Category Archives: Food

Yes, we can grow citrus in Georgia! –Marj Schneider

Update 2 Feb 2014: Citrus Resources.

At South Georgia Growing Local 2014:

Learn about varieties that do best in our climate, and how to plant and nurture your trees. We will discuss winter protection, fertilizing, and challenges with citrus. You’ll leave with resources for buying trees and learning more.

Bess T. Chappas wrote and took this picture for SavannahNow 24 September 2008, Tropical garden in suburbia,

Twenty citrus trees are scattered around the yard, including lemon, blood orange, tangelo, cara-cara orange, lime, grapefruit, tangerine and mandarin. A pumello plant, a citrus variety from Southeast Asia, has a fruit the size of a basketball. Papaya and guava plants grow tall against the back of the house. Pineapple and coffee plants grow in the ground and in large pots.

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Online payment for South Georgia Growing Local 2014

You can register online for South Georgia Growing Local 2014.

Seed saving, composting, rain water collection, fruits, vegetables, textiles, goats, chickens, bees, and policy, plus Friday Farm Tours, dinner and a movie!

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Early registration extended to January 15th! –South Georgia Growing Local 2014

Early registration extended to January 15th!

Update 2 January 2014: Or pay online.

You can sign up here to see the goats, bees, chickens, ham, eggs, fruits, seeds, textiles, rain, and sun, and let’s not forget the worms!

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Florida Goats at South Georgia Growing Local 2014

It’s not just for south Georgia: from Madison County, Florida, Julia Shewchuk will talk about her goats of Serenity Acres Farm.

Here’s Wayne and Julia’s welcome to Serenity Acres Farm:

We are a small farm in Madison County Florida working toward the big goal of bringing you locally grown products and farm raised products without the use of major pesticides, hormones and genetically modified components.

Our philosophy is simple: Grow and raise it locally and then offer only the freshest and best of what we produce.

The goats appear about a minute into this video, with milking about 2 and a half minutes in: Continue reading →

South Georgia Growing Local 2014 – Registration Open!

Update 2 January 2014: Or pay online.

Update 31 December 2013: Early registration extended to January 15, 2014!

Registration is now open for the South Georgia Growing Local 2014 Conference

Experience Agriculture

This two day event will begin with farm tours on Friday, January 24th ($50 and includes lunch). Dinner and a movie ($5), on Friday evening is sponsored by the Lake Park Chamber of Commerce. The Saturday conference ($40 and includes lunch) will be a multi-track day, filled with informative talks about local growing, homesteading, multi-generational learning, and more.

The Saturday schedule currently includes the following: Continue reading →

South Georgia Growing Local 2014

What has about 300 heads and eats really well? A local agriculture conference coming to Lowndes County 24 January 2014.

South Georgia Growing Local 2014 is a local food conference for growers, consumers, homesteaders in South Georgia. Farm Tours 1/24 — Conference 1/25

You can like the facebook page and join events there for the conference itself on January 25th and for the farm tours on January 24th. Agritourism has come to Lowndes County! This is one reason a wide variety of organizations, including two Chambers of Commerce, are supporting this conference: it will fill hotel rooms. Even more, it’s about longterm local economy through growing and buying food right here in south Georgia and north Florida. All that and it tastes good, too!

26 January 2013 in Reidsville Continue reading →

USDA approves Non-GMO meat label

Now easier to vote at the checkout counter (or the farmers market), at least for non-GMO meat.

Stephanie Strom wrote for NYTimes 20 June 2013, U.S. Approves a Label for Meat From Animals Fed a Diet Free of Gene-Modified Products,

The Agriculture Department has approved a label for meat and liquid egg products that includes a claim about the absence of genetically engineered products.

It is the first time that the department, which regulates meat and poultry processing, has approved a non-G.M.O. label claim, which attests that meat certified by the Non-GMO Project came from animals that never ate feed containing genetically engineered ingredients like corn, soy and alfalfa.

Seen here.

-jsq

Lowndes County next year: SoGa Growing Local & Sustainable Conference

Janisse Ray starting the conference This year’s SoGa Growing Local & Sustainable Conference was a satisfying success, and next year it moves to Lowndes County.

Not only did 260 people sign up, but all the sessions were well-attended, and everybody seemed to learn something new, from hoop houses to solar power, from hands-on workshops to all-hands plenary sessions. Of course the food was excellent. You can get a hint from this picture of Janisse Ray opening the conference; the food in the foreground is on the snack tables (ah, the honeycomb!). Then there were the meals, potluck by and for a conference-full of foodies.

In 2011 about 50 people came to the first one in Tifton. In 2012, about 150 people went to Reidsville. In 2013, about 260 people signed up, also for Reidsville, Tattnall County, to learn what it takes to grow local sustainable food here below the gnat line in this longleaf pine land of tea-colored rivers, acid soil, and rich gardening traditions.

