Congratulations to Local Food Director, Rae Miller, and her partner Jarred on their brand new daughter, Maple Breese. We are all wishing you well!
The Known and Grown family of farmers continues to grow as we have recently added two new farms. Long time area organic farm Biver Farms joined us in July, as well as Mindy and Bobby with Rustic Roots Farm. Welcome to Known and Grown STL!
Known and Grown farmer and MCE partner in the Washington University Building Resilient Inclusive Communities grant, Erica Williams of A Red Circle, hosted the first annual Good Food Summit at the University of Missouri Extension Office. This was an exciting event bringing together policy makers, growers, educators and many other activists in the North County Local Food movement. We identified what was required to sustain a viable food community in North County and who in the room represented each of those requirements. The event ended with all attendees agreeing to keep this discussion alive, to act on the ideas shared and prepare for Good Food Summit II.
This spring we launched our farmer mentorship program by selecting Danielle Meert of MOshrooms Regenerative Microfarm, Janett Lewis of Rustic Roots Sanctuary and Tara Blanchard of Tara’s Herbs as the first three mentees. All three of these farmers have already made impressive progress towards achieving their stated goals. We plan to piggyback on their success in subsequent years pairing some of our talented veteran Known and Grown farmers with new farmers hoping to establish themselves in the market.
Eve Abrams of Food and Environment Reporting Network was in town interviewing farmers for a podcast targeting agriculture’s response to climate change. Eve spent time with several Known and Grown farmers, including Paul and Nancy Krautmann of Bellews Creek Farm, Nicki and Beth of HartBeet Farm, Janett Lewis of Rustic Roots Sanctuary, Ben Brownlow of Fox Holler Farm, and Serena and Fred of Stuart Farm. Eve fell in love with all of our farmers and plans to sprinkle pieces of their conversations throughout her podcast which will also include interviews with large scale conventional farmers. Many thanks to everyone who shared their homes and time with Eve; we look forward to tuning in to her podcast.
Rae Miller has been coordinating with Operation Food Search (OFS) in hosting gleaning events for the last couple of seasons, and we hope that we did her program justice as we continued without her during her pregnancy leave. On Tuesday August 3, we teamed up with OFS to harvest cherry tomatoes and potatoes at a Known and Grown farm, Three Rivers Community Farm in Elsah, IL. The weather was gorgeous and the crew gleaned 710 pounds of cherry tomatoes and 442 pounds of potatoes. Thank you farmers Amy and Segue!