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monthly news from ASAP | JUNE 2022 | asapconnections.org
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Passes Are on Sale for ASAP's 2022 Farm Tour
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ASAP’s Farm Tour is back Sept. 17-18, 2022 and passes are on sale now! Experience the sights, tastes, and stories of farm life through guided tours, demonstrations, and hands-on activities. The tour is family-friendly and a great adventure for visitors of all ages and interests. One pass, $35, is good for all passengers in your vehicle to visit any farms on both days, Saturday and Sunday, 12–5 p.m.
This year’s farms and clusters will be announced in in July. Farms featured on the tour vary each year, but are all located within an hour drive of Asheville and are arranged by cluster to help plan your weekend. The Farm Tour showcases the diversity of working farms in Western North Carolina with produce farms, creameries, vineyards, orchards, flowers, fiber farms, livestock, and more!
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Farm Fresh for Health Symposiums in July
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Farm Fresh for Health connects people to environments and activities that support healthy eating and healthy lifestyles. ASAP is presenting a series of symposiums for healthcare professionals in Western North Carolina to take part in farm tours, hands-on activities, and facilitated discussion about how they can use Farm Fresh for Health tools in their own practices to improve health outcomes. Find details for the two July symposiums below, or check out the full symposium schedule.
Thursday, July 14, 3–8 p.m.
ASAP staff and partners will focus on Farm Fresh for Health strategies around youth engagement, creating social healthy food environments around recreational activities as well as as school and community gardens, and workplace wellness. Presenters include:
- Terry and Debbie Perry are both registered nurses and have worked in the healthcare field for more than 40 years. Together they founded Perry's Berry's Vineyard and Winery in 2009. They love teaching families about the health benefits of farming and blueberries through farm tours, classes, and classroom visits.
- West Marion Community Forum (pictured) is using a community-centered health approach, including a community garden, to drive systemic changes and address childhood obesity and the underlying factors that contribute to this health disparity in McDowell County, NC.
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Jennifer Trippe, director of ASAP’s Growing Minds Farm to School program, is a Registered Dietitian with nearly two decades of experience working to improve the health and well-being of the Western North Carolina community. She has worked at MANNA FoodBank, Food Connections, and as a WIC Nutritionist and Diabetes Educator.
Dinner is catered by Singlewyde at Fonta Flora Brewery, offering wood-fired sourdough pizza with local ingredients.
ASAP staff and partners will focus on Farm Fresh for Health strategies for wrap-around clinical health services, local food and nutrition security programs, and cooking education. Presenters include:
- KT Taylor is a nurse at Mission Hospital and the farmer and owner of KT’s Orchard and Apiary, where she grows a variety of apples, peaches, nectarines, raspberries, pears, and local honey.
- Vecinos provides culturally appropriate health and wellness services for the uninsured Latinx community. Vecinos breaks down barriers by bringing services directly to the community through out-patient clinics and mobile medical clinics. Presenters will be executive director Marianne Martinez and farmworker health program manager Valeria Barrera Vizcarra.
- Uncomplicated Kitchen (pictured) teaches community members how to plan meals, shop for ingredients, and cook healthy, simple, and affordable recipes. Presenters will be founder and executive director Jenna Kranz and board chair Nilofer Couture, Registered Dietitian and Clinical Nutrition Manager at Cherokee Indian Hospital in Cherokee, NC.
Dinner is catered by by Luis Martinez of Tequio Foods.
Additional symposiums will be offered later this summer and fall. Find out more and register here.
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Appalachian Grown Producer Survey
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 Every year ASAP's Local Food Research Center sends a survey farmers in our Appalachian Grown network in order to take the pulse of farming in our region and assess the impact of ASAP's programs and services. Read the report from the 2021 survey here.
A primary theme in this year’s survey responses was the lasting influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Farmers cited difficulty with sourcing equipment and supplies due to disrupted supply chains. Production costs increased. Labor was a significant challenge as many farmers had difficulty finding and hiring workers.
Luckily, market opportunities and sales rebounded in 2021. Multiple respondents noted reconnecting with restaurants. Farmers market access was reported as being more stable than the previous year. Consumer interest in local foods continued its upward trend. Nearly half of farmers surveyed reported higher sales in 2021 than in 2020.
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Rekindling Restaurant & Farm Relationships
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 ASAP is offering funding to restaurants for staff to visit one of the farms they source from. This is an opportunity for chefs and other restaurant workers to reconnect with local farms following the industry stress of the past two years. Stipends of $400 can be used toward staff or farmer time, vehicle rental, or in other ways as needed. In addition, participating restaurants get a free listing and display ad in ASAP's 2023 Local Food Guide and promotion by ASAP.