As Janisse Ray wrote on the facebook event for this year’s conference:

Gretchen Quarterman on preserving foods

SoGa Growing Local 2014 will be held in Valdosta, GA. Gretchen Quarterman will be the lead organizer. We’ll be keeping you posted on the date so you can put it on your calendars now. (We may do a mini version in Tattnall in 2014.)

More later on what happened at this year’s conference, and more as it develops on next year’s conference. So far, many local farmers, civic and business organizations, and local governmental bodies have offered to help, and Gretchen is forming an organizational committee. Stay tuned!

-jsq

SoGa Growing Local & Sustainable Conference

I think this is the third year of a fascinating conference that started when some people in south Georgia realized nobody else was going to talk about what it takes to grow local sustainable food here below the gnat line in this longleaf pine land of tea-colored rivers, acid soil, and rich gardening traditions. -jsq

Red Earth Farm Janisse Ray present:

SoGa Growing Local & Sustainable Conference

A day-long, information-rich, action-packed, affordable conference designed to get you healthier and save you money.

facebook event

When and Where:

9AM to 6PM, Jan. 26, 2013
Tattnall County High School,
Highway 23/57 South,
(1 Battle Creek Warrior Blvd)
Reidsville, GA 30453

Registration:

PDF, Word
$30 before Jan. 15;
$45 afterwards.
Includes lunch.

Many do-it-yourself workshops in homesteading and country living: mushroom culture, beekeeping, backyard chickens, soil-building, small fruit production, economics, gardening for wildlife, charcuterie, natural cleaning, fermentation, herbs on the menu, natural cleaning & body care products, making jams & jellies, vermiculture, weed management, marketing, everything you need to know about small farming. Ladies Homestead Gathering, seed-saving. And so much more….

Conference actually starts on Friday with a potluck, reading & a showing of the film “Grow.”

For more information see Registration on the left here, or email redearthfarm at yahoo.

Gretchen Quarterman will be giving a workshop at the Growing Local conference: Beginning lesson on home made jams and jellies. What you’ll need (not much) to start making delicious sweets from fruits that are easily available.

Inspirational gardener & naturalist Ellen Corrie of Tifton, Ga. will be teaching a workshop on Gardening for Wildlife at the Growing Local conference Jan. 26. This presentation will look at how gardening for wildlife makes your garden (whatever size) healthier and helps restore habitat and preserve biodiversity. There’ll be an overview of factors which need to be considered to attract and keep any wildlife or beneficial general. I’ll focus on pollinators and specific practices and plants to attract them. — with Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath and Dan Corrie.

Albert Kipple Culbreath will be teaching a Mushroom-Growing Workshop at the conference. Inoculation and care of logs for production of shiitake and oyster mushrooms. Will include information on where to obtain supplies, how to handle logs, which type logs to use, care for the logs, and culinary uses. Sign up now. — with Leeann Drabenstott Culbreath.

Native plants in your yard for native wildlife

Nature is not something out there, apart from people. It never was, and nowadays people have built and farmed and clearcut so much that wildlife species from insects to birds are in trouble. In south Georgia people may think that our trees make a lot of wildlife habitat. Actually, most of those trees are planted pine plantations with very limited undergrowth, and in town many yards are deserts of grass plus exotic species that don’t support native birds. Douglas Tallamy offers one solution: turn yards into wildlife habitat by growing native species. Since we are as always remodeling nature, we might as well do it so as to feed the rest of nature and ourselves, and by the way get flood prevention and possibly cleaner water as well, oh, and fewer pesticides to poison ourselves.

Douglas Tallamy makes a clear and compelling case in Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants

…it is not yet too late to save most of the plants and animals that sustain the ecosystems on which we ourselves depend. Second, restoring native plants to most human-dominated landscapes is relatively easy to do.

Some of you may wonder why native species are so important? Don’t we have more deer than we can shoot? Maybe so, but we have far fewer birds of almost every species than we did decades and only a few years ago.

Some may wonder: aren’t exotic species just as good as native ones, if deer and birds can eat them? Actually, no, because many exotic species are poisonous Japanese climbing fern on native Smilax to native wildlife, and because invasive exotics crowd out natives and reduce species diversity. From kudzu to Japanese climbing fern, exotic invasives are bad for wildlife and may also promote erosion and flooding by strangling native vegetation.

All plants are not created equal, particularly in their ability to support wildlife. Most of our native plant-eaters are not able to eat alien plants, and we are replacing native plants with alien species at an alarming rate, especially in the suburban gardens on which our wildlife increasingly depends. My central message is that unless we restore native plants to our suburban ecosystems, the future of biodiversity in the United States is dim.

Tallamy had an epiphany when he and his wife moved to 10 acres in Pennsylvania in 2000:

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