What's Up with Slow Food Gainesville

[Anna Prizzia]

Dear Slow Food Members and Fans,

It has been a while since we have sent you an email, but it is not
because we have been taking a break from our work with good, clean,
fair food. On the contrary, Melissa and I have been hard at work
behind the scenes building a new foundation for this extraordinary
movement in our community. While we are still members of Slow Food
USA, and hope that we can continue to support participation in their
national campaigns through this new effort, it became clear to us that
the work and programs we have built needed a local and independent
life of their own.

With the increasing popularity of local and sustainable food, the
conversations around food security and access becoming more important
than ever, and the call for additional programs, partnerships, and
information growing daily, we needed to develop an organization around
this work that would allow us to focus more attention to it and that
would allow others to plug in in meaningful ways. Thus, Forage was
born. Forage is our new non-profit, and in addition to doing all the
great things you are accustomed to – food and garden workshops and
events, the Grow Gainesville network and seed library, Farm-to-
Restaurant, and Buy Local North Central Florida, etc… – we have built
a farm that can serve as a physical space for people to learn and can
provide a sustainable source of income for this work.

Our mission for Forage is that we will be a valuable center for
educating and inspiring people to value healthy food, land, and
community and that we can create a place where people can transform
their environment and themselves by exploring the natural world and
engaging in the meaningful work of farming and food systems. As we
work toward this mission, we are committed to maintaining and
enhancing the programs that help people build a special relationship
to the food they eat in ways that translate to action. We hope this
new direction will also help people foster respect, critical thinking,
and skills to enhance our food system and help individuals find the
connection between people, their food, and the environment by engaging
directly with our farm. Over time, our idea is that this space will
also allow us to create connections for youth to education and
employment, by developing professional skills related to sustainable
food, farming and small business management.

The farm is located on Alachua Conservation Trust’s Prairie Creek
Preserve, and in many ways it is their vision to provide us this space
that has made all of this possible. As a small farm nestled on
conservation land, Forage seeks to preserve natural habitat in order
to maintain the balance that is essential for our long-term
sustainability and that of the earth we share. We approach the farm
from an ecosystem perspective, working to restore topsoil and meadows
to create a truly sustainable food web that feeds people’s hearts,
minds and bodies as well as wild plants and animals.

As you read all of this, we hope you are as excited as we are about
this new direction and we look forward to your ideas, comments and
participation! Our plan is to simply transition this list to our
Forage list so we can continue to keep you updated on our progress and
can re-invigorate the announcements about food efforts and events in
our community. Please, let us know if you have any updates to your
contact details.

You can read more about Forage by visiting our website – www.foragefarm.org
and by following us on facebook - http://www.facebook.com/foragefarm.
Please also consider passing our information on to your friends and
family so we can grow our community of people committed to a just and
sustainable food system.

Keep Growing,
Anna Prizzia and Melissa DeSa
an...@foragefarm.org