2010 Extension Farm & Industry Tour

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Organized by the 
Chatham County Center of North Carolina Cooperative Extension.

Tickets are now on sale for the annual Chatham County Farm and Industry Tour conducted by the Chatham County Center of North Carolina Cooperative Extension in conjunction with the Chatham County Farm Bureau. This year’s tour will be Thursday, October 28, 2010 from 8:45 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The focus of this year’s tour will be local foods, production and marketing, and healthy lifestyles.

Tickets are $15.00 per person and include lunch (cooked primarily from locally grown food), refreshments, and transportation. The tour is limited to seventy-five people on a first-pay, first-serve basis. The tickets are available at the Chatham County Agriculture Building, 45 South Street in Pittsboro or from John Wait in Fearrington Village.  Tour stops this year will include Oakmont Nursery, SAGE Academy, Chestnut Hill Farm and Okfuskee Farm. Lunch will be at the Silk Hope Farm Heritage Center in Silk Hope.

The lunch menu includes spaghetti with meat sauce made using grass-fed beef from Chestnut Hill Farm, salad with ingredients from Okfuskee Farm, bread, tea and Dutch Apple Crisp for dessert made with North Carolina Apples.

Pick-up locations include Siler Crossing Shopping Center in Siler City, the Chatham County Agriculture Building in Pittsboro and the Gathering Place in Fearrington Village. Departure time is 8:45 a.m. for the Pittsboro and Fearrington Village pick-up locations and 9:00 a.m. for the Siler City pick-up. All groups will return to their pickup locations by 4:00 p.m.

For more details, call Chatham County Cooperative Extension at 919-542-8202.

Tour Stops:

Oakmont Nursery

Oakmont Nursery broke ground in the summer of 1988. Philip Dark was a landscaper in need of field grown plants. Oakmont now grows a mix of woody trees and shrubs. He acquired a plant patent on the ‘Crown Jewel’ plant that is now being produced by wholesale nurseries from Florida to California. Philip also has several more hybrids that are in the evaluation stage.

Learn more about the ‘Crown Jewel’ gardenia.

SAGE Academy

SAGE Academy (Students Achieving Greater Education) partners with the home and community to provide a safe, supportive, educationally appropriate environment for the life-long learner. Students are selected from grades eight through twelve. Small class sizes and creative teachers offer students many opportunities to learn and to be successful.

Among these opportunities are learning to grow food crops in the garden and transform these foods into meals in a safe and healthy manner. With the help and guidance of community volunteers and teachers, students have built raised beds in front of the school in which they have been learning to grow, nurture, and harvest fruits and vegetables.

Bringing the garden’s bounty inside, they are moving forward with developing culinary skills in the school’s kitchen through the Cook Smart/Eat Smart curriculum. Here they are developing healthy life skills that will last beyond being at SAGE. In addition, the students will be involved in an indoor rowing program that will make a good addition to the development of healthy life style skills.

Chestnut Hill Farm

Chestnut Hill Farm is a 4th generation poultry and livestock farm owned and operated by Lin Andrew and his wife Angie, Kenneth Andrew, and Blake and Rebecca Andrew. Lin has added a line of grass-fed beef to his commercial cow herd, and continues to raise poultry laying hens. They also compost a portion of their poultry litter as a way to both add revenue and have an alternative use for excess litter.

Okfuskee Farm

Farmer Bobby Tucker and crew are in their third year of production at Okfuskee Farm, a 20 acre farm built on the permaculture model. Bobby raises vegetables, herbs, cut flowers, small fruits, and small grains. They also do pastured pigs and laying hens and keep bees. They have a solar-powered well and a 2,000 square foot greenhouse and use season extension techniques in the field to produce vegetables throughout the cool season. Bobby sells to local restaurants and at the South Estes and Carolina Brewery farmers’ markets.

North Carolina State University and North Carolina A&T State University commit themselves to positive action to secure equal opportunity regardless of race, color, religion, creed, national origin, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, or veteran’s status. North Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T State University, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and local governments cooperating.

Persons with disabilities and persons with limited English proficiency may request accommodations to participate by contacting Sam Groce, County Extension Director at 919-542-8202 or in person at the County Extension Office at least 5 days prior to the event.