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Mini-Market Opening on June 1st!

The Mini Farmer’s Market is not so “mini” anymore!  The market is expected to have 13 vendors at its opening on tomorrow, June 1st, 2011!  The Mini-Market is a collaborative effort between the Wayne County Health Department and the City of Goldsboro.  The market will be open from 9:30am-2:30pm each Wednesday through the fall and is located near the Herman Park Center at Herman and Pou Streets.

The Market Opening Day Celebration will feature fresh veggie songs by Dillard Academy Charter School along with fresh, local produce from your Goldsboro neighborhood farmers!

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Local Grower Spotlight: Barnes Farms

Tucked away off the main highway in Dudley, you’ll find a homestead.  This oasis of local food belongs to the Barnes family.  This family of 4–Jennifer, John, Isabell and Eloise – owns and operates Barnes Farms.  Their primary goal is to feed themselves and to feed the community.  Barnes Farms has donated hundreds of transplants to area community garden projects like the ones at the Goldsboro Library, The Freedom Farm and Dillard Academy.  Additionally, they offer food plants for sale to companies, orgs and individuals, all in an effort to get good food to the people!  Below is a price list.  Contact Jennifer Barnes if you’re looking to get something good growing in your own backyard!

Barnes Farms

Contact: Jennifer Barnes (919) 539-1439; jenno78@yahoo.com

Price List of Items

Food Plants:

  • 4 pack…….$2
  • Flats (8) ……….$8
  • Buckets ………………$15

Flowers:

  • 4 pack…….$3
  • Flats…………$15

 Tomatoes:   Roma, Homestead, Marglobe, Cherokee Purple, German Johnson, Pineapple

Herbs:  Basil, Thyme, Dill, Cilantro, Arugula

Peppers: Green peppers, Jalapeno peppers

Flowers: Petunias, Marigolds


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Plum Tree Market Place Set to Open!

Spending your food dollars locally just became a little easier in Wayne County with the Opening Friday of Plum Tree Market Place!  On Friday, April 8th, Plum Tree market debuts it’s 2nd season of local art and local food.  This time around, every 1st Friday, there will also be local music!  Check out the info below and support!  We’ll see yall at the marketplace!

PLUM TREE MARKET PLACE,
Farmers Market/Community Gardens

 104 South George Street ~ Historic Goldsboro
(between Walnut & Chestnut Streets)

Opening TODAY, Friday, April 8, 2011
4pm-7pm – Open Every Friday thru Fall
Local Produce ~ Local Artists ~ Home Produced Items ~ American Indian Artisans

First Fridays ~ Music & Food!

For more info: grandpachildren@earthlink.net
Dreamweaver or Lotus Blossom @ (919) 736-9412
www.plumtreemarketplace.blogspot.com

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Mark your calendar: Day of Caring Volunteer Event, May 13th

Wayne Food Initiative is preparing for the United Way’s “Days of Caring” event on May 13th!  If you’re interested in finding out about upcoming volunteer opportunities, please contact shorlette at sammonss@ncat.edu.  To volunteer at the Freedom Farm, please contact Charles at freedomfarm4@gmail.com!

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New Season, New Energy at the Freedom Farm

Meet Charles McNair, new grower at the Freedom Farm, formerly known as the Urban Farm, at Washington Park.  Check out his story below and stay tuned for more info on the growing community connections happening at the FREEDOM FARM!

Here is Charles’ story in his own words…

this is the Freedom Farm!

Grew up in a rural environment until attending college in 1988. While growing up we lived next door to our grandparents, who owned the land we lived on, as well as rented out other land they owned to local farmers who planted on a large scale. We raised our own pigs and chickens and planted, harvested, and stored the bulk of our own food, only having to purchase certain items for consumption. My grandfather and grandmother taught me about farming and agriculture from preparing the land for fertility, to breaking up the land, to planting, weeding, watering, harvesting, and storing (canning, freezing, drying ,etc). We grew butterbeans, greens, peas, corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, etc. We also had fruit trees and plants such as strawberries, pears, apples, cherries, scuppernongs, purple grapes, plums, watermelon, cantaloupe, etc.

During the summer months, grandfather would come to the window to call my brother and I to awaken and get started to “water the collards” before it got hot. We also would pick cucumbers for money for our cousin, who was a large scale farmer. My grandparents also modeled and taught us about being good neighbors by sharing and/or trading what we had grown with our neighbors.

