A New Beginning for Farm to Table
One thing I have learned about writing is that sometimes, your stories and projects don’t always end up being about what you wanted them to be about. Farm to Table, the blog, seems to have undergone that transformation. Zach began the blog in order to promote a potential TV show, but it became something more: a forum to discuss developments in the sustainable food world, a way to bring together those people with a passion for local agriculture and traditional culinary craftsmanship. A community of like-minded individuals has grown up around the blog, myself included. I followed Farm to Table because I believed that here was a voice that had the strength to rally people and effect real change in the way Americans think about their food. And I still believe that it will.
Zach has graciously turned over management of Farm to Table to me. Many of you may recognize me from a post on Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. I am a dedicated sustainable foodie, an elite fitness enthusiast whose entire success as an athlete rests on eating locally grown, sustainably farmed, wholesome foods. For me, sustainable food became the common thread tying together personal, social, and environmental health. So I took up the fight and joined the community.
Zach has built a great community here, and we don’t want to see it go to waste. There is still much to do with Farm to Table, so I am assembling a team of people to take over and expand the site. By getting more people involved, we hope to extend our reach and create the ability to tackle more and bigger issues. We want to make Farm to Table the authority on sustainable food news and developments in the community, and create a forum for ongoing dialogue. Ultimately, we would like to use the Farm to Table community to motivate lasting and far-reaching change in the way America thinks about its food. We hope to bring sustainable food to the mainstream by connecting all the various elements involved, enabling people to connect with one another locally, nationally and globally, to better support each other’s efforts to build a sustainable food system.
Our Goals
- News: To make Farm to Table the authority on sustainable food movement news, the place to get information on political developments, farms that are paving the way, intellectual movements, the economic climate for SOLE food, and new trends. We would comment on existing content as well as generate our own stories
- Community Forum: Farm to Table will be host for the discussion on SOLE food, bringing together major bloggers, thinkers and intellectuals, aspiring foodies, farmers, restaurateurs, and average readers to share, collaborate, and inspire one another. We want to help the discussion develop rather than simply report on it. To this end, we will set up a dedicated forum separate from, but associated with the blog posts themselves.
- Monetize: In order to sustain it, we would like to derive some revenue from Farm to Table, in order to pay hosting and domain registration fees, as well as fund journalistic missions at some point. If a sustainable food blog is going to claim that SOLE food can survive economically as well as environmentally, it must be able to do the same. Sustainability applies to both the environment and the economy.
- Host on a dedicated domain: We want to move Farm to Table to its own domain. This is so that we can promote cooperation without people fearing that their brand/identity is being subsumed.
- Reconnect with our community: We want to draft a mission statement and send it out to our readers as well as those farmers and restaurant owners we have previously worked with, inviting them to join in the mission. We will be renewing old connections with farmers and business owners, incorporating them more fully into an ongoing dialogue.
If you would like to get involved, let me know. We are looking for regular bloggers as well as occasional contributors. We will be expanding the scope of the site to include a number of different departments, so there’s a good chance you could be in charge of one of them. If you know the restaurant industry, for example, you could head up our search for sustainable, locally sourced eateries, coordinating with contributors across the country and connecting with restaurants wherever you find them. If you just have an interesting story about local and sustainable food in your life, feel free to share that too. We can help you polish your writing if necessary, and will do our best to give you a voice in a growing community. If enough of us get involved, we can accomplish a lot without having to dedicate huge chunks of our time. Once our forum goes up, there will be more room for people to start their own discussions, and we will be reaching out to local farming organizations across the country.
If there is anything you’d like to see on Farm to Table, now is a good time to make those suggestions as well, as there will be some structural changes going on in the near future. I can’t promise we’ll incorporate all the suggestions, but we want to take into consideration the needs and expectations of the people that make up the sustainable food movement to which we are trying to give voice.
So if you’ve been waiting for the right moment to step up your involvement and take an active role, now is the time. All it takes is a willingness to reach out to farmers, grocers, restaurants, friends and family, to share their stories and establish connections. Real, local food thrives on community ties, so let’s make Farm to Table a reflection of that truth and make the website the product of collaboration and community dialogue.
