Lunch at Closed for Business

After a meeting downtown this morning, Jamee and I decided to head over to Closed for Business for lunch. CFB is REV's (LLF member) newest restaurant - a fantastic craft beer bar that opened this past January. Jamee and I split a bowl of their Roasted Corn Soup and each had a Southern Chopped Salad full of local veggies! Yum!

CFB is located at 453 King Street. If you're in the area this evening, every Tuesday is "Kick the Keg Night," which means $4 Pints of Victory Hop Wallop, Sea Dog Blue Paw and Dogfish Head Chicory Stout.

'Tis the Season

Sign up for your fall CSA! Charleston is extremely lucky to have quite a few farms who are now running their own Community Supported Agriculture Programs. To find out more info, click here!

Food & Farming Entrepreneurship Course

Another great component to our Growing New Farmers Incubator Program is our Food & Farming Entrepreneurship Course. We have par terned with FastTracSC and Clemson to offer a business planning course for those interested in food system entrepreneurship in the Lowcountry. This was the first time this course was ever offered. The course was 9 weeks long - the graduation will be held next Thursday!

We've had some phenomenal speakers come to participate in the course. This week, the speakers were: Brady Waggoner from HOOK, Greg Garvan from Money With a Mission, Bernie Mazyck from SC Association of CDCs, and Tiffany from Aio Design. Thank you all so much!

The class will be offered again this upcoming fall. If you think you might be interested in taking the class, get into touch with Elizabeth at elizabeth@lowcountrylocalfirst.org.

Where has the summer gone?

I can't believe it's almost August - where does the time go? Summer was supposed to be "quiet" and devoted to planning here at LLF. However, it's been anything but! The Online Market is in full-swing and the apprenticeship program has taken off. We've been hard at work at the office writing grants, looking into projects and managing our ever-growing membership.

Many thanks to all of you who make this possible! We heart you!

Sustainable Agriculture Program Planning Day

The LLF team sat for 3 hours this morning planning for the next year's Sustainable Agriculture Program. We have some exciting stuff in the mix and are extremely excited!

Hydroponics

Our newest Founding Partner, George Nelson of Sweetbay Produce & Nursery, came over to the office this morning to meet with Elizabeth and me. Now here's a man with a vision! George has a 10,000 sq. ft. hydroponics facility located in Huger, SC.

George has grown arugula, basils, pak choi, romaines, multi-lettuces and butterheads with plans to expand into other various crop varieties.

Local herbs in winter? Sure! Local greens in January? You got it! I think he's onto something...

Our Apprentices

Shout out to the participants in our Growing New Farmers Incubator Project! Matt Frye, Nikki Seibert and Julie Hart are our full-time apprentices. Each work on three area farms (Rosebank Farms, Joseph Fields Farm and Our Local Foods/Thornhill Farm.)

These amazing individuals are our first cohort to go through the program and have worked extremely hard to help us work out the kinks. Each week they complete crop walks, harvest produce from the fields, sort and deliver produce to our partner chefs, manage the online market, participate in farm/entrepreneurship courses and much more!

We can't even begin to say how lucky we are to have such wonderful people. Keep up the good work!