Urban Garden Bike Tour - This Saturday!

Our fabulous Sustainable Agriculture Director, Elizabeth Beaks, has organized a Urban Agriculture Bike Tour around downtown Charleston for this upcoming Saturday, July 17th. If you're interested in checking out some of downtown's urban gardens, just show up! Details below...

WHEN: Saturday July 17th

WHERE: Meet at Gadsen Street Garden (see map of tour route)

WHAT TO BRING: Bike, money for lunch, sun attire, etc.

Agenda

• 9:00am Check in with LLF if you need to chat
• 9:30-10:00am Tour begins at Gadsen Streen Garden
• 10:30-11:00am Green Heart School Garden Tour (#2 Perry St. Mitchelle Elementary School front yard, in front of the park)
• 11:20-12:10pm Elliotborough Community Garden Tour (134 Line Street, in Elliotborough Park, at the back of the park)/Bogarden Tour (southeast corner of Rutledge and Bogard St.)
• 12:30pm Taco Boy Downtown (217 Huger Street)
• 12:40-1:00pm Josh Martin from the Coastal Conservation League will discuss Agriculture and Urban zoning
• 1:00-1:30pm Urban Farming Panel/group discussion/questions/resource sharing
• 1:30 until whenever Hang out!

If you have questions, please email Elizabeth at elizabeth@lowcountrylocalfirst.org

July Member Meeting

We're pumped for our July Member Meeting this evening! Judith Moore will be hosting the meeting at her business, The Charleston Cookie Company! She is located on James Island 1750 Signal Point Road.

Meetings are open to the public, so come out! The meetings are casual and include plenty of time for socializing. We typically make any necessary announcements which are then followed by short presentations by member businesses. Join us and get to know the locals!

We HEART our Committees!

We are extremely fortunate to have groups of wonderful people who donate their time and energies to help LLF! We have a number of different committees that are working tirelessly to help us improve what we do.

Our Membership Committee has launched its Membership Drive and is planning for a special event towards the end of the summer! Keep your eyes and ears open!

Our Directory Committee is gearing up for the 3rd annual edition of our Directory of Local Independent Businesses that will be released this upcoming fall.

Our Buy Local Committee is working on an LLF Loyalty Card to encourage local retail spending.

Big thanks to all you fantastic people!

New Member!

Slather Brand Foods is LLF's newest member! Check out Robin Rhea's Slatherin' Sauce! Yum!

Welcome!

Wild Flour and King Bean

Board Meeting this morning - and you know what that means... pastries and coffee!! Thank you to our members WildFlour Pastry and King Bean Coffee for supplying us with the goods!

Don't forget to visit the Downtown Farmer's Market tomorrow morning and thank your local farmer. Have a great weekend!

Produce Delivery Day

Thursdays are produce delivery day! LLF has partnered with 3 farms (Joseph Fields, Our Local Foods and Rosebank Farm) and seven restaurants (REV, Al Di La, Fish, FIG, The Glass Onion, McCrady's and Med Bistro) to pilot our Farm Fresh Online Market. Each week, seasonal produce from the three farms is uploaded onto the site by our fabulous apprentices. Come Tuesday, chefs will go online and place an order for the week!

The apprentices are harvesting as I type! Chefs will receive their orders tomorrow.
We are now into the 3rd month of the pilot market and (after some initial growing pains) have streamlined the system.

For more info, feel free to give us a call at 843.740.5444.

We're Baaaaaaa - ck!!

(Sheep from our 3rd Annual Chef's Potluck this past May!)

LLF is officially back on the blog scene, and since our last blog post was in December (sorry!), lots has changed!

I encourage you to check out our new and improved website! Browse around and be sure to check out our Growing New Farmers Incubator Project that we launched this spring!

Will be sure to keep much more up to date (daily, hopefully) postings! Oh.. and happy belated "Independent's" Day!