2012 Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market - Your Chance to Sustain

Now is the time for all fans of Sustainable Glasgow, and/or Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market, to get involved. On April 28 the center of our community will once again come alive with truly local commerce and camaraderie. The act of reinvigorating our local economy and reinforcing our ability to feed ourselves is not a spectator sport, it requires your active participation. 

Many friends and colleagues have asked how they might help Sustainable Glasgow achieve its goals. Here is what we need. We need for you to show up on April 28 for the first day of Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market 2012. We need for you to talk some of your friends into showing up. You need to spread the word about the importance of getting healthier through eating locally. We need for you to help us walk our talk by voting with your fork and with your wallet. You can become a player in the movement that is bringing life back to our public square. You can be a soldier in our struggle to help those who want to create their own jobs and provide for our food security by farming the land that surrounds our home.

The Sustainable Glasgow team now begins its fourth year of experience at putting the market together. We have learned how to do this well, but putting the market together, giving local vendors a way to meet with local eaters, and giving local musicians a place to perform on crystal clear Saturday mornings, is not enough to allow us to declare victory. We only win when you and your friends become a part of the market by showing up and participating. 

This year you will be greatly rewarded by becoming a part of the market. New vendors will be appearing this year, local artists will be displaying painting, sculpture, and other objects. Produce so fresh that it still has dew on it will be available for consumption less than ten miles from where it was grown. Local restaurants around the square will be open to serve you hot coffee and breakfast as part of your market day experience. There will be no better way for you to enjoy your life in Glasgow than by becoming a part of our Saturday mornings on the square. 

Please help us keep this thing growing by bringing your friends. Introducing them to local food may well be the most thoughtful thing you can do for a friend!

Bounty of the Barrens Market 2012

It is just about that time again! The planning has been going on for months. Permissions have been sought and received. Vendors are gearing up for a bigger and better year. It looks like local food and crafts are going to be more available and even more important to our local economy in 2012 than ever before.

This Saturday will be the last "warm up" for the 2012 Bounty of the Barrens Market. Come to the Barren County Agricultural Extension Service office on West Main, just beyond the Dana Plant, on Saturday April 14 from 8:00 until noon, and you will get a chance to purchase early spring produce and talk with the BOTBFM vendors and the Sustainable Glasgow team about this year's version of the full market.

The BOTBFM will begin its 2012 run on the Glasgow Square on April 28, and will be there each Saturday thereafter through October. Josh Johnson will be managing the market and the music for us this year and we are all very excited about the reappearance of our established vendors and the appearance of some exciting new vendors to the BOTBFM family.

Hope to see you Saturday the 14th and each Saturday during the summer market run, commencing April 28 2012!

The Last Waltz - Glasgow Style

Everyone knows that Sustainable Glasgow is all about promoting the idea of living locally. While we have spent a lot of our time trying to get people to live local be eating local food, we also have other ideas and initiatives to promote local living. We are happy to provide you the details about the very latest one of those projects, The Last Waltz - Glasgow Style, our planned New Year's Eve celebration of local business and local musical talent.

On New Year's Eve, December 31, at George J's on the Glasgow Square, we want you to join us and your friends to celebrate the end of a fantastic year and the beginning of 2012. Sustainable Glasgow in cooperation with George J's and other local sponsors, is presenting this tribute to The Last Waltz with several local musicians playing and performing their versions of the music and the feeling of the movie, better described at this link. It should be a phenomenal evening and an opportunity to ring in the new year right here in Glasgow and keep your fun and your money local!

Tickets are $25 and seating is obviously limited. The plan it to start the evening with finger foods and snacks and listen to the music organized by Josh Johnson until midnight. Then the staff at George J's will serve you the first breakfast of 2012. It is our sincere hope that you will attend with your closest friends and start a new tradition centered around our life here in Glasgow. If you wonder just what sort of music this will be, check out this link. Contact us at localfirst@glasgow-ky.com for more information or to purchase tickets. We hope to see you there!

