In January of 2010, we began identifying farmers and producers for expanded marketplaces. This included farms to join local CSA’s, take on a booth at the state market in Asheville and to join the Polk Fresh Trade Post and Farm Store. Our first public presentation of the PolkFresh Tradepost project was at the statewide NC Soil and Water Conservation Districts annual meeting. Also in this month we designed the farm store layout on blueprints with the builder and with the help of an Ag Options grant, began the tear out and rebuild. We also began work on the PolkFresh logo design and began the layout and development ideas for the new website.  We contacted six people from the farmers’ market craft and value-added food production communities and formed a farm-store advisory committee to develop the idea.

A farmer profile script and template was created to begin the yearlong collection of farm pictures, profiles, contact information and personal stories on local farmers’ and food producers. We created a database that targets local grocers, restaurants, caterers and B&Bs who are interested in buying local. We made a calendar of the special events we wanted to accomplish in the year and put the PolkFresh TradePost project into three local food guides for print and electronic publication.

February:

We reached out to Jimmie Buel of the Polk County ag co-op extension service who is the contact for the Buy 10 percent Local Campaign to share our database and create packets that go around to the database contacts for buying local. We began the development of the tenants of the farm store with our store advisory committee.  Our website copywriting began and we found local people willing to help cater volunteer days with local food for the help we were receiving among large groups of volunteers to fill in the gaps in creating the farmstore. We reserved a spot with our Chamber of Commerce to host an after-hours event in April highlighting and collaborating with different government and civic groups on the PolkFresh Tradepost project. We advertised a Farmers’ Market Potluck Luncheon that brought together more than 70 people who vend in our year-round farmers’ markets and passed out literature about participating in the PolkFresh Farm Store and received many applications back.  This sent several articles and ads out into the local newspaper and the project began receiving the attention of the local press.  Much of the momentum we set in place in January with farmers’ profiles, branding with the PolkFresh logo and website, store vendor sign-ups, the Buy 10% Local campaign, and ramps up during this month.

March:

Our stores’ build-out is in full-swing and we collaborated with a large volunteer group of alternative spring breakers from University of Illinois who spent a week in our community and pushed projects around the Ag Center forward to the tune of more than 30 volunteers who gave close to a total of 1,000 hours of service that week. Our farm store development is in full swing with research being conducted on how to structure commissions, vendor volunteer time in the store, product types and placements, equipment and fixture needs, and the accounting system for the commerce conducted.

We furthered along promotional materials like our new brochure, sent press releases to the local paper and continued placing vendors in the store and farm connections to local restaurants. We launched our brand new website with our new logo and began design on the PolkFresh Farm store signage and product labels. We had a second large volunteer day to connect and collaborate different private individuals, businesses, civic groups and government agencies, which numbered between 30 and 40. The day was catered by a local foods buffet. We’ve also attended a marketing opportunities for farmers’ conference and spent the day networking with the WNC market in terms of restaurants, distribution centers and grocers.