Polk Small Farms: SAVE THE DATE: Monday, October 24, 2016 for SWFSFN Meeting at Olga Farm and Farmers Market in Lee County

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

SAVE THE DATE: Monday, October 24, 2016 for SWFSFN Meeting at Olga Farm and Farmers Market in Lee County

Hello members & supporters of the SW FL Small Farmer Network (SWFSFN)! We are very pleased to send you this announcement and invitation to the next meeting of SWFSFN on Monday, October 24, 2016. We are providing you this 2nd event of the 2016-17 growing season following our very successful August meeting to the UF/IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC) and the introduction by Agehara Shinsuke, Ph.D. (http://gcrec.ifas.ufl.edu/faculty/dr-shinsuke-agehara/) of his research program on the development of vegetable and fruit production practices to improve productivity, product quality, and resource conservation, as well as niche crops development like hops and blackberry.

We are very fortunate this time to being hosted by Cesar Peralta of the Olga Farm and Farmers Market in Fort Myers. This small farm is a diversified operation in the field production of vegetable, such as zucchini, squash, Ga sweet onions, peppers, cabbage, green beans, tomatoes, red onion, long hot peppers & more. In addition, it has its own farmers market on the SE corner of the property under the big oak trees which offers FL grown foods from other local small farms, as well as the Olga Farm and Farmers Market. For more information, check out the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/OlgaFarmersMarket/

Here are the details of this SWFSFN event:

Date: Monday, October 24, 2016

Time: 9:30 am – 3:00 pm

Location: 2369 South Olga Dr., Fort Myers, FL 33905

Cost: free

Note: bring eating utensils, and home-made/home-grown food to share at the pot luck lunch

RSVP: send RSVP to Roy Beckford at FBeckford@leegov.com

We are sure that you will not want to miss this opportunity to learn about the enterprise practices at the Olga Farm and Farmers Market that could benefit your small farming operations, as well as for social and business networking with your fellow small farmers in SW FL. Come meet your fellow food producers and purveyors who are making our local food systems a reality! Remember to bring seeds to share for our Seed Swap activity and help promote such collective actions of SWFSFN members. Finally, we are planning to have another spectacular pot lunch so bring your locally-grown foods prepared with you special recipes of your seasonal crops!

AGENDA:

9:30 – 10:00 Registration

10:00 – 12:00 Welcome and tour of the Olga Farm and Farmers Market

12:00 – 1:00 Pot Luck Lunch; Seed Swap

1:00 – 2:00 Farmers Networking Meeting (introductions; discussion of challenges & opportunities in production & marketing, as well as Ag regulatory issues in SW FL)

2:00 – 3:00 UF/IFAS Extension Session (county Extension Ag education announcements; and UF/IFAS/FAMU Small Farms and Alternative Enterprises (SFAE) Program conference reports & announcements)

Please, feel free to pass along this announcement to your fellow small farmers and local foods entrepreneurs & stakeholders who would be interested in the activities of SWFSFN and meeting our regional farmers. If they are not familiar with SWFSFN, please, refer them to both our webpage (see http://sarasota.ifas.ufl.edu/AG/swfsfn.shtml) and Yahoo Group (see http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SW_FL_Small_Farms/). The SWFSFN is a farmer-driven initiative of the of the UF/IFAS Small Farms and Alternative Enterprises Program (see http://smallfarms.ifas.ufl.edu/) which provides the Cultivator newsletter for all small farmers in FL (see http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs104/1119960844909/archive/1120764668547.html)