does ‘local’ mean to them?”…some places think that anything in the western hemisphere counts as “locally grown”. Do they buy directly from farmers or from a local broker that gets their food from everywhere (including Canada and South America)? Do they buy only a tiny portion of a given product from local farms and fill in the rest with stuff from a distributor? These distinctions are important, and it’s crucial that restaurants and stores know we are paying attention in order for our local economy and local farms to thrive. It’s sad that we can’t just take labels at face value, but the reality is that we can’t. We have to take our shopping to the next level of investigating to keep the marketplace honest. Knowing who grows your food is the first step to demystifying it.

We welcome 2008 with great anticipation of another year building community around amazing food. Here are a few things to put on your “to-do” list for the first quarter of this year:

1. come to the Farmers’ Markets - fresh & local food is available in winter too!!!

2. attend our shiitake mushroom inoculation workshop on February 16

3. enroll in the course “Sustainable Vegetable Production” sponsored by Lincoln county cooperative extension (Saturdays in January)

4. Join CFSA (Carolina Farm Stewardship Association), and attend our first meeting of the year on February 7

5. If you haven’t already, sign up for our e-mail newsletter…we’ll use it to keep you abreast of more fun and useful stuff as the year rolls along.

We are up to some pretty neat stuff this year - it’s going to be another fun one. We hope that for you it is richly blessed, healthy and prosperous!

Christy from the Davidson-area Local Food Club just left with her pickup truck full of beautiful farm products. Today she was carrying eggs, pork, beef and apples. Yesterday, her truck was full of produce, nuts, and dairy products. This amazing, energetic woman created a club of folks underserved by farmers’ markets. Each month she pools their orders from local farms and treks the Carolina countryside on their behalf, collecting items directly from their source. She and an ad hoc group of volunteers doles out the goodies in a local parking lot, and everyone goes home with a heap of groceries from Carolina growers…and it doesn’t just stop with the food. Christy also coordinates seminars, potlucks, tours, and opportunities for the club members and farmers to connect. This, my friends, is a phenomenal win for our community: fewer miles travelled, more sales proceeds to farmers, and happy consumers - community being built around food. It’s another way neighbors feed each other, and there’s a social element to boot. All over the country, folks like Christy are forming clubs to connect their members with food from around their region. The clubs can take many forms: some do just meat, some only produce or dairy, others - like the Davidson LFC -cover a comprehensive mix of things. Consider gathering a group from work or church or your neighborhood to do something like a food buying club. If you need help finding farmers to supply your needs, please contact us at info@ggfarm.com and we’ll help connect the dots.