Pictured is the staff of The Admiral, which took a field trip to The Culinary Gardener in Weaverville.
To apply, email Ana Maria at [email protected]. Funds are available throughout 2022–23. This opportunity is limited to Buncombe County restaurants, and farms must part of ASAP's Appalachian Grown network.
This program is supported in part by The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina.
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Scenes from ASAP's 20th Anniversary Celebration
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Thank you for coming out to celebrate 20 years of ASAP and Charlie Jackson's retirement last month at Hickory Nut Gap Farm! It was a great night to look back on the work ASAP has accomplished, with so many partners joining us. Want to support our next 20 years? Keep ASAP's work going strong with a donation today.
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 20 YEARS OF ASAP |
|  As part of ASAP's 20th anniversary celebration, each month we are sharing the origins of some of our programs.
In 2011, Growing Minds began using an upstream approach, training future educators and health professionals to adopt farm to school practices in their work. Following a pilot with education and health sciences students at Western Carolina University, Growing Minds partnered with dietetic intern programs at WCU, Lenoir-Rhyne University, and Appalachian State University. Growing Minds @ University—the only program of its kind in the country—aligns core competencies for registered dietitians with farm to school principles.
Similarly, Growing Minds @ Community College, piloted in 2018 at Blue Ridge Community College, provides resources and training for early care and education programs.
Pictured is ASAP's spring 2022 Dietetic Intern, Cameron Jackson, with farmer Delia Jovel at Tierra Fértil Co-op for a Growing Minds event with WNCSource in early June. |
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 FACES OF LOCAL |
| Aaron Grier, John Fleer, and Brian Canipelli
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|  ASAP likes to share the stories of people who help us fulfill our mission. This month we're talking to farmer Aaron Grier of Gaining Ground Farm along with chefs John Fleer of Rhubarb and Brian Canipelli of Cucina 24 about what has made those chef-farmer relationships so strong over the past decade. (Photo of John Fleer and Aaron Grier by We Give a Share.)
AARON GRIER: Our relationships with John and Brian have been unique from the get go. They have tried to understand and substantively support us. They have a real relationship with vegetable growers. There are a couple other restaurants that are great and get it.
When the pandemic hit, all of our restaurants disappeared, held checks on us. With John and Brian it was, “We’ll sink or swim together.” That was really awesome. When we got flooded [from Tropical Storm Fred], Brian threw a fundraiser and raised money to take heat off us for a little while. John stepped up and covered our CSA customers with gift cards to Rhubarb.
BRIAN CANIPELLI: When the pandemic started I had to let everybody go and try to figure out what to do. Aaron and Anne just started bringing vegetables and wouldn’t let me pay. That meant a whole bunch. Then when floods happened last summer, there was a big blow to them. I wanted to try to make some sort of impact. I wanted to let customers know how important [Gaining Ground] is to my business. We were doing a pretty strong takeout business at the time, so we decided that for a week all takeout sales would go to those guys. A lot of people from community showed up and helped.
JOHN FLEER: I first met Anne and the kids in 2012 when I was still at Canyon Kitchen. I was doing a Blind Pig dinner in Asheville and I asked Mike Moore about connecting me with local produce, because all of my relationships were out in Cashiers. The event was at Yesterday’s Spaces, so I met Anne, baby Cyril and little, tiny Addiebelle in their front yard on the way over to prep for the event. The kids were so cute, I couldn’t resist continuing the relationship. Of course the produce was amazing, too.
Rhubarb opened in October 2013. At that point they were our only farm relationship. So we made hay with that. I bought everything we could possibly buy from them without too much of a plan. I was committed to inserting myself into the local food economy, to being a buyer and server in that triangle with farmer/producer and consumer. As we began to grow, we began to bring in other producers, but honestly, for two years they were probably our only farm relationship. As the restaurant volume has grown, Asheville has grown. We’re sticking to our mission of being an important part of local food economy, a committed big buyer of local produce and artisanal cheese.
We are lucky in Asheville that it’s the producers who are at the core of the food scene. Restaurants may change, but I think there will always be successful restaurants because that core of producers exists. A change I’ve seen is nontraditional farmers being able to break into the business because of the demand.
AARON GRIER: Asheville 15 years ago didn’t have a restaurant scene that could lay purchasing power behind farms. When we first started out, chefs would come to market, but it wasn’t hundreds of dollars. There was an evolution of them having more volume and then the farms being able to ramp up production to supply that. When John Fleer came to town, that changed things. He really upped the game. It was inspiring for us and for a lot of other restaurants. Because of his purchasing power, we had the confidence to expand. John really helped transform our farm.
