Local first and hey, our 100th posting!

Check it out: it's our 100th blog posting! Cue the parade! What fun! Truly, writing this blog is one of the best parts of my job. It's been really interesting to watch its evolution. It's like a journal, but with a little more attitude, at least I hope so. Thanks to all of our kind readers who take time out of their busy surfing to pay us a visit.


Now, onto today's events. Spent the morning chatting with the folks at Lowcountry Local First who hosted a great meeting with restauranteurs, chefs, local growers and some folks from the SC Department of Agriculture who helped put together the Certified SC Grown program. Some very thoughtful ideas came out of today's meeting. In the first place, it's so rewarding to hear the perspective of the growers. It brings your focus down to the micro level: what's happening with the weather, what's happening with the land and what's in season. What we realized is a lot of what we need to connect chefs with local growers is actually already in place. It's just reminding people of who people are, what's out there and slowly but surely, changing people's habits. Why aren't more chefs buying from the Farmer's Market in Marion Square? Why can't chefs and growers have more of a dialogue? Rather than go after the big guns, the giant, open air, Pike's Market model, perhaps it's a change that truly needs to happen within first. One step at a time. One chef to one grower. And from them, momentum. Friendships. Mindfulness. Fresh, local produce and meats. And ultimately, the community we all want to be part of. (By the way, the peaches pictured above won't be in season locally until May. Now you know.)