This month’s issue of The Washingtonian examines the meaning of local: an enlightened way of eating or marketing buzzword? Continue reading
Tagged with Local Sustainable Foods …
Willowsford: Agriculture Supported High End Community
By Amanda
Willowsford’s ‘in house’ farm may be perceived as just another amenity to provide “farm to table attributes,” to sell to prospective residents of the mega house development. However, I wonder how would our world be changed if all new developments included a farm? What if it were required of the developer, like water, sewer, runoff mitigation and stoplights?
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Spring Comes Full Cycle for a Growing Season
By Amanda
Martina and I recently got together to celebrate spring and the one year anniversary of this blog, A Growing Season. For both of us, it was a time to look back and see how far our lives have come: what our blog has produced, how it has expanded our knowledge and understanding of local food and food systems, and most of all, where our life’s journey has taken us. Continue reading
Up close and personal with the spirits…whiskey, that is
by Martina
Last month, I discovered an unusual and super fun way to spend a Saturday morning…at Catoctin Creek Distillery, helping to bottle the latest batch of their popular Roundstone Rye with 20 fellow Catoctin Creek fans.
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A New Model for Local Food Distribution: Blue Ridge Produce
By Amanda
We visited Blue Ridge Produce in Elkwood, Virginia to tour their facility and find out about their business model. Blue Ridge Produce is a for profit local produce wholesale ‘aggregator’, which means they buy from lots of little guys to sell to the big guys. Continue reading
Farm Profile: The Bowen Farmstead, Brandywine, Maryland
By Amanda
I recently visited the P. A. Bowen Farmstead in Brandywine, Maryland in southern Prince George’s County, a pasture-based mixed animal soy free farm operation owned by Sally Fallon Morell, author of the Nourishing Traditions cookbook. With pastured dairy cows, egg and meat chickens and pigs, each part of the farm is organized with sustainability and humane animal treatment principles in mind. Continue reading
A Lollapolooza of Local
Despite the rain, the DC Eat Local festival event was a great ending to the week’s events. Every type of organization or business involved in the local foods movement was represented: restaurants, local farms, food hubs, businesses, food producers, wineries, and more. Here’s a gallery of photos:
Before the Supermarket
“The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard.” ― Joel … Continue reading
To Be Young, Hip and Ag
By Amanda
Growing up, I always was interested in animals and growing things. As I matured, I harbored an inner interest in being a farmer. But this was put away on a shelf, as all my perceptions of what a farmer was, how one did farming and how you could possibly get there. Continue reading
A Growing Season 