Growing the Local Food Movement in Greater Richmond
Welcome to Real Local RVA’s blog! Here you will find entries from the Executive Director, Leadership Board and guest bloggers. This blog will focus on farms, farmer’s markets, restaurants, groceries, food vendors and producers. We will work to keep you informed on all the local food events and news in our community.
If you have any questions, comments or possible topics please email us . We would love to hear from you!
A Reflection, by guest blogger Rebecca Parker PayneI like to say that Wendell Berry’s writing happens to you over time. His prolific slew of literature, non-fiction, and poetry–which span the topics of agriculture, community, faith and place– is slow and steady. It isn’t fiery, and not one of his many books could be described as a “page-turner.” But it does change a person. It moves them to think differently about how they live, and how their living affects other people around them or the land under them. It’s like his writing slowly moves in, setting up house, unpacking boxes and rearranging the furniture until one day, you realize you’re different.
[Read more…] about A Film Screening of “Look and See – A Portrait of Wendell Berry”
For the second year in a row Real Local RVA hosted a Reverse Farmer’s Market intended to facilitate the wholesale relationships between growers and small scale producers with vendors interested in purchasing local food. Vasen Brewing Company were gracious hosts of the event. The typical farmer’s market format was reversed, and the vendors remained at their respective tables while the farmer’s and producers traveled the room.
Guests began to arrive on Broadfork Farm around 10:30AM for Real Local RVA’s second annual Farm Tour & Cookout. At 11AM the guests gathered their homemade, boxed lunches provided by Ellwood Thompson’s and cookie provided by Libbie Market and boarded the buses.
The first stop on the tour was Tricycle Urban Ag located in Richmond. Tricycle is Richmond’s leading urban agriculture nonprofit organization, and they are on a mission to grow a healthy future through urban agriculture. Since breaking ground on their first garden, they have engaged thousands of neighbors and show that the simple act of growing food is an incredibly powerful way to impact the overall health of our community.
Photo: Shalom Farms
As we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of relocalization vs. globalism, consider the following.
Facts:
There are some reasons why we are not producing and sourcing our own food and why it’s easier and cheaper to distribute food globally versus locally. I will address these paradoxes.
On Thursday, March 16th, 2017 @ Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church members of the local food community joined together for an evening of local food and drinks with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms!
Joel’s talk focused on building a Local Food System that Works. For all the desire and good will surrounding local food systems, they require six components to work effectively: production, processing, accounting, marketing, distribution, and customers. Each of these pieces must be committed not only to its own role, but to the success of the others. Each can be either a liability or an asset in the whole scheme and in this talk, Joel examined these principles with an attentive audience.
[Read more…] about Joel Salatin’s Building a Local Food System that Works
Helena and Matthew Sylvester would love to plant fruit trees and blackberries on their Bay Area organic farm, but they’re holding off because they don’t own the land. Like a growing number of young farmers across the country, they lease it year-to-year. That means the Sylvesters must weigh every improvement carefully. “Last year, a week before my husband and I were going to get married, our landlord told us they were going to pave over 2 acres of our farm,” says Helena, 29. Although she and her husband were able to block those plans, the experience “makes me hesitant to think we could financially invest, because that could happen again,” she says.
Read the rest of the article HERE.
