Keeping the Delicious Parsley's Vibe Going

So I'm coming home from the ARC Green Communities workshop yesterday (which was punctuated by Parsley's Catering's excellent breakfast and lunch, with some ingredients grown/raised by farmers I know) when I hear on NPR that Georgia was just rated as below average on food safety in an annual report that has been issued each year since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01 (which was the event that made me start my home garden, by the way).

The best way to ensure safe food (and a secure food system in the face of rising costs and other threats to supply) is to produce it as close to home as possible. The hierarchy goes: home gardens, community gardens, small local market farms, larger farms within 100 miles, regional farms, national farms, and finally global (can you say bananas, coffee and please don't stop supply of my chocolate!) Here is a FoodShed Planet post about it.

My vision for Dunwoody? A Dunwoody Grows! Local FoodShed Center or series of food security/education/production initiatives that include:

HOME GARDENING

Dunwoody Kitchen Gardeners Education Center: classes and resources for home gardeners.

COMMUNITY GARDENING

Dunwoody Community Garden: raised beds for rent by members of the community

Dunwoody School Gardens: vegetable-growing raised bed school gardens with vermicomposting bins that encourage healthy snack consumption so the kids can feed fruit and veggie waste to the worms.

SOCIAL SUPPORT

Fruitful Dunwoody: urban gleaning of fruit and nut trees to donate to food banks, perhaps in conjunction with local faith-based initiatives.

Lettuce Thrive: greenhouse and/or garden program that provides easy-to-grow and culturally-appropriate vegetable transplants to the community and engages marginalized populations (at-risk youth, seniors and immigrants) as productive members of the community.

Plant a Row for the Hungry: An existing national program that encourages gardeners to donate some of their bounty to local food banks.

FARMERS MARKET

Dunwoody Farmers Market: Wednesdays AND Saturdays.

SMALL MARKET FARM

Dunwoody Farm: 1-5 acres cleared and utilized as a suburban farm (see the Atlanta-based Truly Living Well Natural Urban Farm) that sells produce at the farmers market, provides seasonal fresh produce to Dunwoody schools, and offers weekly CSA pickups.

RESTAURANT

CSA: A Farm-to-Fork Café: featuring seasonal, local, organic farm-fresh food from Dunwoody Farm and other local farms (see the Athens, GA-based Farm 255).

A girl can dream, can't she?

(Oh, and the photo is of the salad I picked from my garden last night, to keep the delicious Parsley's vibe going!)