From the Get It! Guide: Joshua Young faced a difficult transition upon his release from a seven-year prison stint. “I said, ‘Joshua, what are you really going to do with your life?,’” Young recalls. At Green Opportunities, Young found the fair chance he needed to rebuild his life.
From the Get It! Guide: Tried of the barriers facing new female farmers, Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture joined together to form connections and overcome the learning curve.
From the Get It! Guide: The Asheville Grown Business Alliance takes 2015 by storm with a focus on diversifying, learning and courageously leveraging our community’s assets to create radical resilience and prosperity for everyone.
From the Get It! Guide: Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project and their Appalachian Grown certification program work to strengthen community connections through local food.
A new report from the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association finds that North Carolina’s clean energy industry has grown 25 percent per year since 2012. The report found that the clean energy workforce is scattered throughout the state, but highlighted Asheville as one “cluster” for these jobs.
The YMCA of WNC Indoor Tailgate Market runs every Saturday until March.
It all began with a picture in a shop window, but as the Asheville Grown Business Alliance has developed from a poster to a loyalty card to a web of interdependent local businesses, the goal has always been, well, growth.
Local worker-owned mobile produce vendor Ujamaa Freedom Market was among 12 nonprofit organizations in the Southeast tapped to receive grants from Whole Foods Market’s Whole Cities Foundation.
The long summer is behind us, but for many growers in Western North Carolina, the spring-summer growing season is only half the story. Commercial growers, donation gardens and garden-based education programs are all finding ways to make local food and food security a hallmark of WNC, year-round.
Grab your camera and pack up your car with your best crew — it’s time to get out in the fields for Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project’s annual farm tour. The self-guided tour will be held Saturday, Sept. 20, and Sunday, Sept. 21, and takes place at 37 Appalachian Grown certified farms across nine counties in Western North Carolina.
In 1790, 90 percent of Americans were farmers. Today that figure boils down to less than 1 percent. The change is particularly noticeable in the South, which up until the 1950s, was a largely agrarian society. Now, some are calling for a rebuilding and supporting of a locally-focused food system — which used to be prevalent in Appalachia.
Western North Carolina is an area rich in agriculture, which means there are many regional tailgate and farmers markets to enjoy. With the help of ASAP, Xpress is providing a roundup of regional markets, including markets accepting food assistance programs.
Western North Carolina features the greatest variety of flora and fauna north of the tropics, which makes Asheville an ideal place for those who forage for food. In fact, foraging can begin as close as your own backyard.
Learning to respect the land — from observing and interacting with nature or valuing renewable resources and producing no waste — is the foundation of permaculture, which is gaining attention throughout the country and in Western North Carolina. And local advocates say that Asheville and WNC are at the heart of cutting-edge, sustainable land use, which can be used in backyards, at schools, in businesses.
From the Get It! Guide: What are we talking about when we talk about sustainability in Asheville? Cleaner air environmental preservation, more city parks, better education, access to good food and quality housing? But what if all these things are not shared equally with all residents of the city?
From the Get It! Guide: Sustainability is a beautiful thing — and so is sustainably crafted fashion. Here’s where you can score some locally source, sustainable fashion.
From the Get It! Guide: Kudzai Mabunda realized a demand for assisted living that allowed the elderly or disabled to remain in a home environment. Utilizing a loan from Mountain BizWorks, she was able to create two new facilities.
The USDA has identified several areas in WNC, and Asheville, as places without access to healthy, affordable food. But three different mobile food markets are aiming to launch this year — reducing the distance between healthy foods and communities in need.
In our new feature, area growers introduce their gardens. This week Melissa Metz, garden manager for Sunny Point Cafe, tells us about the restaurant’s garden.
From the Get It! Guide: The idea of local economy has become a growing global movement to build a saner and more sustainable world. Increasingly, people are waking up to the simple truth that “local” matters — the best way to help out their economy is by keeping it as local as possible.
A celebration of locally grown food and neighborhood relationships, the Oakley Farmers Market and the adjacent Oakley Community Garden are giving a much-needed boost to a predominantly low-wealth community that the U.S. Department of Agriculture considers a food desert. But what brought them all together was as simple as a sign.