The Food Bill -- We Need To Worry

We Owe Thanks to Many

Yesterday we had our last outdoor version of Bounty of the Barrens Farmers’ Market for 2011, and even though we will continue to have the market on the second Saturdays of each month though the winter (at the Barren County Cooperative Extension Service office), it is time to pause and reflect on our third year of operating the market.

We have so many folks to thank. First of all, we continue to owe Debbie Livingston and the team at BB&T for allowing us to give birth to the market at their property and to continue to give us a place when other events prevent us from using the Glasgow Square. Of course, next we need to thank Judge Executive Davie Greer and the Barren County Fiscal Court for allowing us to move the market to the Barren County Courthouse lawn this year. That move was also facilitated by the approval of Mayor Rhonda Trautman and the Glasgow Police Department, and we are thankful for all of the confidence these folks have in us. I think all of us, including the local elected officials, are thrilled with the way the market has brought life back to the Square this year on Saturday mornings.

We are so lucky to have gotten so much support from the locals who made the market a required part of their Saturday mornings and for the new folks who discovered Glasgow and the Square and the unique qualities of our community through their attraction to the local food and the festive atmosphere created by Bounty of the Barrens Farmers’ Market on the Glasgow Square.

Of course, the festive atmosphere and the local food are things we owe to the farmers and craft people and local musical artists that gave of their time and talent for the twenty weeks of the outdoor market season. Their decision to employ themselves and their land in the work of feeding their neighbors is at the very core of the Sustainable Glasgow movement. Without them, we accomplish nothing.

We are still working to attract more local farmers and land holders into the local food economy that is represented by the market. We know that a sustainable local food economy begins and ends with local people willing to till the soil and work with the weather to firmly establish our region as one capable of producing food which can also be consumed by local folks. We have enough folks working the commodity crop business – we still need a lot more of them growing food that we can put on our tables right here in Glasgow such that our food system will serve us no matter what else happens in the business world outside of our region. The pursuit of this mission will continue to be at the very center of our efforts.

As this year’s outdoor market ends, the Sustainable Glasgow team begins its plans for next year, and beyond. We will be looking for ways to improve the market on the Square next year and we are always looking for more food vendors to set up shop there. Eventually, we hope our market evolves into a year-round indoor facility with a commercial kitchen and other features which will continue to move us toward a totally sustainable food economy. At the same time, we continue to lobby for improved pedestrian and cycling facilities in Glasgow as an alternative way to improve our transportation and health options in our town.

The Sustainable Glasgow movement is alive and growing and we know that is because of all of the folks who have made it a part of their life. We are thankful for all of the support we have gotten in our work and look forward to the many ways we can make our little corner of the world a better place for us all to live. Keep your eyes on our website and our Facebook page for exciting new developments, coming soon!

Big Day at BOTBM this Saturday!

Every Saturday morning at Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market is a special celebration of life in our community, but this one will be extra big! It is Highland Games weekend in Glasgow so there will be a lot of visitors in town for that. We expect a lot of them to spend some time in the welcoming shade of the Barren County Courthouse Lawn. At the same time, the Courthouse lawn is also right on the route of historic US 68 which is the site of the famous 400 Mile Sale. So, we expect a lot of folks to pull into the market and explore the items for sale under our festive white canopies!

Everyone who drops by will enjoy spending some time with the local folks of Barren County, the local food produced by our wonderful vendors from Barren and surrounding counties, and they will get to immerse themselves in the pure joy of local music, provided this week by Bob and Joanna Harvey. We look forward to seeing you among the group enjoying the shaded lawn and the wonderful food prepared by the restaurants around the Square between 8:00 and noon tomorrow!

What You Can Do to Help

This Saturday, May 21, at 9:00 a.m., the ribbon will be cut to officially open Bounty of the Barrens Farmers’ Market for 2011. The market is now on the lawn of the Barren County Court House on Saturday mornings.