Graduated BA in Religious Studies with a minor in Anthropology from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1993. Trained grassroots organizer through the Childrens Defense Fund and Midwest Academy. Helped to open and establish Dillard Academy Charter School in 1998. Worked there until 2003 as an Executive Administrative Assistant. Returned to work at Dillard Academy in 2008 and was surprised to see the garden initiative and WFI. Being able bodied and young and experienced with agriculture, I jumped at the opportunity to start working with the earth again and teaching the youth what my grandparents taught me about the earth and proper respect for it and the value of working smart and working efficiently and when needed, working hard. When the opportunity came open for Washington Park, I was overexcited to have a larger, more independent project to throw my energies into while teaching grownups the value of organic and sustainable agriculture.

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9/11 Day of Service & Remembrance Garden Workdays

Calling all youth, grown folk, community orgs, crop mobs, churches, etc…Join us on Sat. Sept. 11th in Goldsboro starting at 9am for our National Day of Service and Remembrance Volunteer Event! Come volunteer in community gardens throughout Goldsboro! Free lemonade to the first 1000 volunteers ;) Please share the flyer and contact shorlette at (919) 288-0192 or sammonss@ncat.edu to register your group or if you would like more info.

National Day of Service flyer- 2010

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Fast Food Fast – from Kebreeya, SWARMer

Hello everyone. Today marks the final day of the fast food fast. The previous weeks were fairly easy. On some days, a bit challenging but I stuck through it. Although the fast food fast is over today, I will continue to be on a full fast from soda, fast food, and (i’ll try my best) to stay away from pork (which was my chosen self-challenge).

I would like to thank you so much for you all sponsoring me and encouraging me throughout this period. Your words of encouragement and support REALLY helped me and once again, thank you.
- Kebreeya Lewis
- SWARMer

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On the Fight for Food Equity, by CEFS intern Elena Wertenbaker

The ideas of food justice and community development have been very prevalent in my internship experience over the past two weeks. Both of these terms are nebulous and difficult to concretely define, as they refer to complex and shifting ideas, but I will give it a shot. Food justice is indiscriminate access to safe and healthy food, and involves the breaking down of existing barriers to that access, which include physical, economic, and paradigmatic barriers. Community development, as I am beginning to understand it, is the development of whatever a community needs to be successful and productive according to its own standards.

We have had numerous discussions about food access in low-income communities and about the role that “alternative food” advocates and practitioners have been trying to play in such places. The overwhelming tendency in this movement has been to try to implant the ethics of sustainably raised, healthy, local food into these communities preformed, as in to take ideas about food that have risen out of other contexts and needs and “teach” them to folks in low-income areas. This tendency is born of very good intentions- many of the areas in question presently have little or no access to fresh or unprocessed foods, and the want to change things that are currently unjust is natural and common. The trouble is that it makes the assumption that people in very different communities with different needs and resources all want to see the same kind of changes in available food. The situation in an area that currently only has access to conventionally grown food from the global food system is different than that of an area that currently doesn’t have access to fresh food at all. The former community is hungry for the ability to make choices about the kind of the food system it chooses to support, while the latter may actually just want what is perceived to be normal and standard. One of the articles that we read quoted a person in an area with limited food access saying that the change they wanted was to have a Safeway built in their neighborhood.

So then my question is what to do. I have had this conviction for years that connecting with food and land has the capacity to make people feel good in some deep and fundamental way, and my plan has always been to take this idea to places where people may not have ever thought of it, and to groups that might particularly benefit from something of that nature. After having had all of these conversations about not imposing the ideas that one community has about food on others, and acknowledging that my truths are my own, I feel steeped in the question of how to proceed.

My ideas about the healing potential of engaging with food and the earth mostly revolve around the idea of a return to the most basic- bodies and food that nourishes and the land that we slowly and continually draw our very lives from. To me this has the potential to cut through the complexity and franticness that is threaded through our lives and culture, to be a metaphorical deep breath, an opening.

What I keep hearing from folks with more experience actually working with food and people is that to figure out how to be of service to other people and communities, the trick is to listen. To trust that people actually know what they need and that they can let you know what that is. To me this translates as taking on a certain quality in oneself, which really is just a matter of being open, which is really the foundation of the whole healing farm idea to begin with. So what I’ve come around to is that the quality that I need to cultivate in myself in order to have a shot at being successful in this work is the same quality that I hope to inspire in others through the healing farm, which is a very interesting “full-circle” experience.

-Elena Wertenbaker