monthly news from ASAP    |   JUNE 2023    |    asapconnections.org

Vote for ASAP + Support Double SNAP for Fruits & Vegetables
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ASAP is a finalist for a $10,000 Asheville Chamber of Commerce 125th Anniversary grant. Your vote can help us win funding for our Double SNAP for Fruits and Vegetables : [link removed] program at nine farmers markets in Buncombe County! 
Here’s how it works: Voting is open through July 31. : [link removed] You can vote once per day for as many organizations as you'd like. The chamber will announce 12 winners at their 125th anniversary event in September. 
If ASAP wins, the grant will help match SNAP dollars, increasing the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables our neighbors can purchase. This grant will also support training and assistance for farmers market managers, farmers market engagement activities, and promotions for farmers markets. All these activities help build and sustain the farmers markets we love and visit weekly.



Join Us at Good Fields This Saturday, June 24
: [link removed]'t miss Good Fields, An Appalachian Food and Farms Festival : [link removed] at Shipley Farms in Vilas, NC, on June 24, 4-7 p.m.! Advance tickets : [link removed] are for sale online with day-of tickets available at the the event on Saturday. The event benefits several agricultural nonprofit partners, including ASAP!
 

Featuring a dozen chefs creating dishes that honor our region's culinary heritage and farming history, the festival will also focus on the 150th anniversary of Shipley Farms : [link removed]. You can read more about Shipley Farms in our Faces of Local interview with Gray Shipley below.
 

Join us and sample locally sourced foods and beverages, meet chefs and farmers, listen to live music, and admire the historic Shipley Farm's beauty.



Give Back Night at Buxton Hall Barbecue Tomorrow, June 20
: [link removed] Tuesday, June 20, is Buxton Hall Barbecue : [link removed]'s Give Back Night benefitting ASAP! Ten percent of dinner sales will be donated back to ASAP. The restaurant opens for dinner service at 5 p.m. Make plans to meet a friend or take the family out for dinner to support local farms and local restaurants!

 

The kitchen at Buxton Hall is led by executive chef Nick Barr, who also owns Big Ivy Little Farm : [link removed] in Weaverville, NC, and supplies local produce for himself and other chefs. The restaurant has a close relationship with Vandele Farms : [link removed] in Lake Lure, NC. Pastured pigs are butchered in-house and set on the smoker for hours until the meat is juicy and sweet. Every part of the animal is utilized.



Fall Internship Opportunity: Local Food Promotions
: [link removed] is seeking a fall Local Food Promotions intern : [link removed] to support the operations of ASAP’s Local Food Campaign. Projects may include: facilitating ASAP’s Appalachian Grown certification program : [link removed], conducting farmer and business outreach, supporting ASAP events (like the Farm Tour : [link removed]!), and providing farmers market : [link removed] support as needed.
 

Pictured are ASAP's current summer interns offering a Farm Fresh for Health engagement activity at River Arts District Farmers Market: Diana Laursen, a Dietetic Intern from Western Carolina University doing her community rotation with ASAP's Growing Minds Farm to School program, and Kelsie Rothwell, an SECU Public Fellow from UNC Asheville. 

 

The Local Food Promotions intern will receive a $100 weekly stipend. Work will typically be 10 hours per week from mid-August to early December. Find out more about the internship requirements and application details. : [link removed] (English/Spanish) Candidates
ASAP is seeking bilingual (English/Spanish) candidates for its open Farm Fresh for Health Program Coordinator : [link removed] position. The Farm Fresh for Health Program Coordinator provides operational and promotional support across programs within ASAP’s Farm Fresh for Health : [link removed] initiative with a special focus on the Farm Fresh Produce Prescription. Key responsibilities include leading participant enrollment and intake; onboarding and communicating with healthcare providers; supporting program management across farmers markets; tracking data; creating resources for program participants; producing engagement activities at for farmers markets; and assisting with Asheville City Market two Saturdays a month. Find out more and apply. : [link removed] LOCAL
Gray Shipley
: [link removed] Shipley represents the fifth generation of farmers at Shipley Farms : [link removed] and is one of organizers of Good Fields, An Appalachian Food and Farms Festival : [link removed], which will take place on the farm in Vilas, NC, on June 24. (He’s pictured with his father and grandfather in 2015.) Good Fields will feature a dozen chefs creating dishes that honor the region’s culinary heritage and farming history and will benefit several agricultural nonprofit partners, including ASAP. Tickets are still available here. : [link removed]
 
What are some of your memories of growing up around the farm?
 
