Proof the elusive Tom Kuettner can be captured. Gretchen Quarterman delivered popcorn from Okra Paradise Farms to Cory Danner and picked up our order yesterday from Dirt Road Organics Buying Club.
More pictures below.
Continue readingTag Archives: Food
Small organic farms can (already) feed the world
Research, including studies presented at the conference in Istanbul, is showing that organic agriculture can deliver reliably high yields ”and that organic fields thrive in the face of disaster and duress, where chemical-reliant crops falter. Organic fields, for example, fare significantly better than chemically managed ones in the face of extreme weather, such as droughts or floods.
Anna Lappe, for takepart, 4 November 2014, Yes, Organic Farming Can Feed the World, Continue reading
Making Mayo at Home
One of the easiest “convenience foods” to make at home is mayonnaise. Once you make your own, to your own taste, you’ll never go back to store bought.
Some time back, I stumbled across the book Make Your Own Convenience Foods by Don and Joan German and my kitchen and pantry haven’t been the same since.
Basic Recipe:
2 egg yolks
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon lecithin (optional)
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard (actually to taste)
1/4 teaspoon salt (again to taste)
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil (depends upon size of yolks)
Actually making the mayo is really pretty easy.
Step one: get out ingredients
Step two: put yolks into blender with vinegar, mustard and salt
Step three: put top on blender and mix this up well.
Step four: take out little plug from top of blender and slowly add oil in pencil thin stream. (about 20-25 seconds)
Step five: scoop mayo out of blender into a jar and label
And now you have delicious home made mayo, no preservatives, no chemicals, and just the herbs and spices you like.
–gretchen
Mobile Market at Barnes Drug Store every Tuesday
Today Lowndes County Partnership for Health picked up some OPF red potatoes to sell at their Mobile Market. Next week probably OPF okra. And every week other good vegetables and fruits from other farmers.
Here’s a South Health District facebook post of 10 June 2014:
It’s Tuesday – know what that means? The Mobile Market, full of fresh fruits and vegetables, will be at Barnes Drug Store Downtown Valdosta from 2:30-4:30! They’re there every Tuesday! Come by and see them…they accept all forms of payment.
-jsq
Honeybee Roulette: Gambling with our Future –Heather Davis
Heather Davis will speak at South Georgia Growing Local 2014:
My presentation will be about how I became interested in honeybees and where my research has led me. It will begin with very basic information about honeybees and how they are important to our ecology. Then I will touch on how the monocultures and industrialized farming, pesticides and GMO/systemic pesticides are killing the bees and our culture and environment as we know it.
I will have pamphlets on GMO’s, how to make your own pesticides/insecticides that are safe for pollinators, what plants to grow to encourage a bio-diverse ecology at home for pollinators and a few others.
She’s on facebook as Sage Apiaries, “Pollination is the future of our food!”
Her conference bio: Continue reading
For the Love of Herbs –O’Toole’s Herb Farm
Elizabeth (B) Fraleigh O’Toole, President of O’Toole’s Herb Farm will speak at South Georgia Growing Local 2014:
This presentation will touch on growing herbs for pleasure, growing herbs for the fresh cut market and growing herbs in greenhouse production for wholesale and retail sales. I will cover the joy and positive healing energy these plants give, the passion of growing and using them and how I got to this place.
Her farm was featured in the April-May, 2012, edition of Home & Design:
“A village is happening out here,” B said during a tour of her 114-acre farm’s greenhouses, gardens, retail shops and resident flock of sheep. “If you think Walmart, we’re absolutely the opposite. Small, local, knowledgeable, none of our plants genetically modified with man-made chemicals.”
Also on
facebook.
Her conference bio: Continue reading
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,
Continue readingTwenty 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.
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!
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
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:
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