PolkFresh TradePost Project: A Strategy to Implement Polk County's 20/20 Vision plan for Sustainable Community Development

2010 Annual Report for CS10-079

Project Type: Sustainable Community Innovation
Funds awarded in 2010: $10,000.00
Projected End Date: 12/31/2011
Region: Southern
State: North Carolina
Principal Investigator:
Carol Lynn Jackson
PolkFresh TradePost Project

PolkFresh TradePost Project: A Strategy to Implement Polk County's 20/20 Vision plan for Sustainable Community Development

Summary

We met with the Polk County Planning Department and established that agricultural development, both in production and marketplace, is a primary economic tool for Polk County. Our outreach into the community through our SARE funded project includes the Friends of Agriculture monthly breakfast series attended on average by 70 farmers, value-added producers, food artisans, educators, county planners and commissioners and related agencies. It is through this group that we identified 50 farms, farm market vendors, local food producers and local food artisans to work with. We created a new website and extended the social media component to include three videos (“Meet your Polk County Farmer, “Momentum” on the Mill Spring Ag Center, and a video produced about our Economic Development Office and opportunities in the county), The PolkFresh team (Lynn Sprague, Carol Lynn Jackson, AmeriCorp volunteers at the Ag Center and other project volunteers) have attended dozens of community coordination meetings with all supporting agencies: The regional effect is a base line estimated at 7 million dollars of new commerce, farmland preservation easements, larger agricultural start-up operations like a wholesale herbal greenhouse system and an aquaponics Tilapia operation. We created a logo “PolkFresh” . We designed the farm store layout with our builders. we corresponded with our 50 identified participants to establish with them the economic baseline they were operating at and how we could assist them into further marketplace. Our Ag Development office helped lead the development of a larger distribution support system within the Ag Center. Toward the end of June, we held an 11-stop Agri-Tour in cooperation with ASAP (Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project). we help establish a local community-center kitchen as one for commercial use for value-added production and local food artisans to rent on an hourly or daily level. We supplemented Foothills Connect, an established regional distribution system offered on-line through a grant by the Golden Leaf Tobacco Trust Fund and located in Rutherford County. By September, we showcased over 20 of these 40 store suppliers in a Farm to Fork Supper fundraiser for the Ag Center. A time to reflect, re-write, and roll on! In our first year as a county with an agricultural economic development office, (2008) A one-man office with 3 AmeriCorps volunteers developed small farm festival in downtown Columbus, NC. By year two, we had an abandoned building donated us and a team that grew from 4 to 8. We held small events and many volunteer days to help save the building and wrote for grants and grew our farmers markets from 1 to 4 and the momentum went on from there. In the 3rd year the team has grown to hundreds who help out regularily and many of whom have gone out into the community with spin-off projects to include community college education, establishing a Slow Food Subchapter called Slow Food Foothills, individual workshops (produce growing, CABA workshop). We feel it’s okay to celebrate a little for all the hard work we’ve done. Our local high school has 250 kids in ag classes: Ag Econ. Office has a certified sustain ag acredited class under continuing education which helps local kids stay local for their ag education. We hope to have those credits recognized by 4 year institutions. All of these projects, goals, and outcomes combined is making the Mill Spring Ag Center a regional center for sustainable Ag and teachings and workshops occurring directly on farms: Within 20 minutes you can be on any farm in this county with the Ag Center as your starting point. We are truly an agricultural community “university” without walls!

