Our Local Food Shed
CSAs – Food so fresh, you have to slap it!
Many local farms have made significant contributions to the local food shed through participation at area farmers markets and via their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Programs.
Our very own Piedmont Biofarm located at the end of Lorax Lane in Pittsboro has a CSA. Click on Piedmont Biofarm’s CSA for more information. Edible Earthscape also offers CSA in addition to taking their produce to market.
Another way to find local CSA programs is by way of the North Carolina Cooperative Extension where Debbie Roos has put together Growing Small Farms, a Website chock full of up-to-date news about local farms and farmers.
A Local Food Grocery Store
In our neck of the woods, we have an abundance of local food options. The Chatham Marketplace is a great source of local food including wine, beer and staples like rice and flour. They also have a wonderful deli, a hot bar and pretty much everything else you could need or want.
It’s a Coop grocery store, so you can buy an ownership, and volunteer and feel great about shopping there. It also has an incredibly high percentage of local food. Because they realize how costly the meat industry is to the environment, Chatham Marketplace takes care to source those products locally. A whopping nintey-seven percent of their meat selection comes from within 250 miles of Pittsboro!
Farm Incubators, Seed Saving, Breeding and Research
Not only does Piedmont Biofarm grow food, but they are growing farmers, too. Farms that hire interns and teach them to farm are popularly known as Farm Incubators.
Edible Earthscapes, located on Thomas Lane in Moncure on the Moncure Pittsboro Road is also a Farm Incubator which brings local produce to the Farmer’s Markets and offers a CSA. For more information about their farm, check out their Website at Edible Earthscape.
And then there’s variety trials and seed saving. Doug Jones of Piedmont Biofarm is developing superior strains of vegetables especially adapted to our local climate and soils through his Plant Breeding and Research Program.
Sustainable Farming is on the Rise
Small, organic farms continue to increase in number and along with them, the number of Farmer’s Markets and CSA’s. In Chatham County, as in many other counties across the nation, the number of small, sustainable farms is growing.
At Piedmont Biofuels., we do our share of Building More Farms. Last year Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA) held its 14th annual Piedmont Farm Tour featuring 30 farms. The year before, there were 25. Two of the farms we helped start are on the farm tour circuit.
Chatham County is on the map as a place where people come to find the best tasting, highest quality produce in the southeast. Between 1996 and 2002 Chatham County farm acreage increased from 108,363 acres to 118,752 according to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Vermiculture – Composting with Worms
We’ve got worms and are happy to share! Closely related to the business of eating and farming is composting.
At Piedmont, we take scraps from The Chatham Marketplace and feed them to a special breed of worms called “Red Wigglers” who then produce worm castings, a high quality soil amendment. We also teach people how to compost using Red Wigglers and send them home with their own worm bin and worms.
Vermiculture composting is a great way to turn your kitchen scraps into fantastic fertilizer. Your trash will smell better and weigh less while your garden, houseplants, landscaping and/or lawn reap the benefits.
The Abundance Foundation – Getting everything you want or something better
Along with all of these small markets and farms comes a need for champions like The Abundance Foundation, an organization committed to supporting local food. community, and sustainability.
The Abundance Foundation supports local farms through fund raising and grant writing and they offer workshops on Seed Saving, Vermiculture, Mushroom Cultivation, Bread Making and much more.
If you want to get involved in our local food movement, The Abundance Foundation is a great place to start.
