It's a country restaurant in a small town, with a down-home menu that is literally down on the farm. Almost all of the meat and vegetables are from local farms.

Marvin is Marvin Bost. He and his wife, Cabarrus County extension agent Debbie Bost, live on a state-recognized "century farm" - meaning a farm that has been farmed in the same family for more than 100 years - although their 145-acre spread actually dates back to an original land grant to Marvin's ancestors.

Read more in the Charlotte Observer

The Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) is bringing Will Allen to Raleigh for its 2009 Sustainable Agriculture Lecture on Nov. 9. Allen’s Growing Power Inc. in Milwaukee has become a national model for adapting community supported agriculture to work for inner-city consumers, and he was selected for of one of the 2008 MacArthur Fellowships (the “genius award”) for urban farming initiatives he has developed. Allen will be discussing “Steps to Successful Urban Farming” during a talk that will run from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the McKimmon Center on the N.C. State campus. This talk will be free and open to the public, but seating is limited. The SAES, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State, and the N.C. Department of Agriculture & Consumer Sciences operate the CEFS jointly. Among its research units is a Small Farm Center, and the CEFS also has swine, dairy, organic cropping, farm systems and pasture-based beef units devoted to innovative practices for advancing sustainable food and farming.

Read more about the lecture
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KANNAPOLIS -- N.C. State University’s Program for Value-Added & Alternative Agriculture will become N.C. MarketReady, effective Oct. 20.

The value-added program was founded in 2006 by Dr. Blake Brown, director and a professor in the N.C. State Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, with funding from the N.C. Tobacco Trust Fund Commission. Since then, the program team, based at the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis, has grown to five faculty and four staff members. It works closely with N.C. State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute, also based at the N.C. Research Campus, as well as with faculty from main campus and Cooperative Extension field faculty across the state.

“We are excited about this new name,” Brown said. “The new name, N.C. MarketReady, more accurately communicates the scope of our program’s work.

Farmers living more than 130 miles from campus who would like to get their name in the hat for lodging, meals and waiver of registration fees for Small Farms Week activities on campus March 22 and 23 have until Jan. 15, 2010, to apply for a scholarship. In addition to living more than 130 miles from campus, applicants must rely on farming for at least 50 percent of annual gross income, and be part of a operation that has a family member making the general managerial decisions.

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Extension Day, Friday, Dec. 4, will include a three-hour morning (9 am – 12 noon) workshop focusing on local food, sustainable business practices and safe food handling and an afternoon tour of value-added facilities. Dec. 5 and 6 will be devoted to CFSA SAC.

In August, the third educational N.C. Goat & Sheep Producers Roundup was held in Greensboro at the Guilford County Cooperative Extension Center. The two-day conference was well attended by over 135 goat and sheep producers from North Carolina, Virginia and South Carolina.

A special feature of the event was the “N.C. Chefs Cook-off of Lamb and Chevon.” Five high-end restaurants and chefs that participated include Spanky’s Restaurant of Chapel Hill; Taste of the Caribbean Restaurant, Greensboro; The Stock Pot, Winston-Salem; JuJube Restaurant, Chapel Hill, and Chatham Marketplace, Pittsboro.

Each restaurant was given a half carcass of both lamb and goat and could prepare it any way they desired for the competition. After the judging of the dishes by area food editors of newspapers and a sponsor representative, the wonderful food was served to the participants at the conference with rave reviews.

Read more in the Wilkes Journal-Patriot

The N.C. Fresh Produce Safety Task Force hosted the Food & Drug Administration in Raleigh for a Small Farm Produce Safety Listening Session on Sept. 28. Senior advisers and policy experts from both the FDA and the USDA listened to a panel of North Carolina small farmers as they shared their thoughts and concerns about impending produce safety legislation.

After the listening session, the FDA and USDA folks visited two area small farms: Peregrine Farm and McAdams Farm. View more photos from the event at Growing Small Farms.

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) is a perennial grass native to the southeastern United States that can be used as a pasture, stored forage or biomass crop. A new technical bulletin developed by crop scientists at N.C. State University and the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service summarizes the results of 26 independent research projects that focused on switchgrass—from its establishment and management challenges to its potential as a crop for grazing animals and biomass.

Based on their findings, the authors make recommendations for establishing switchgrass, managing it and selecting a cultivar based on use. The bulletin includes data on two improved cultivars developed jointly by the N.C. Agricultural Research Service and the USDA–ARS and released in 2006.

Cooperative Extension has conducted train-the-trainer workshops for Extension agents, who, in turn, will train producers. The training focuses on Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and what it takes to obtain GAPs certification. Industry, such as grocery stores, is increasingly demanding that growers they buy from be GAPs certified.

Eaten any good goat lately?

Well, I have.

I was invited last Friday to the Guilford County Agricultural Center to help judge a cook-off featuring goat and lamb meat.

The cook-off was part of the third N.C. Goat and Sheep Producers Roundup, held by the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service.

Read more from the Winston-Salem Journal.

N.C. State's Poultry Science Department and Feed Science Program continues to expand its extension and outreach programs. In June, the department hosted a group of 30 workshop participants from China. Participants attended a Poultry Production and Feed Manufacturing Workshop at N.C. State, sponsored by the American Soybean Association International Marketing office in Beijing, China. The participants work for poultry production and feed manufacturing companies located throughout China.

The group attended lectures and worked in laboratories on campus and at the Feed Mill Education Unit located on Lake Wheeler Road. The group toured the Mountaire Farms feed mill in Candor, Southern States feed mill in Farmville, Cargill soy processing plant in Raleigh, East Coast Soy Processor in Pantego and Reggie Strickland’s soybean farm in North Carolina.

The event will be held at the Guilford Cooperative Extension center, 3309 Burlington Road in Greensboro, and N.C. A&T State University Research Farm, also in Greensboro. Goat and sheep producers, along with youth in the Southeast, are invited to this educational event to share and learn more about the latest issues related to the production of sheep and dairy and meat goats.

Experts from around the United States will address many topics of interest to sheep and goat producers. Special features of the conference will include an North Carolina Chefs Cook-Off of both chevon and lamb for Friday’s lunch. On Saturday, a youth program will be added, targeting youth interested in fitting and showing goats and sheep for competitions.

Read more from CALS News

Hannah Cowell is a frequent visitor to the pollinator garden at Chatham Marketplace. The bed, which features herbs as well as native perennials and vines, was center piece of the pollinator celebration held last month in Chatham County. For the third year, Chatham County Cooperative Extension and the Chatham County Beekeepers Association partnered for a pollinators' celebration in Pittsboro. Agent Debbie Roos says the event has grown every year, and she expects to repeat it next year. The purpose of National Pollinator Week is to teach pollinator-friendly practices and raise public awareness of the importance of the bees, beetles, butterflies, moths, flies, birds and bats that are needed to produce 80 percent of our flowering plants and one third of our human food crops.

To see more photos from the event, visit Debbie Roos' Growing Small Farms Web site.