Collecting unsold produce for the hungry
Margaret Gifford makes her rounds on a recent Wednesday evening near closing time at the Carrboro Farmers' Market. With a cardboard box in hand, she reminds farmers that she's there to collect any produce they can't sell and won't keep until the next market day.
"We're collecting as always," Gifford tells Hailey Moses, who works for Cane Creek Farm.
"I have some stuff for you," Moses says, and hands yellow squash and zucchini to Gifford.
To donate food, Margaret Gifford is always collecting donations at Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings at the Carrboro Farmers' Market. For information about the market's hours and location, go to www.carrborofarmersmarket.com
Music CD being sold to benefit NC Family Farms
On Sale Today!
North Carolina Home Grown Music for the Soil
A CD Benefiting Small North Carolina Family Farms
(Raleigh, NC, July 2009) Whole Foods Market and Redeye Distribution are pleased to announce the release of North Carolina Home Grown Music for the Soil, a collection of songs featuring some of North Carolina’s best homegrown talent in the music industry.
Beginning July 10th the CD will go on sale at all 5 North Carolina Whole Foods Market stores. Whole Foods Market is donating 100% of the sales from each North Carolina Homegrown music for the Soil album to Feed the Farm in support of its efforts to provide assistance to small North Carolina Family Farms facing a hardship.
Localdirt.com Connects Farmers and Buyers
What is Local Dirt?
Local Dirt is an online site for finding, selling, and buying local
food (and local food buyers). We are funded by the National Science
Foundation. Local Dirt is the only site that does not charge a markup
for selling online.
We come from farm backgrounds and have a goal to give small and
mid-sized farmers the same advantages as large distributors. Finding
buyers and automating the sales, invoices, and inventory is made as
easy and fast as possible.
How It Works
1. Profile page - have a free page telling about your farm.
"Food Inc." to be shown at Colony Theatre in Raleigh
Mark your calendars now for a special showing of the movie "Food Inc." at
the Colony Theatre in Raleigh on Saturday, July 18th at 10:30 am!!
Attached you'll find a flyer you can put up and below you'll find more
details. Spread the news to your friends!
Yeah for local food!!! Thanks! Peace, Karen
http://www.cookforgood.com/foodinc.html
Special showing of Food Inc. is Foodraiser for Inter-Faith Food Shuttle
Mark your calendar for now for the special showing of Food Inc. on
Saturday, July 18th, at the Colony Theater in Raleigh, NC. Doors will
open at 10:30 a.m., the program starts at 10:50, and the film will start
Pollinator Day with schedule information
If you like to eat, then you have cause for celebrating pollinators, as at least one-third of the food we eat relies on bees, flies, and other critters to set fruit and seed. Much of our wildlife also relies on pollinators to make the seeds and fruits that they eat.
Chatham Marketplace is Pittsboro's locally owned grocery co-op - stop by this week and look for the little bee symbols that identify all the products in the store that depend on pollinators - everything from vegetables and fruits to juice to cooking oils to meat and dairy (forage crops) to coffee and tea and chocolate...when you see the bee symbol you can thank pollinators for making that food possible!
Free E-Waste Recycling: June 27th at 3 Area Best Buy Locations
Our landfills are filling up with things that won't ever go away.
Specifically, old, outdated electronic equipment which take up space
and pose a hazard to our environments.
That's why FOX50 created "E-Cycling" Day:
Saturday, June 27th from 10am - 2pm at all 3 locations.
Come out and see us - rain or shine - in the parking lots of three Best Buy locations:
* Durham - Renaissance Center
(7001 Fayetteville Rd, Durham, NC 27713)
* North Raleigh - Capital Blvd.
(6101 Capital Blvd, Raleigh, NC 27616)
* Cary - Crossroads Plaza
(237 Crossroads Blvd, Cary, NC 27518)
Effland farm comes full cirlce - naturally
EFLAND -- Ten years ago, walking around a certain 61-acre parcel of land in Efland was more like off-roading. All you could see were overgrown weeds and trees coming out of nutritionally parched soil that had been slashed and burned several times in previous decades.
Ben Bergmann and Noah Ranells, then N.C. State University professors teaching and researching agro-forestry and soil science, could see much more.
They could see goats, sheep, cows and chickens grazing free on pastures and garden patches full of vegetables and fruits.
They could see Fickle Creek Farm.
Beginning Farmer Rates Make Land Affordable
Beginning Farmer Rates Make Land Affordable
USDA is offering big benefits to beginning farmers: Who else can
qualify for 1.5 percent, 20-year fixed interest rates on a big chunk
of any farm mortgage? No, that's not a typo. The Farm Service Agency's
Down Payment Program for beginning or limited resource farmers may be
the best deal in decades for someone interested in buying land at the
moment.
"That's the best rate I've ever seen for a USDA loan program, and I've
worked in farm credit for 27 years," says Greg Beachy with Farm Credit
Services of Mid-America in Louisville, serving Ohio, Indiana,
Tennessee and Kentucky. Borrowers who've stumbled onto the offer are
Farmers owe buyers sludge-safety study - Opinion Piece
Shame on the farmers who won't let the county test the effect of the sludge they use, in case it might turn out to be making their customers sick! (CHN June 3).
I believe Hendrik Ibsen wrote a play about that 100 years ago, "Enemy of the People," in which the doctor who discovered that the town's spa water was causing illness rather than being beneficial, and was driven out of town for saying so. Perhaps the paper should publish the names of the farms that refused so that we can refuse to buy from them at the Farmers Market.
Tony Armer
Farm to Fork Picnic: A Celebration of NC Foods
On Sunday June 14, we are joining many of North Carolina's most
acclaimed chefs and a group of incredible Piedmont farmers to cook a
picnic-style dinner at W.C. Breeze Family Farm, a 270 acre educational
farm devoted to sustainable agriculture just a few miles north of
Hillsborough. All proceeds from the evening will help grow new farmers
across North Carolina by supporting farmer apprentice programs hosted
by the Center for Environmental Framing Systems and PLANT at Breeze
Farm Enterprise Incubator program.
Over 70 restaurants, artisans and farmers are working together to
prepare the all-you-can eat feast celebrating the bounty and diversity