I actually grew up in Raleigh, so for me the farm was our vacation spot. We wouldn’t go to the beach or Disney World, we’d go visit our grandparents, and there was nowhere better to be. So, the farm for me and my sisters was summers playing in the barn with my cousins, and family meals over holidays, eating the incredible dishes that my grandmother made from ingredients that came almost entirely right off the farm.
 
What’s your experience now as a partner in managing the farm and business operations?
We relaunched kind of a new take on the family business in 2014 when my granddad, at 101 years old, decided he was bored with retirement and wanted to get back into the cattle business. That was the point that we started the meat side of the business, selling packaged beef to friends and family, and then local restaurants. So, I got to be a business partner with my 101-year-old grandfather, which was incredible, and I get to continue to manage it with my Dad, who grew up here working alongside his dad. So it’s really special to get to work here, applying business practices to agriculture, and figuring out how to innovate to make small local farming work, and to hopefully see this last a few more generations.
 
How did the Good Fields festival come to be?
 
We just reached our 150th anniversary. Our farm got going in 1872, five generations ago. So, we started talking about what we should do to celebrate that milestone, and we obviously wanted to do something of a community celebration centered around food. I had the chance to go to Charleston Wine and Food and work alongside Steve Goff : [link removed] a couple of years ago, and saw the model that these food festivals have built, highlighting amazing chefs and the local food culture and bringing a real benefit to their community. So we saw an opportunity, with the chef relationships we have, to do something like that. We decided, this isn’t wine country, but it’s farm country, so let’s make it a “Food and Farm” festival. We can bring in all of these amazing chefs across North Carolina who like to work with our product, and feature what they do, and also highlight the Appalachian food culture we have here in Western North Carolina that is rooted in local, fresh from the dirt, wonderful foods that people don’t really think about when they think about the North Carolina mountains.
 
One of the aims of the Good Fields festival is to support farmland loss prevention in North Carolina. Can you talk about why that’s such an important issue right now?
 
North Carolina has lost 40,000 farms in the past 40 years, and Watauga County, where we are, is projected as the number 39 county in the country for share of remaining farmland projected to be lost to development by 2040. Farming is a hard business, especially at small scale. John F. Kennedy once said “The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.” So especially here in the mountains, but also across the state, we’re seeing pastures turning into developments—really nice properties, beautiful homes, amazing serene settings—but in the process, the agricultural communities that this area was built on are going away, one by one. So many family farms are just hanging on, watching progress slowly come for their land, and they’re having the conversation about how long they can keep going, maybe hold on for another decade. Maybe the next generation will be the one that has to make that decision to sell granddad’s farm. So Good Fields is about bringing support back to local farms and to the chefs and restaurants that feature our products, because there’s tremendous value not just in the products these farms produce, but the experience they offer—to come see what’s going into the food that you’re eating, how it affects life and health and environment and community. People want to have that connection to the land that we’ve kind of lost in the last few generations. So the event supports several great nonprofits focused on this issue of preserving farms, but it also introduces new customers and new sources of revenue for small farms.
 
What are some of your favorite preparations or dishes using Shipley Farms beef and other local products? (Either that you make or enjoy eating elsewhere!)
 