Image Source: playingwithbrushes on Flickr
Hi Khaled
I have enjoyed following the Farm to Table site and your endeavours mirror my own.
I am a freelance journalist writing extensively for the agricultural (and business) press in rural Maniotba, Canada. I also have my own blog where I try to raise awareness of issues around food, economics, environment and sustainability.
Let me know how I can help if I can!
Regards
Angela
.-= Angela Lovell´s last blog ..International Year of Biodiversity off to a fishy start. =-.
I just found Farm to Table and I’m glad to see the site won’t be abandoned. Good luck! I can’t wait to see what you all do with it.
I love reading about organics, sustainable farming, eco-friendly living, etc. Food, Inc. had a big impact on my thinking and behavior last year—leading me on a quest for more knowledge and great blogs like Farm to Table. I started my own “green” blog not long ago called “Madly Madly Green”. It feeds my desire to become a better writer as well as a more responsible consumer. Let me know what you think. I would love to write for you.
.-= Chelle´s last blog ..You Can’t Go Back =-.
Thanks everyone for the support and the enthusiasm for taking the site in a new direction. I’m really excited to have this opportunity to help bring people together and hopefully make a difference.
I would like to suggest a segment on farm dinners. I belong to an organization called the Mississippi River Hills Association, it covers 7 counties in southeast Missouri. Its purpose is to support and promote producers, growers and artisans all in the name of locally made and grown products. Last fall we held a farm dinner. One of our members who is a cattle producer of grass fed beef allowed us to use his pasture. We set up two long rows of tables and covered them with quilts. All the food was donated from farms within the 7 counties that make up the organization, including wine and cheese. We served over 40 people, 25 of those attendees paid for this meal ($50), drove an hour and 15 minutes to come eat in a cow pasture. It was awesome, they loved it. A few made the comment that they had been searching for a long time to find a farm dinner and was not having any luck before seeing the ad for ours.
There are people who are on the hunt for this kind of experience; unusual setting and locally grown and produced food. We plan to do 3-4 of these each year rotating sites.
I think something like this would also be a good feature so that people are not only educated and informed about the process, the benefits, and outlets to buy such foods, but a place and way to have fun and gather with like-minded people.
Just a thought. Keep up the good work.
Oh wait, I just had another thought, too.
I don’t remember the whole proper name, but there’s a market for connecting people who preserve and make their own foods; whether it be jams and jellies, salsa, cheese or meat products, but can’t sell it because it’s not legal to process it in your home kitchen and sell it. I don’t remember the term, but that hurdle can be jumped by those people being able to rent commercial kitchens to process their products which then makes it legal to sell.
How does a persona find out about them? Where they are? Who owns them? What would be needed? Do they offer warehouse space? Do they have a retail outlet attached?
Having someone who can make those connections would be something I think others would be interested in knowing about.
Thanks again.
@Lynda The farm dinner is a great idea for a post. I’d never heard of that before, and if we could provide ways for people to find farm dinners in their area, that would be a plus too. I will look into it. Thanks
I have just read about your blog, and am very interested in participating. I am the founder and CEO of Culinary School of the Rockies in Boulder Colorado. We have the only culinary school in the nation with a month long off campus farm to table program for our students. They work on farms, witness animal processing, put on farm dinners and apprentice in restaurants whose chefs buy directly from farmers. This program occurs twice a year and began in September 2008. Our graduates are uniquely suited to bring this passion for local, organic and sustainable cooking where ever their careers take them. Joan Brett
I am glad to see that Farm to Table will be continuing and expanding in the future. I am a recent subscriber and think it has the potential to be an even more incredible resource than it already is.
I would love to contribute/help in any way possible. I blog on sustainability issues (including food) from a similar standpoint that you do – the balance between personal choice, healthy communities, and environmental impact. Please let me know if I can be of any help!
From a super easy technical standpoint, it would be great to see a subscribe to comments feature on the blog to facilitate following ongoing discussions
.
.-= Jess @OpenlyBalanced´s last blog ..Transition: An Introduction =-.
