Record Keeping Methods for Farms Keeping records is hard! The key is finding the right mix of methods, tools, and automations that work for you. Don't have time to research all that? Who does? A bookkeeper. This seminar, led by farm bookkeeper and tax expert Laurel Clabaugh, will cover different ways to effectively keep records [...]
From Farm to Experience: Building Agritourism Success Discover how agritourism can transform your farm into a thriving, diversified business. Shipley Farms, a 153-year-old family farm in the Western North Carolina mountains, has evolved from a legacy of Hereford cattle, sheep, and tobacco into a modern, value-added operation centered on their Signature Beef brand. Since 2014, [...]
Mushrooms can be a powerful way to diversify farm revenue—but success depends on choosing a model that aligns with your farm’s scale, infrastructure, and market realities. This hands-on workshop focuses on the business and operational considerations of adding mushrooms to an existing farm. We’ll explore scalable production models, space and infrastructure requirements, startup and operating [...]
Navigating the USDA GAP Audit: Wake County June 16, 2015 - 9 am to 4 pm NC Growing Together is partnering with Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, North Carolina State University, and North Carolina Cooperative Extension to deliver workshops across the state with the aim of providing farmers with the tools to reduce food safety risks [...]
Photo by Debbie Roos. June 2015 -- NC Growing Together has released a baseline survey on North Carolina's growing farmstead creamery industry. A "farmstead" creamery, by definition, is one that manufactures on-farm, value-added dairy products made exclusively with milk from that farm. The survey summarizes data on 13 goat creameries and 10 cow [...]
March 2015 - Mike Burris, who served as the Director of Produce for 27 years at Merchant"s Distributors, Inc., the Hickory-based grocery distributor that online casino is a sister company to NCGT partner Lowes Foods, has a new role, focused specifically on increasing the amount of locally-grown North Carolina produce distributed by MDI. "I"ll be [...]
March 2015 - On March 2 at the Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh, approximately 20 North Carolina growers and buyers sat across tables from each other, in a kind of business development speed-dating. They had eight minutes to decide if they were potentially a good fit for each others' business. Attendees included produce farmers from all [...]
February 2015 - Food distributor Cornucopia Cheese & Specialty Foods Company was founded in 1980 in the back of a community grocery store in rural Alamance County. It is now one of the leading cheese and specialty food suppliers in the Southeast, providing over 1,000 products to customers in North Carolina, Virginia and surrounding states. Working [...]
February 2015 - One of the biggest challenges facing local small and mid-sized producers and large-scale "mainstream" buyers (grocery chains and wholesale distributors) is how to move smaller volumes of source-identified product from farm to point-of-sale at a price that keeps everybody along the supply chain in business. NC Growing Together is working to develop and [...]
January 2015 - NC Growing Together is working to connect the state's small and medium-scale dairy producers with larger markets. North Carolina is a milk-deficit state, meaning we produce only about half of the milk we consume. Strong demand for local products - including produce, meat, seafood, and dairy - creates a potential market [...]
