Are you ready for 2009

What is a CSA? How do I get food that I know is safe? Where is my food coming from? How long ago was it picked and at a ripe time or travel time? Has it been gassed? Is there water added to my meat? I would like to help you find answers to each of the questions and to show you how to find a safe local farmer in your area to buy your produce and meats from.
Question 1 A CSA is a farm that works with you to provide fresh produce that you help pick the
crop and help the farm by picking the produce, delivering and boxing for a few hours in the growing season and you buy a share. #2 is it safe? You help pick the produce that you would like to see and then it is grown for you it is not coming in from a different country that has lack safety rules. You are a part of the farm. #3 food is from where?? You are welcomed to visit and asked to help the farmer so you know the food source and the grower. #4-5 picked how? We pick as the peak of freshness and delivery with in 2 days it is not trucked or boated for a month and picked green then gassed you your table. #6 we do not inject water or anything else into the meat you get just the meat that way it was grown, fresh pasture based and free from any junk to make it last longer or look fresher.

How do you find farmers like this ?
Try Carolina Farm Stewardship association@
http://www.carolinafarmstewards.org/ for a list of local farmers in your area

In the Upstate try http://www.welchandsonfarm.com/

contact your local extension agent

South Carolina Dept of Agriculture

or just look for a farmer at your farmers market and talk to them

You would need to act fast for this upcoming year as the CSA shares go fast and the farmers can only grow so much
Hope this helps and remember to eat fresh food from a local farmer as that way you will have good food to eat that was grown just for you
Bill

Lazy Days

Me? Work? It's summer! I think I'll just stay right
where I am...this looks like a great place for a catnap.

PHOTO SUBMITTED BY: Mahaffey Farm (Lancaster, SC)

Extra, extra, read all about it!

Dear Reader,

I write as a recently educated individual on the terrible nature of our food industry and an advocate of eating locally. However, I want to be even more educated and an even greater advocate. I would be interested to know what books/articles are out there that people like myself are reading. What first got me interested in the issue was Friedman's The World Is Flat. Then I read The Omnivores Dilemma by Micheal Pollan. John Bowe's Nobodies is also a good read related to farming (and other industries) and modern day slavery here in America. Various New York Times articles are also good places to start in order to gain an understanding of the system and lifestyle. I know there are other great books out there and would love to hear what you are reading to educate yourself about farming and eating well. Learning what you the individual can do is extremely important to me, and having a website like SCFV is so very important. Thanks for all you do! I'm excited to see what's to come--for the site, for our state, for our nation...

Sunday, April13,08

Today has been a restful day. Went to church and dinner with our family. I am at our farm store. I put Lemon Balm in the dehydrator yesterday and it is ready and I have bagged it. Really smells nice!! Tomorrow will be soap making day. I am WAY behind on making my herb soaps and need to build up my inventory. Planting needs to be done but we are still a little wet. Todays high winds will help with that, though. Mike is milking our Jerseys and will have to bottle some milk tonight. Hope everyone has a great week.
Patrice
Butter Patch Jerseys

Send In Your...

...pictures, movie clips, stories! Because this site is media driven, it's important to have dynamic content. Submit photos and stories to the blog, or email them to be placed in the media gallery. SC Farm Voice is supposed to act as an extended community, so let's get to know one another better! Send in pictures of your overly lazy farm cat or a rediculously large pile of turnips! Take a break from all your hard work and have a little fun. Make sure that you attach your name and caption information to the file so that you will get credit.

Email your content to: scfarmvoice@gmail.com

Thanks or your work on this Brooks. It's great to see interest continue to grow in local agriculture, especially at the University. There are many challenges to the success of any local farm, not the least of which is the weather. On Saturday we had golf-ball sized hail that ripped a bunch of holes in my greenhouse. Fortunately, the plants inside look pretty good for the most part. It should not be terribly hard to fix. Well, it's on to other business, because Spring is a very busy time of year. I hope to hear from all of you soon. We will also be at the Sandhills Markets and the All-Local Markets this year. So come see us!

About SC Farm Voice

SC Farm Voice is the name that I have chosen for the site. Of course, this site has been born out of my senior thesis project at the University of South Carolina, but I hope it will become a functional tool for SC residents. The site is set up with search features to locate your farms, a media center with photos and video, and this blog. The goal of the site is to personalize the small farm so that consumers are more willing to buy local. There are many sites online to serve the purpose of connecting consumers to local farms, but I wanted to take it one step further by adding the elements of interaction and media. I plan on promoting the site once it is up, both locally and on campus, for a start. I would also encourage you to do the same.

Please feel free to email me with questions or ideas at scfarmvoice@gmail.com.

To All Bloggers

This blog is intended to be a forum for farmers to connect with each other, as well as to connect to consumers. Currently, this blog has not been advertised to the public as it has not yet been incorporated into the site (soon the be SC Farm Voice). But if you are interested in blogging, feel free to do so. This blog will be open to the public by the end of the month when the site goes live, and for now it can serve as a means to communicate between bloggers. Once the site is live I hope to get some topics going, so check back for new posts! Thanks for joining!