We had a fantastic conversation with four local food growers at our March Transition Town meeting. Below is an edited transcript.

Panelists:

Angie Fink, landscape designer background, community garden organizer.  Benton Community Garden (west of town) – 40 x 40 feet on one neighbor’s property.

Jamie Barrett, manages Bellair Farm CSA.  25 acres of veggies all under organic certification standards.  Raise some chickens and pigs as well.  Sell at mid-week markets and at some restaurants. 350 families in the CSA right now. Seminars on the farm every Saturday.

Ann Marie Hohenberger, backyard gardener for several years.  Learning to recognize problems and identify solutions; looking to make a dent in household food budget.

Sarah Frazer, co-owner of C’ville Foodscapes, a 3-member worker cooperative helping people transform their lawns into an edible oasis with garden installation, education and maintenance.  The business was originally more about raised beds; the current owners are trying to bring in more fruit trees, berry bushes, and perennials.

Why is local food important to you?

Angie: Nutrition.  Freshly harvested lettuce, amazing!

Jamie: Supporting a local business, protecting areas around town that aren’t developed, employing 11 seasonal workers. Accountability for food quality.

Ann Marie:  Avoiding fossil fuels used to transport food, pesticides, refrigeration and packaging that go into industrial food.  Also the satisfaction of producing your own food.

Sarah:  Food security and food sovereignty – not being susceptible to price increases, and having democratic input into how food is sourced.

What’s the biggest challenge in the work you do?

Jamie:  Production has challenges – diseases, pests. Mother Nature is a big challenge for sure.  Plus businesses challenges, getting the word out since we’re new. [[Moderator: what about climate change?]] The last 4-5 years I was in Massachusetts, we could plant a month earlier. Here, the Derecho with 100+ degree weather, that took a toll.  Any extremes are not good.

Sarah:  Folks are really disconnected from the landscape – what’s outside their door, plants and animals.  Doing a one hour consultation, we have to broaden their horizon to what’s possible.

We can move toward a more local diet by planting fruit trees, creating opportunities to buy local food year-round, and learning how to cook seasonally.

How realistic is it to eat a totally local diet? How can we move in that direction?

Jamie:  More community canning centers, cold storage like root cellars.  Those can extend the life of the food for a long time:  onions, potatoes, winter squash.  Centers would be a big help.  More education and outreach to people about the benefits of buying local.  There’s been a huge shift in the past 15 years, which is great, could be more.  Local government could get more involved.

Angie:  Plant more fruit trees everywhere, especially low maintenance varieties.

Sarah:  Seattle is planting a public food space, come pick your own. Would love to work on a project like that here.

Todd:  Lobby the city to plant more fruit trees on public land.

Sarah: Planting fruit-bearing trees on public lands gets into who’s going to pick it, attracting vermin, etc. As inspired as I am by guerilla grafters, a specific Forage Forest might be better.

Andon: Portland Fruit Tree Project – when harvest season comes around, they get crews of volunteers, donate the harvest to local food banks. Having a system in place helped convince the city to do it.

Todd:  Like adopting streets in a way, having designated people.

Lorrie: I offered to pick neighbors’ fruit in exchange for jam. Figs, mulberries, apples. No one has said no so far.

Sarah:  Could be a cool project for Transition:  forage mapping project for the city.

Jamie:  Cville is positioned well for [a more local diet]. Even Whole Foods is trying to reach out, and the restaurants are really positive. Food Hub is also a key piece to the puzzle. It’s about education.

Sarah: I love IY, because local food is there almost all year round, when the farmer’s markets aren’t open.

Andon:  I think the City Market could be opened in March. There are other things besides produce that could be offered:  mushrooms, Kombucha, etc.

Jamie:  We don’t do much season extension stuff right now, but there are farmers who do. Space for an indoor market would help.

Sarah:  In the 40′s, “victory gardens” produced maybe 40% of food. How do we monitor that, how could we set a goal?

Ann Marie: VA Food Systems Council promotes a pledge to spend $10/week on local food. For people who are already doing that, what about a bigger goal? Let’s do a challenge in July/August to see how much local we can eat.

What’s your advice to someone who wants to start eating a more local diet?

Jamie:  Pick something easy:  breakfast, local eggs, local bacon.  Simple things, doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Sarah: Put together something from what’s in the fridge. We’ve gotten away from making something out of what you’ve got – what’s fresh.

Ann Marie:  Knowing what to do with the local food is a key place to start. If you’re not a good cook, you have to take a simple approach to cooking seasonally – not so gourmet sometimes.

Andon: What about a recipe calendar?  52 recipes for the year – based on what’s available.  Maybe a Skill Share?

