Extension Report

Baldwin County Extension Office

302A Byrne Street

Bay Minette, AL  36507

Telephone (251) 937-7176 or

928-0860/943-5611 ext. 2222

FAX (251) 937-7285

Ken Kelley

Regional Extension Agent/Animal Science

February 9, 2010

Local or Home Grown Food

Home grown, or locally produced, food seems to be pretty popular catch phrases that are being thrown around these days. Coming from the background that I do (country as a butterbean) I grew up eating vegetables out of the freezer or Mason jar, and eating beef and pork that was produced on the farm. It also goes without saying that grandmother had enough chickens to produce eggs for four or five families in close proximity. My grandmother milked a cow when I was a young child. I remember drinking fresh milk (I am in no way advocating or recommending this) and we had fresh buttermilk and butter. We had corn ground into cornmeal at a mill about 30 minutes from the house. My dad and uncles had beehives, and all of us boys knew how to peel and chew sugar cane.  Looking back, we were way ahead of the curve as far as eating locally…in fact we ate extremely local. Most folks, however, never had the opportunity to do or experience this type of activity of raising, preserving, and eating their own food.

There are plans underway to have a series of educational meetings for folks who want to produce their own food, or in some cases just enjoy having animals on their farm. We are making plans right now to have the first of these meetings. This first program will focus on having backyard chickens. There has been tremendous interest in this over the last couple of years. Recently some of my counterparts in Florida had similar meetings that were both well attended and well received. We also have heard from several area merchants who sell either poultry or poultry products who have expressed the need for this program. This program will focus strictly on backyard poultry, with backyard chickens being the main focus. This is not designed for the large poultry producer with large production poultry houses…this will focus on the average backyard chicken producer who has anywhere from 3 to 30 chickens...folks like you and I. We plan to offer this at little or no charge.

We would also like to do some other similar meetings later this fall, if we have the interest from the community. Plans are under way to offer several programs focused on raising your own freezer beef. There has been a pretty good demand for locally grown beef over the last few years. We have several cattlemen in the area who are trying to meet the demands of local consumers. We have some folks who are growing natural beef (no antibiotics), grass fed, and even a few trying to grow completely organic. While there are several of these folks, they are probably nowhere near the amount needed to meet the demands of consumers. Many people are already buying these products from specialty and health food stores, but would probably prefer to either grow their own or purchase from local producers. Hopefully these meetings will provide insight into the actual production of these types of animals, as well as serving as a gathering of producers and consumers.

There are certainly other educational programs that could be offered in the future to complement these two proposed meetings. Perhaps home grown pork, or various produce, or how to preserve your foods once you have grown them. Realizing, however, that there must be a starting place we will focus on backyard poultry and raising your own beef. The plans as of right now are to offer both of these programs at little to no cost (I don’t know about you but that is right about where I like a price to be). We will also attempt to have the meetings at convenient times…most likely weeknight evenings and we will condense as much as possible in order to save you seat time.

Now, what do you need to do in order to help facilitate this? Simple...let me know this is what you want (and if it isn’t tell me that too).  Most of the time I mail meeting announcements to a mailing list. I have a list for cattle and hay producers (by the way, if you are a cattle, hay or horse producer and do not receive meeting announcements let me know and I will add you to the list). I do not, however, have a mailing list for backyard chicken growers. I take a lot of calls from a lot of folks on backyard chickens (some I can answer, some I send on to someone who knows more about chickens than I do, some have no answer), but seldom if ever do I record a phone number from a phone call. So…let me know if you want these meetings. Send me an address. Even better send me an email address. All of us try to be good stewards of the resources that we are given. One thing that we as extension folk can do is to eliminate as much of the paper mail as we can, and hopefully eliminate a good bit of the expense associated with that. If we can put together an electronic mailing list that makes things much easier. That also means that I can disseminate information to you on a timelier basis. With electronic communication it is instant. With a paper letter, I have to write the letter, have folks print the letters, put them in envelopes, and put on stamps….you get the point. Most folks within extension realize that there will always be folks who don’t have access to, or simply don’t want to use electronic forms of communication. That’s fine. My dad has never turned on a computer…and unless I am completely wrong, has no intention of ever turning on one. That being said, however, he has two sons and daughter-in-laws who do…every day…and to his credit he has learned to use us as resources. So, while we know we will never reach every single person in the area with an interest in agriculture, we can certainly reach a whole lot more of them than we are currently doing.

So, to kind of sum up…backyard poultry producers get ready for a program targeted to you…you haven’t had many. People who are wanting to produce their own beef, pork, whatever…let me know! We are here to serve you. We need to hear from you. I encourage you to send me an email (let’s get this electronic thing rolling...), or give me a call. While it is hard to tell exactly which extension office I will be in on any given day, you can always call me on my cell. You might not get me right then, but if you leave a message I will call you back.

As always we want to hear from you. There is no way to give you what you want or need if we don’t know what that is. My email address is kellewi@auburn.edu and my work cell number is 251/238-0373.

As a final side note, we have talked about food type animals in this article so far, but we would also like to hear from you horse enthusiasts. We had a series of horse meetings that we teamed up with the University of Florida Extension, or IFAS, to put on last fall. Recently, I saw a participant of those programs who told me that she enjoyed them and looked forward to future programming. We are always glad to work with our equine enthusiasts and look forward to hearing from you folks.

While I know this article has been somewhat different from the usual stream of educational material, I think it is important to let folks know that we want to serve. We are here to help. I look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Email address: kellewi@aces.edu

Phone number: 937-7176 or 943-5611, 928-0860, ext. 2222

The Alabama Cooperative Extension System (Alabama A&M and Auburn Universities) in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture is an equal opportunity educator and employer.