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May Fruition Showcase

We live in a vast rural county, larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island. In a place this spread out, sometimes it takes a while to know who is doing what. There’s a brand new way to learn more about agriculture in our area and the stories behind our area’s food businesses.

In addition to this blog, just launched in May 2021, the Extension Local Foods team is bringing the farmers and food businesses right to your computer screen with a new livestream called the Fruition Local Food Showcase. We are passionate about connecting consumers with the people who grow or sell food items available in St. Lawrence County.

The showcase features three new people every month, who have their chance in the spotlight for a 15 minute interview. Community members tune in on YouTube or Facebook, where it’s livestreamed and also saved as a recording to view later.  The program gives viewers a unique opportunity to learn directly from the people who run these businesses about what drives them, what’s new this season, and how to access and best use their products.

Read more May Fruition Showcase

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Seed to Supper Gardening Course Comes to a Close

On Saturday, graduates of St. Lawrence County’s first Seed to Supper gardening course gathered at the Learning Farm to receive their garden kits and to watch Master Gardener Ken Kogut demonstrate how to build a raised bed with a hoop cover.

Seed to Supper is a 6-week comprehensive beginning course focused on low-budget strategies and partnership building for new gardeners. The curriculum was adapted by Cornell Garden-Based Learning from resources created by the Oregon Food Bank and Oregon State University Extension.

Throughout the spring, 15 participants met weekly on Zoom to learn from St. Lawrence County Master Gardeners about planning, planting and maintaining a food garden as well as using its bounty. Despite the limitations of teaching the course online this year, the instructors were able to convey a wealth of information and to break up the lessons with demonstrations on growing microgreens, effective watering, and comparing soil types. Early on in the course, Master Gardeners consulted with participants on their garden maps, prompting responses like this one from Wajira: “Thank you so much everyone for your time. I made changes to my garden map based on your valuable advice. I have already seeded okra seeds inside near the window. I am so happy to tell you some of them have germinated!” Read more Seed to Supper Gardening Course Comes to a Close

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Meet the Local Food Team: Flip Filippi

What is your role on the local foods team at CCE and what services do you offer to community members? 

Here at Cooperative Extension I work in the Ag and Food Systems Department as the Local Food Program Leader, I started in April of 2017. We have a shared-use kitchen onsite called the Harvest Kitchen at the Extension Learning Farm. I manage that space which gets used for a lot of neat things including classes, technical assistance and rentals. The kitchen covers everything from consumer education classes through our Master Food Preservation Program to our Celebrating Local Food series which engages folks in the area through foods that are available seasonally and making them more capable, excited and comfortable using these ingredients in the kitchen. 

In addition, I work with new food entrepreneurs, answering 1-1 technical assistance questions on everything from value-added production, to regulations, labeling, inspections and record keeping. If a grower wants to create a product and I can help them through the process of learning how to do that. 

The Harvest Kitchen is a shared-use commercial space that can be licensed for someone who owns a business. It might be a caterer that wants to bring food offsite for meals or events. Maybe they are somebody that wants to make a product and then distribute it wholesale or retail. Basically, the Kitchen exists to get people excited about food in many different ways. 

What do you like about your position? 

Read more Meet the Local Food Team: Flip Filippi