What To Do Before Growing Season

So it's cold outside and your twiddling your green thumbs. Here are a list of things you can do to pass the time and prepare for the next growing season:

- Decide what your goal is (short-term / long-term)

- Prepare your soil, sample it to see what it needs

- Compost

- Prepare your seeds

- Layout your garden

- Create a growing schedule

- Package and label seeds (what's commercial and most likely laced with genetic engineering, organic, heirloom, idk's)

Guide: Where to Find Local Food

Eat Well Guide^® is a free online directory for anyone in search of fresh, locally grown and sustainably produced food in the United States and Canada.

The Guide's thousands of listings include family farms, restaurants, farmers' markets, grocery stores, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, U-pick orchards and more.  Users can search by location, keyword, category or product to find good food, download customized guides, or plan a trip with the innovative mapping tool, Eat Well Everywhere. The Eat Well Guide team is responsible for the free educational booklet Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Food Movement.

Together with the enterprising spirits of independent farmers, locally owned businesses and partner organizations, the Eat Well Guide’s collaborative technology harnesses the power of the web to effect social, environmental and economic change, and maps the route to a more sustainable food system.

For more on the criteria to be listed in Eat Well Guide, view our standards for inclusion.

For a complete list of all the Farmer's Markets in Georgia, please visit the Georgia Department of Agriculture's Community Farmer's Market list. You will be able to search for a market by County. 

Click here for the Community Farmer's Market list.

For more information on what market is best for you, please contact:
Matthew Kulinski
Tele:  (404) 656-3680
Fax: (404) 656-9380

"How to Join A CSA"

Step 1: Decide on where you would like to receive your CSA. Is at home better for you? How about work? Maybe both are fine. Are you willing to travel a certain distance to pick it up?

Step 2: In Google Search, type "[your location] CSA", "[your location] Community Supported Agriculture", "[your location] farm share", or any other version of that. This should pull up a list of farms with CSA's in you area. If you are lucky, you may stumble on a master list of all the CSA's in your region.

Step 3: Shop around. Spend some time looking at all the farm websites in your area. Pay attention to:

• What pickup methods are offered (delivery, or you pick it up)
• What pickup times are offered (will you be available then?)
• How much food is offered (some CSA's have several box sizes to choose from),
• How much a share will cost (some cost vary depending on pickup location, method, time of year, and box size)
• How long the CSA session will last (I don't recommend that beginners commit to more than 3 months)
• What is offered (many farms offer organic, vegetarian, meat-only, fruit-only, and custom box choices)

Step 4: Mull over the idea. Once you have selected the perfect CSA for you, really think about the impact it will have on your life. Aside from the weekly farm appointment you will have come pickup time, think about what you will do with the food, and how that will affect you daily.

For example, I find that I spend significantly less money on food and traveling to get food, but I don’t go out with friends to eat as often because I already have food that must be eaten.

Step 5: Once your decision is solid. Go for it! It’s only for a session. Prep your food in your free time, and learn new recipes :)