asheville, 2008 Local Food Guide features 240 Mountain Farms

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2008 Local Food Guide Available Now, Features 240 Mountain Farms

The 2008 Local Food Guide is now available throughout Western North Carolina. In its seventh year of publication, the Guide is one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind published anywhere in the United States. Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP), the Asheville-based non-profit organization that produces the Guide, has been asked to advise dozens of groups throughout the country who are attempting similar projects.

"As a consumer, the Local Food Guide allows me to quickly find sources for local food and that helps me to fulfill my commitment to eating from our local region. Every year I look forward to seeing new additions to the guide,” says Jeanie Martin. “As the chair of ASAP’s Board of Directors, I know the Guide works because farmers tell me how many people drive up to the farm and get out of the car with the the Local Food Guide in hand.”

The farms listed, more than 240 of them, are selling their food products locally. They do so in several different ways, all of which are listed in the Guide for use by mountain shoppers interested buying fresh, local foods. Farm products featured include vegetables, tree fruits, berries, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, rabbit, milk, cheese, eggs, cornmeal, sorghum molasses, honey, trout, shrimp, and much more. The opening section describes the 49 farmers’ tailgate markets operating weekly in season in the region covered. The 2008 Local Food Guide also lists:

32 apple orchards
50 restaurants that buy and prepare locally-grown foods
Grocers offering goods from local farms
25 CSAs (farm subscription programs)
40 U-pick farms
45 farms to visit
Bakers and other entrepreneurs making foods from locally-grown products;
45 farm stores and roadside farm stands.

The coverage area includes those mountain counties within 100 miles of Asheville. The focus is on Western North Carolina, but the guide includes some farms and markets in the neighboring mountain counties of Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Virginia.

The Local Food Guide is available at more than 400 area locations: 5 Earth Fare stores and 95 Ingles locations, independent grocers, bookstores, libraries, welcome centers, tailgate markets, doctor’s offices, and other newsstands throughout the region.

The complete content of the Local Food Guide is also available online, at the recently-redesigned site AppalachianGrown.org. Online listings are searchable by product, town, county, production practices, and more.

Production of the 2008 Local Food Guide is supported by the Greenlife Grocery, Earth Fare, the Golden LEAF Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

(Images provided by www.asapconnections.org.)