I’ve seen growth in vegetable farming in the region. Vegetable farming with restaurant support is something that could be here to stay. Tailgate markets can get rained out, but we’re still harvesting food that week. Those restaurant accounts are really standing behind us. Before the pandemic, we were selling John more produce dollar-wise in a year at wholesale prices than we were selling at our Wednesday tailgate market. That’s a big deal. It’s a rain or shine commitment.
JOHN FLEER: If I had to imagine what was different in our relationship with Gaining Ground, other than the personal, is that our approach has been to buy as much as we can manage. They’re the experts in their dirt, what they can grown, what they can harvest. I put my trust in the grower to grow what they grow best, and then the relationship works better for them. We can manage with our volume and craft to use everything they can send us.
This is something we talk about a lot with our staff. The great thing about this community is that the relationships [with farmers] are so direct. Almost all of our farmers deliver to us. You can’t really help but absorb that, when it’s not coming off an anonymous truck. If a cook checks in the order, they are talking to Anne or Aaron or the kids or one of the farm staff, or they see Evan Chender [The Culinary Gardener], or Jess Whaley [Whaley Farmstead]. None of those people are just delivery drivers.
Rhubarb would be nothing without our relationship with Gaining Ground. I will stand by that until the end of time. For this restaurant and for me, it has been critical to what we do and how and why. Despite all the foibles and hiccups and floods, this is as perfect as it can get.
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 RECIPE OF THE MONTH |
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Fettuccine with Walnuts, Zucchini Ribbons, and Pecorino
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|  Serves 6
Ingredients:
- 2 1/2 pounds small zucchini, untrimmed
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 garlic cloves, pressed
- 2 anchovy fillets, minced (about 1 tablespoon)
- 1 pinch dried crushed red pepper
- 1 pound fettuccine
- 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil plus additional for serving
- 3/4 cup walnuts, toasted, coarsely chopped
- 1 cup freshly grated Pecorino cheese (or other hard, salty cheese), divided
- 1/2 cup (packed) thinly sliced fresh basil
- 1/4 cup (packed) chopped fresh mint
Directions:
- Using vegetable peeler, shave zucchini lengthwise into long ribbons. Discard scraps. Place ribbons (about 10 cups total) in large colander set over large bowl. Sprinkle with one teaspoon salt. Let stand 30 minutes. Rinse zucchini under cold running water; drain well. Spread on two large kitchen towels; roll up in towels to absorb excess water. Set aside.
- Combine garlic, anchovy fillets, and crushed red pepper in very large serving bowl. Using pestle or wooden spoon, crush mixture until paste forms.
- Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup cooking liquid. Transfer pasta to bowl with garlic mixture. Add 1/3 cup oil and 1/4 cup reserved cooking liquid; toss. Add zucchini, walnuts, 1/2 cup cheese, basil, and mint; toss. Season with salt and pepper, adding more pasta cooking liquid if mixture is dry. Drizzle with additional oil. Serve with remaining cheese.
Adapted from Bon Appetit.
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 MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS |
| “We want to make the healthy choice the easy choice for our patients. Changing culture and environment so that people are nudged to make better food choices, move more, and take part in health-promoting activities, is so important. The Farm Fresh for Health Symposiums give healthcare professionals tools and action steps they need to help their patients make these changes.”
—Dr. Brian Asbill, Chief Health Officer of LoveLife! and former president of ASAP’s board of directors quoted about ASAP's Farm Fresh for Health Symposiums in Morning Ag Clips and Transylvania Times
"For the past three years, we’ve been developing our Farm Fresh for Health initiative with the support of a Food and Farming grant.... It includes a Farm Fresh Prescription program that [The Community Foundation] allowed us to adapt when the pandemic hit. We are now working to roll this out across the region with federal support that we were able to leverage through what we had learned. This is a great example of how the Foundation can seed an idea and let us try it out."
—Molly Nicholie, ASAP executive director, interviewed by The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina (read it or watch the video)
“[ASAP's Farm Fresh Produce Prescription] program gives healthcare providers a concrete action step that fits within the established healthcare visit. We know social environments significantly impact food choices and are an important intervention point to increase healthy eating with our patients. Farmers markets are environments that naturally encourage eating fresh and seasonal fruits and vegetables, and we are excited to be part of this project.”
—Francisco Castelblanco, DNP, RN, director of MAHEC and chair of the Department of Continuing Professional Development, quoted in Morning Ag Clips
"ASAP’s Growing Minds program has developed farm-to-school activities that incorporate state and national curriculum for every grade from preschool through high school."
—Article by EdNC about getting locally grown food into North Carolina schools |
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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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