Objectives/Performance Targets

In the first quarter of this year, (Jan. 2011- March 2011) we met with the Polk County Planning Department and established that agricultural development, both in production and marketplace, is a primary economic tool for Polk County. We’ve had weekly meetings with Polk County Planning to work agricultural economic development into the unified code for our county’s 20/20 Five Year vision plan. Further community outreach has included the Polk County Wellness Coalition, where we showed a series of wellness films here at the Ag Center this year, held several farmers market vendor meetings, and work weekly with our co-operative extension office including the health and wellness coordinator who we assist on her Buy 10% Local Campaign. The PolkFresh team (Lynn Sprague, Carol Lynn Jackson, AmeriCorp volunteers at the Ag Center and other project volunteers) have attended dozens of community coordination meetings with all supporting agencies: presentation to County Commission updates by Lynn Sprague: Health and Wellness Coalition: strategic planning commission, Tryon Rotary Club, Lions Club, Pea Ridge Community Center, UUWA, and our local small business entrepreneurial program called Mountain Biz Works where we have developed a model of agricultural business planning that has gone out to 17 NC counties.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Our outreach into the community through our SARE funded project includes the Friends of Agriculture monthly breakfast series attended on average by 70 farmers, value-added producers, food artisans, educators, county planners and commissioners and related agencies. It is through this group that we identified 50 farms, farm market vendors, local food producers and local food artisans to work with. (attached). We created a logo “PolkFresh” (attached) We began development on our new website, www.polkcountyfarms.org, linked with social media sites Facebook and Twitter and generated regular posts and e-blasts as our newsletter format. Our website gives information on local farms, farm markets and the vendors who attend, local CSA’s, local road-side stands and local farm to table restaurants. We published several press releases about the grant and its objectives. We unveiled our new logo and website, as well as the Farm store and distribution centers’ development plans at the NC Soil and Water Conservation Districts Annual Conference in Asheville, NC.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

We created a new website and extended the social media component to include three videos (“Meet your Polk County Farmer, “Momentum” on the Mill Spring Ag Center, and a video produced about our Economic Development Office and opportunities in the county), We send a weekly online newsletter from our farm store, the PolkFresh Trade Post, and our distribution center sends web notes to farm distribution lists and hospitality clubs.
The regional effect is a base line estimated at 7 million dollars of new commerce, farmland preservation easements, larger agricultural start-up operations like a wholesale herbal greenhouse system and an aquaponics Tilapia operation. Henderson County hired an Ag Economic Development Director modeled after us: That coordination is extending into these others counties. Cherokee, Graham, and Clay, Buncombe, Yancey, Wilkes, City of Charlotte.
We designed the farm store layout with our builders. We met with our co-operative extension agent, the nutrition counselor in order to create packets to promote the “Buy 10% Local Campaign” within the community. We took packets around to area restaurants and currently have 4 of these private businesses signed on. We worked daily alongside the Ag Economic Development office and visited our state farmers market to see where PolkFresh growers could find a niche there. We were offered our own booth space and began to determine which farmers’ wanted to be involved in a more regional marketplace on a weekly basis. We had one farm, our largest produce producer in the county, willing to take on the challenge of yet another market and they continue selling up there to date. We met a local nut roaster who asked us to consign PolkFresh produce into his monthly rented booth and he would hand back to the growers the more generous portion of the split. However, this was a hard sell: to consign perishables into a marketplace that was over 30 miles away. We know producers are more interested in selling out right until traffic flow and demand has trained the consumers to sell them out whether they are direct selling or consigning. We profiled 3 farms: Charlene’s Garden, Nelon Knoll Farms, and Restoration Farm, all in Polk County. Our profiles give them the who, what, where, when and why about the farms as well as testimonials from the farmers about their history, what brought them to farming and their passion for sustainable agriculture and community. This template has set the format for as many more farm profiles as we can fit in 2011 and then turn the project over to our annual AmeriCorps volunteers who can follow the format and continue to update the local farm scene. We hosted a community-wide Volunteer Day, which sourced local food catered for no charge by local growers and garden-club enthusiasts. We began the development of a very special event that connected the Ag Center with our diverse business community by hosting a Carolina Foothills Chamber of Commerce After-Hours event. We also partnered with Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP) in Asheville to mutually participate in a June, 2011 Local Farms Agri-Tour. Within this event, we picked up two new farms who chose to associate themselves with our grant project: Maple Creek Farm and Sweet Grass Farm, both meat producers.