Jamie:  In our newsletters we have some of that.  Someone is putting a recipe blog together for us, should be up soon.

What about restoring heirloom varieties?

Jamie: If there are interested parties who ask me, we’re more likely to grow that. I’m still new to this area, so I don’t always know what they are. Very interested in VA Food Heritage Project.

Sarah: VA Food Heritage has seeds, just need people to plant them.

Andon:  Southern Exposure Seed Exchange is in this area and do a lot of heritage seeds.

Ann Marie: Edible Landscaping in Afton, they grow local varieties and develop their own. Volunteer workdays every month – you can earn $10 credit/hour.

People have these sexy landscaped garden designs. Is that practical?

Sarah:  Yes, that can be the best way to go.  Get a map of your property and just start drawing. You don’t have to do it all at once. Plan for permanence. Start with a kitchen garden and then move out to the orchard.  Lot of clients aren’t aware of the support plants that can help with pollination.

Ann Marie:  My veggies will get eaten by deer if they’re not inside a fence, so that’s a design constraint.

Angie:  When you’re adding it to your yard, there’s always a place for different things that the deer won’t find. Design also depends on what your goals are. If you want tomatoes to can, you’ll need a big grouping, whether or not it’s in a row.

Jamie:  Farming is a really creative venture, so people are going to have different ideas. My scale is different. My garden would be a horror show, I’m not the best person to ask. We do cultivate natural habitat and borders. We’ve had good luck keeping critters out with a baited electric fence. For insects, we use rotation, row covers, organic pesticides.

You are invited to The UVA Food Collaborative‘s GMO FORUM*  on genetically modified foods next Tuesday, April 23 at 6:00 pm in NAU 101 auditorium.

There will be healthy snacks from Whole Foods and a film clip as  well as the program.   NOTE: free Parking right next to Nau Hall (take Brandon Ave.off of JPA, across JPA from  the back of Cabell).

You no doubt already know that these foods are prevalent throughout our national food system (88% of corn and 93% of soy in 2012 per USDA).  Come hear a panel of experts representing all sides and learn the science, the risks vs. benefits to our health and the environment, and the issues around labeling.

Panelists include:
Eric Hallerman, Department Head, Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech
Jean Halloran, Director of Food Policy Initiatives, Consumers Union, NY
Manuel Lerdau, Professor of Environmental Sciences and of Biology, UVa
Michael Rodemeyer, Executive Director, Policy Internship Program, UVa

Some stores, including Whole Foods, are committed to not buy GE salmon and to require labeling of all products within 5 years.  If you don’t know their specific reasons, here’s your chance to learn the balanced facts and then make your own informed choice.

Call Lynda Fanning of the UVA Food Collaborative at (434) 978-4805 if you have questions about the event.

*When genetic material/DNA from one organism  (I.e., a bacteria) is inserted into the genome of a host organism (I.e., corn) to produce a resulting “genetically modified” organism with different/desired traits (I.e., resistance to an herbicide).

Directions to Nau Hall, South Lawn Commons:

You have to love a class where one of the first questions the instructor poses is:  “Does anyone here faint at the sight of their own blood?”  Good stuff.

About a dozen current and wanna-be orchardists met for a one day workshop led by Alexis Zeigler of Living Energy Farm.  Alexis has hundreds of fruit trees at various properties, and this self-taught expert provided a wealth of information as well as hands-on experience.  He pointed out that we’ve all been duped by a culture of deception when it comes to fruit, thinking that the shiny apples and plump peaches of the grocery store are desirable.  In reality, those fruits have been sprayed with fungicides and pesticides up to 14 times during their growth.  Meanwhile, because industrial farming only serves up a relatively small number of fruit varieties, we don’t realize that fruits like the paw paw, persimmon, and muscadine are much better suited for the mid-Atlantic and are incredibly disease and insect resistance.  In some cases, these and other little-known fruits also offer more vitamins and even protein than we get from the ubiquitous red delicious apple.  I was definitely inspired to think about my fruit tree choices in a completely different way.

After learning the characteristics and hardiness of some of the main fruit and nut tree families, we moved on to propagation.  We covered seed and root cuttings, and then spent the rest of our time learning to graft.  Turns out, once you know which parts to line up, it wasn’t that hard, but it was invaluable to have Alexis there — definitely  not the kind of thing you can learn from a book.

Along with knowledge, we all left with some actual grafts that we should be able to plant in 4-8 weeks.  What did I end up with?  Pretty excited about some blight resistant pears, hardy almonds, and some paw paw seeds that I’ve already put into pots.  Planning to add kiwi and persimmon to my yard as soon as I can figure out a good location.  Great class!

You can take this class too! Alexis will hold another session on April 13.

Alexis shows how to wrap a new graft.