101 Places where you just gotta eat in West Virginia

The Collaborative for the 21st Century Appalachia and the Dept. of Tourism are asking the public to submit their favorite restaurant on wvfarm2u.org's survey 101 Places in West Virginia where you just gotta eat. Have you submitted your favorite restaurant here in Wild Wonderful WV?

On a technical note: I have received emails and calls from folks who were experiencing issues with the image verification at the bottom of the survey. This has been removed so anyone who may have experienced an issue can now complete the survey without any further problems.

On a side note: Happy SPRING!!! What are the signs of spring in your neck of the woods? My elderberry bushes are getting leaves, the daffodils are in bloom, and the red potatoes, peas and onions have been planted.

Small farms are gowing everywhere!

MUNCIE, Ind. - Rising consumer demand for locally grown, organic produce is fueling a surge in the number of small Indiana farms, boosting their numbers nearly 80 percent over five years, a new farm census report shows.

The number of Indiana farms under 10 acres soared from 5,436 in 2002 to 9,720 in 2007 -- a 79 percent increase -- said Greg Preston, director of the Indiana Agricultural Statistics Service.

"It's skyrocketing. We are getting a lot of newer farmers coming in that are smaller -- going into direct marketing, specialty products, organics, locally grown, this type of stuff," Preston told The Star Press.

For the ag census, taken every five years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a farm as any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products are produced and sold.


Read more here...

The Collaborative's lessons learned through SARE grant

In summer 2006, Collaborative for the 21st Century Appalachia in partnership with the South Central Penn State Extension Service Office submitted a SARE Sustainable Community proposal and despite the multiple challenges for a small farm in trying a new venture, nine farmers (six in West Virginia and three in Pennsylvania) expressed an interest not only in learning about value-added but also in trying it on for size because as a part of this grant they could minimize the risk, the financial outlay, and get some solid assistance with marketing.
This SARE initiative provided the opportunity for these farmers to become working partners with SARE and in this way to develop the sweat equity needed to finance their value added processing. The learnings from their efforts then became a model for others to benefit from.

Lessons Learned

• Offering free samples is a most effective marketing technique and so is and providing the customers with recipes.
• Having a recipe from a well-known chef on the package added even more value.
• Consumers love a story. One farmer shared with customers that they were using their great grandmother’s recipe. Another shared the story about how the heritage seeds for their product had been handed down for 7 generations. These stories made people interested and eager to buy.
• Consumers love history—for example, having corn stone-ground at historic (Stonewall Jackson) mill added even more value to the product.

To read more about the Collaborative for the 21st Century Appalachia SARE learnings, please click here