Buying groceries at a big box store, it’s easy to forget the work that goes into growing your food, no matter how many pictures of pretty farm fields are used as decoration in the produce department. But, if you know a farmer, you are immediately reminded of just how much work goes into bringing that food to you. Farmers must be masters of many skills: learning to grow a wide variety of produce (including soil science, irrigation, disease and pest management, cover cropping, harvesting, handling, etc.) and raise multiple varieties of livestock, business planning, marketing, sales, equipment and infrastructure, food safety, water and land conservation … and making a sustainable income.

One fantastic way to understand how hard farmers work to grow and raise your food is by going on a farm tour. On this month’s Piedmont Farm Tour, there are 35 different farms – all have to come up with innovative solutions to problems every day. In this issue of The Stew, we introduce you to one of the farms on the Tour for the first time this year, Okfuskee Farm. Okfuskee uses innovative permaculture and sustainable practices and smart technology to raise their livestock and crops.

In addition, I share one of my favorite stories of a farmer as an innovative marketer: Clay Smith and Nancy Joyner of Redbud Farm were able to bring a Japanese variety of sweet potato to the Japanese immigrant community that they couldn’t find anywhere in their new home.

If you haven’t taken a moment to see our new videos that feature organic growers across the Carolinas as part of our Carolina Organic Project, I invite you to check them out. The video in this edition shows how one farm is transitioning from conventional to organic – no small feat!

If you ever doubt just how innovative farmers have to be, you just have to suffer one defeat. This month, try your hand at organic gardening. You might even come up with your own solution to a challenging problem, or, you might just decide that you will leave the innovation up to the farmer.

Enjoy,

Elizabeth Read, CFSA’s Communications and Development Director

P.S. Come work with us! We’re hiring a Local Produce Safety Coordinator. Share far and wide!