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Looking for ways to earn extra money with your forestland? A daylong workshop for landowners and forestry professionals will be held on March 9th at the Robinson Center in Breathitt County, KY. Speakers from the University of Kentucky, Cooperative Extension and Rural Action will discuss woodland management, growing non-timber forest products like mushrooms and ginseng and even beekeeping. The event is free and lunch is provided. For more information, including an agenda and how to RSVP, click below.

Engaged and active residents of Floyd County, KY are meeting at the end of March for a strategic planning and visioning session around the potential for sustainable agriculture to bolster their community. The invitation describes the meeting as:

"a 2-day strategic planning process with community citizens, leaders and stakeholders to determine how we can build the capacity of Floyd County Kentucky through sustainable agriculture.  We are hoping to build a social, economic and environmental system that knits people together and cultivates a new relationship economy that favors local over distant in food production, buying and other transactions." 

This kind of active planning and discussion is of critical importance in Appalachia. Our communities have tremendous, unique assets that can be built upon, and grassroots, bottom-up planning creates buy-in, engagement and excitement. We are eager to hear what happens next!

If you'd like to attend the meeting, more information is below.

Our friends at Making Connections have a great radio interview about Appalachian Sustainable Development's "Goods from the Woods" program:

Central Appalachia has no shortage of lush forests, beautiful vistas and idyllic streams. We also have our fair share of terrific hiking and biking trails, from the great Appalachian Trail to the Sheltowee Trace to the Virginia Creeper Trail. Now many towns located near these trails are becoming more savvy about drawing in the locals and tourists who enjoy them. "Trail Towns" draw in the hikers, bikers and horseback-riders with easy access, restaurants, hotels, camping and gear shops.

Probably the best example of an Appalachian Trail Town is Damascus, Virginia, located on several long trails, including the Appalachian and Virginia Creeper Trails. Once a struggling former coal town with a rapidly declining population, Damascus is now a vibrant, bustling place that ranked on Budget Travel's list of "Coolest Small Towns in America." It has multiple bike shops, outfitters and restaurants, and hosts festivals and fairs that bring in thousands of people. Not bad for a town of less than 1000 residents!

In most cases, you can make more money selling a jar of tomato sauce than you can selling the tomatoes. But the start-up costs - developing a recipe, finding a place to produce and jar it in large quanitites, obtaining the nutrition information, marketing - can be daunting. The USDA offers Value-Added Producer Grants through the Farm Bill to help producers get their foot in the door. The story below, from Grist, explains how these grants help small farmers and food entrepreneurs. Here in Appalachia, we've got ACENet's commercial kitchen facility in Athens, the Jackson County Regional Food Center in Kentucky, and even a Food Innovation Center at the University of Kentucky.

We can fund that! USDA grants help the local food movement grow

By Twilight Greenaway

In case you think pickling is just another excuse to put Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein in goofy wigs, think again. Along with products like jam, flour, and beef jerky, pickles count as “value-added” foods, and they’re at the core of what it will take for the local food movement to mature beyond an easily parodied trend.

You see, without these higher-value, less perishable products, farmers and ranchers working at a small, sustainable scale and selling their products locally can rarely make a real living. In addition to the home food preservation trend, small businesses are also working to fill the gaps that exist between heavily processed, industrial foods and local produce — and the result is often minimally processed “value-added products.” Such products allow farmers to extend their season, providing a way for locavore consumers to, say, eat peaches in February, and — perhaps more important — providing a product for farmers to sell long after peach season is gone.