Not long ago, GrowFood Carolina was just a bright idea by environmental advocacy non-profit the Coastal Conservation League, designed to provide a missing link between farmers within 120 miles of Charleston and restaurants seeking a reliable source of local produce. Just a year after the concept went public, it’s not uncommon to find local chefs at the warehouse on any given morning, picking out produce and chatting with farmers who are dropping off their harvest.
This guy used to not know what a broccoli plant looked like, and he spends his days working at American Apparel, but Andrew Werth will soon be growing food for the Lowcountry, having been chosen for a farm incubator by Lowcountry Local First.
“You watch all those large-scale documentaries, and they sort of freak you out. You almost don’t even know what to do with them,” Hailey Wist says. “If you watch something that fires you up and makes you have fun, then there’s the social incentive to make small changes in your life.” That’s why she made The Garden Summer, which will premiere to a sold-out audience tonight. Wist invited four suburbanites to spend the summer on an Arkansas farm growing food and selling it at a local farmers market.
What’s it like raising your own chickens? Ari LeVaux lets us know. Sometimes, you end up eating them — after you kill them yourself.
Wadmalaw Island dairy farmer Celeste Albers — you may know her formerly for her Sea Island Eggs — is hoping to sell fresh buttermilk, but the regulations governing milk pasteurization are turning out to be cost-prohibitive.
The Coastal Conservation League has started GrowFood Carolina, a wholesale food distribution center where businesses can buy produce from farms within a 100-mile radius of Charleston. That means local restaurants and grocery store will have easier access to produce, and rural farmers will have a marketplace for their crops.