Great, so glad its coming back. I’m reading Jerry Saltz’s Facebook rant about young critics starting their own online art magazine–which 1) could change art criticism and 2) would benefit from actually being EDITED. Funny seeing ZAC’s comments in there.
I think Farm to Table should have diverse content streams–plugging into video, radio etc. Lots of different ways to engage.
.-= Adriana´s last blog ..Summer berries enrobed in winter =-.
Hi,
I’ve been following Farm to Table for several months, and am really happy that the site will continue to head in this direction. Let me know if I can help in any way.
.-= Esperanza´s last blog ..What Is a Food Citizen? and Black-Eyed Pea & Kale Soup with Lemon & Sage =-.
I really enjoyed your site and would like to link to it on my own (16 writer) food& cooking blog. This site has the best coverage of issues re: sustainability and the farm to table approach which is one of the (several) areas I like to explore in my own cooking in Brooklyn. Great job and keep up the good work.
.-= Sasha´s last blog ..Matt’s Kitchen: Cooking With Kids – "Wacky Cake" =-.
@Joan Brett: We’d love to get in touch with you about getting involved with Farm to Table. We are looking for more people to help run things, and contacts in the sustainable food world are a big plus as we’ll need lots of contributors. I’ll send you our plan
@Jess: We are looking for writers both to create original Farm to Table-specific content as well as established bloggers who can write on their chosen topics or post their articles on our site in exchange for links and traffic. I like your blog and your writing voice. Let me know if there’s any topic you’d like to write about for Farm to Table.
@Ariadna: We are definitely planning to incorporate more mediums of engaging, including TV and radio if we can figure out how to integrate it all.
@Esperanza: I love your blog! The article I read covered both political issues and provided a great recipe. We are looking for regular writers on both topics, so if you’d be interested let me know.
@Sasha: Please feel free to link to us. We’re in the process of changing a lot around here, so keep in mind that our domain name may change in the coming weeks (we’ll keep everyone posted). Thanks for your support.
I’m by no means into the food scene to the depth of most of the others on the blog, however I am a huge believer in eating/providing as much garden fresh, home or locally grown food as is available and educating those who don’t realize the difference it makes. So if there is anyway I can help (and learn by doing) with the Farm Dinner section of the site, I would gladly do so. I think it would be fun and very helpful on many levels.
I don’t do much public writing except on my own website for the historic site that I manage, so I’m curious what the difference is between the three roles you commented on in your reply.
My experience with managing this historic site is restoring it back to a working home and farmstead. We tap maple trees and cook syrup, squeeze sorghum cane for making molasses, grow broomcorn to make brooms, raise a garden, have a flock of chickens, we plan to incorporate demonstration plots for farming with horses and we bake in a outdoor brick oven. Our main goal is to educate our visitors about how the immigrants who settled here in 1839 survived and then to educate them about the food chain. Where does it start? We show just the real basics; where do we get eggs or milk? How do vegetables grow? What did they season their food with? Etc, etc.
So now that you know all this, how can I help and where do I fit?
Hi Khaled, I’m excited to hear about the plans you have for Farm to Table and would love to contribute. I’m a real-foods enthusiast, CSA-member, culinary student/professional cook and also run a buying club with a grass-fed, organic farm providing their products to my community. I’m particularly interested in helping people find ways to access and incorporate more real, sustainable foods into their diets and the nutrition/health repercussions of a real foods diet versus an industrialized diet. I used to blog a bit on local, sustainable food (mostly recipes driven by my CSA deliveries) but haven’t been keeping up with it since starting school. I’d love to get back into writing and further involved in the farm-to-table movement, though, so please let me know if I can be of help!
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Hi! Love your plans! I’m a Holistic Nutritionist and herbalist. I work with clients to teach then to eat local, organic, and sustainable to improve their health. I teach classes, on a variety of subjects, including cooking classes and, kid’s classes. I’ve had a CSA for years and buy a large percentage of my meat and dairy from local farmers. I regularly send people to the food circle and local sources on my examiner.com page. Please let me know if I can help or what type of articles I can provide.