Last month on November 15th Red Bird Mission coordinated an heirloom apple tree training for our 55 Grow Appalachia members. Our Speakers Jeff Casada of the Clay County Extension Office and Jimmy Sizemore did an amazing job on showing the members the best way in how to go about planting apple trees and protecting them from critters. It was also fun to watch. Each of the 5 apple trees that the farmers received, is from a different apple tree family, each one has its own produce time. The apples will produce from June – October. This way the farmers will have apples growing 5 months out of the year. The Clay, Bell, and Leslie County Extension Offices and Soil Conservation Districts, all worked together with us to help provide our 55 Grow Appalachia members a small apple tree orchard of 5 apple trees of there own.  We also had a grant from GBGM Rural Food Security Grant that provided 50/50 with the extension offices/conservation districts to pay for the heirloom apple trees for our Grow Appalachia members.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2017 Heirloom Apple Tree Training

 

 

 

 

 

 

2017 Heirloom Apple Tree Training

 

 

 

 

 

 

2017 Heirloom Apple Tree Training

Also this December, me and Meredith Asher just finished our “Better Processing Control School On Acidified Foods”. So now we can properly operate and run our commercial kitchen. It was nice meeting everyone there.