Saving the hardest question for last, I see! Really, my favorite part is the fat—which it turns out by the way isn’t terrible for you like we’ve been told for 40 years. If I’m doing the cooking, I eat a lot of our steakburgers and our beef sausages. My favorite steak is the dry-aged flat iron. It’s a lesser known cut but is a really tender, flavorful cut with a beautiful spiderweb marbling. When I have time I like experimenting with different cuts and techniques—cooking on coals, or sous vide, or confit where you let the fat do the cooking. A perfectly smoked brisket is hard to get right, but it’s one of the best things you’ll ever eat, with that fat cap just melting through the meat. But I most enjoy when I get to try what our chef partners do with our product. Down your way in Asheville, the guys with the Smasheville burger truck make an incredible Shipley Smashburger. Chef Goff is always doing something interesting with an obscure cut like beef heart or chuck short ribs, so its always fun to go see what he’s doing. If I had to pick a favorite, Chef Danny [Bock, the chef for Shipley Farms Beef and Watauga Butchery] has this unbelievable chimichurri recipe he learned down in Mexico that he’ll marinate a skirt steak or sirloin flap in, and I can’t even describe it.

RECIPE OF THE MONTH

Chef Steven Goff's Braised Beef Cheeks : [link removed] Goff has operated many restaurants in the Asheville area—most recently Tastee Diner : [link removed]—with a firm commitment to local sourcing and reducing food waste. He is one of the featured chefs at the upcoming Good Fields: An Appalachian Food and Farms Festival : [link removed], on June 24 at Shipley Farms : [link removed].
 
"I love showcasing lesser-utilized cuts of meat, and this particular recipe provides me with not only an amazing meal but two amazing byproducts (beef fat and glaze)," says Steven. "When I’m working with animal products it’s extremely important to me that we honor the life that was given by making good use of every inch of the creature. On top of that, a lot of the less-utilized cuts of meat come from the harder working parts of the animal. The parts that work harder are imparted much more flavor! This is also a perfect crockpot recipe."
 
Ingredients
10 pounds beef cheeks (I don't trim the fat so I can use it later)3 onions, diced5 ribs celery, chopped5 carrots, sliced1/2 head garlic, cut in half3 quarts beef stock (homemade is best)Directions
In a large pan, sear all beef cheeks until crispy and golden. (You can sear them harder than you think you should, as this creates the Maillard reaction which equals free flavor!)After golden, remove cheeks to the side and cook down veggies in the beef fat.Deglaze (pour stock into hot pan).Return cheeks to the pan and top up with stock.Place in 300-degree oven and cook for approximately 5 hours. (Sometimes the oven or meat may differ so you may need to go down or up on time, usually up.)If you’re feeling extra chef-y, strain the liquid off and reduce to 1-2 cups and use as a glaze or use on steaks later.If you have time, let the cheeks rest overnight in the liquid, as that will deepen flavors. If not, pull it out and enjoy!I trim the beef fat after cooking because I can use the cooked fat. It’s good to use like salt pork or bacon and start a sauté, or I purée it and fold it into salted butter to spread on toast. (Try it you, won’t regret it.)

MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS
“Participants [in ASAP's Double SNAP for Fruits and Vegetables and Farm Fresh Prescription Program] have talked about how shopping at farmers markets makes them feel more connected to the community. Parents have told us their kids are better eaters if they’re part of the process of picking out vegetables at markets.”
—Sarah Hart, ASAP's Communications Manager, in The Laurel of Asheville : [link removed] 
 

"The passionate ASAP champions convinced farmers to grow fruits and vegetables while at the same time lobbying local restaurants and grocers to purchase their products. From 2002 to 2012, the former burley-dependent counties saw a 98% increase in the number of farms growing vegetables, melons, potatoes, and sweet potatoes."
—Robert Turner in a column for Mother Earth News : [link removed] about changes in agriculture

CONNECT WITH ASAP
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asapconnections.org : [link removed] | growing-minds.org : [link removed] | appalachiangrown.org : [link removed]
  
ASAP's mission is to help local farms thrive, link farmers to markets and supporters, and build healthy communities through connections to local food.
 

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ASAP (Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project) - 306 W. Haywood Street - Asheville - NC - 28801

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