Lexy here from Build It Up East TN. We are on our last day of recruitment for participants in our Market Garden Program for 2015. We originally planned to recruit 10-15 participants, but currently have over 50 applications for these spots. We are talking with community partners about the possibility of raising more money or in-kind donations to support more people getting into market gardening. We had originally planned on a lower number of participants with the goal of very intensively supporting their efforts this year to grow high quality, high value produce for a couple of new local food outlets in the area. This past year, a distributor for restaurants, Rooted in Appalachia, and an indoor, year round farmers market, Boone Street Market, both opened up to exclusively sell local products. Several CSAs have also opened and our regular seasonal farmers markets in the area are also popular consumer destinations. So, there is a strong appetite for locally grown food and not enough producers to meet the demand!
We’ve gotten quite a bit of notice in the local news and I thought I’d share one of the articles and also a great news story that ran on local TV:
The Johnson City Press Article
Before the temperatures dropped yesterday, I saw a row of forsythia covered in yellow flowers. It seems like nature is as eager for spring to begin as I am! Looking forward to a fun and productive year in the garden 🙂
That’s awesome! I can tell you our veterans have exceeded our 30 mark and we feel really good about this. Let’s hope it’s a record year in participants and produce.
I am excited that you have had such a wonderful response and news coverage. Congratulations and I hope everything goes well this growing season.
What a good problem to have w/exceeding your goal for growers. Good luck in making it happen.