Three years into Sustainable Glasgow’s efforts to make Glasgow better by reinforcing the local economy, we are proud of what we have accomplished with Bounty of the Barrens Farmers’ Market, but we have only begun the work of building the durability of our economy, starting with our food system.

In a world where our drive to build a sustainable local food economy, starting with locally grown food at our outdoor market, is challenged at every turn by the marketing might, convenience, and momentum of the big box supermarket system of feeding ourselves, the volunteers at Sustainable Glasgow are largely outgunned. Still, we continue to fight against the odds. We love our community and we are convinced that the future of local food production is indistinguishable from the future of the land in Barren County, which, in turn, is not distinguishable from the future of our community as a viable place to live out our years in peace and happiness (Thanks Wendell Berry for pointing this out to us!).

Obviously this task is too daunting for a handful of Sustainable Glasgow volunteers to pull off alone. This is a job for us all, that is all of us who have decided to put down roots in this community and make it the place we dream of. We need everyone’s work and the intelligence of the collective. You do not have to win an election to participate in this transformation, you only need to find what part you have the skills, or resources, to play.

Here is what must be done.

Grow. Barren County is rich in fertile farm land. Right now our high schools are graduating hundreds of bright young folks who are looking for their mission in life. These two ingredients should be combined and nurtured by sunlight and support from “we the people who like to eat.” The opportunity is obvious. Many studies are now predicting that the long term value of many college degrees is not worth the cost. We need more local folks growing food for local folks on local farms.

Study. We are sensitive to what we gaze upon with our eyes and what we listen to with our ears. Why then are we so flippant about what we swallow? Don’t take our word for it. Read the label of something in a box in your freezer. Does it sound like the ingredients to a chemistry experiment? If you want to purchase less medicine, eat more local food and less things with more than four ingredients. That leads one to real, local, food instead of fake food-like substances. A good variety of real food is available at Bounty of the Barrens Farmers' Market.

Innovate. Rebuilding our food economy from the ground up does not just mean planting more vegetables in Barren County soil. A few visits to Bounty of the Barrens Farmers’ Market will reveal scores of other opportunities for someone looking to improve their lot, as well as the community. Watch the mad rush to purchase the very limited supply of cold pasteurized milk from JD’s County Milk and you will have to wonder why no Barren County dairy farmer has yet replicated that idea and product. Dare to come between local market patrons and the supply of peaches from the Jackson’s Orchard truck and it is obvious that more locally grown fruit will find a market here. A commercial kitchen operation would allow local producers to cook, can, and otherwise process their bounty when there is much and sell it the rest of the year. Opportunities abound for those who are looking for them.

Participate. Just show up at the market and become a part of it. Not sure if you even like vegetables enough to shop at the market? No problem, come and listen to the pure sounds of local musical artists who love the community so much that they just want to share their talents with us. Sit in the grass and give them an audience. It costs you nothing yet means everything to the artists. Mill about and chat with your neighbors and drink in the free milk of human kindness. Be late for soccer practice. Miss a few cartoons. Gain a new relationship with this place we call home.

Stick. This is the very easiest way to become a part of this movement. Just resist the urge to travel to Bowling Green, Louisville, Nashville, or farther, to acquire your food or other needs. Gasoline is $4 per gallon. Big box retail stores, even if they are called Kroger or Whole Foods, might suit your personal desire for nutrition, but nurture our home place they do not. Rejoice in the uniqueness of the local vendors at our market and while you are there soak in the pure joy of dining in a locally owned restaurant around the Square like Fine Arts Bistro or George J’s. For some added spice to your Saturday morning adventure, walk or bicycle to the market and leave the SUV at home! Free yourself from the wanderlust and siren song of the distant corporation and celebrate the joy of localism.

Together we can continue our progress toward a sustainable economy by uniting local land, local sunlight, local intelligence, and local work. Will you pick one or more of these tasks and join us?