Here's a Locally Produced Valentine!

As reported by the Albert Lea Tribune, which serves southern Minnesota and northern Iowa:

Farmer Bruce Andersland has created a half-mile wide arrow-pierced heart made of manure as a Valentine for his wife of 37 years. He drew the plans on paper, then drove his tractor and manure spreader over the snow covered field to create the special heart shape. His wife Beth commented that it was the most original and biggest Valentine she has received in her life. Beth raises purebred Simmental cattle on their farm so this was a very locally produced Valentine!

Click here to read the original article in the Albert Lea Tribune.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all! And if my husband Bob is reading this post, I admire this man's creativity, but I'd really rather have chocolates!!

NAFDMA 2010 Trade Show

We were looking forward to attending our first NAFDMA Trade Show in Lancaster, PA this upcoming week. Unfortunately, both work and personal constraints made us reevaluate our plans and cancel our participation.

North American Farmers' Direct Marketing Association is a trade association dedicated to the farm direct marketing industry. Members are family farms who sell farm-grown produce directly to consumers at farm stands, farmers’ markets, pick-your-own farms, consumer-supported agriculture, agritourism venues, and other ever-growing innovations in direct producer-to-consumer agricultural marketing methods. For more information about the association, visit www.nafdma.com.

We’d like to offer you the discount we would have given to NAFDMA trade show attendees. If you place an order on-line at www.eatlocalfoodstore.com, we are continuing to offer a 10% discount from now until February 28, 2010. Just enter the code “EXPO09” during checkout.

We hope the show is a great success for our fellow exhibitors and all the attendees.

For 2010: Metrics, Measures and Assessing your Day

Today I was doing research on farm photography and came across Roger Overall’s blog. He is a fantastic photographer based in Cork, Ireland. In a recent blog post, Mr. Overall noted that he applied three measures to determine the success of his business day:

1. Did I take a worthwhile photograph?
2. Did I learn something valuable?
3. Did I strengthen my business relationships or start a new one?

How do you determine the success of your business day? Are there 3 measures you could use to assess your day? Perhaps there are more than 3, or only one. This question gave me pause for thought.

As a small business owner, it’s important to have metrics and measures to evaluate your operations. Annual sales goals, number of returning customers, bottom line profits are all periodic measures of the health of your business. But as a small business owner - whether you are a farmer, retailer or restaurateur – you often perform many tasks yourself and a business day can pass quickly without assessment. Days turn into weeks and weeks into months, then years. Perhaps taking 5 minutes to evaluate the success of each business day will bring to light some small task, some opportunity, which will make your life easier or your business healthier.

In 2010, I vow to follow Roger Overall’s philosophy and apply measures to determine the success of my business day. After much thought, I found I have 4 important measures:

1) Did I make a sale?

2) Did I strengthen my business relationships or start a new one?

3) Did I write something?

4) Did I complete my office tasks? (accounting, tracking marketing efforts, updating our business plan, developing new product)

I'll post again on my success on assessing my daily success! If you have a similar habit you follow, we'd love to hear from you.

Food System Economic Partnership of SE Michigan Plans 2010 Conference

Save the Date! FSEP Annual Conference is June 24, 2010

Do you live in Southeastern Michigan? Are you interested in learning about building a better food system in the region?

The Food System Economic Partnership's fifth annual conference "Building a Better Food System in Southeastern Michigan" is scheduled for June 24, 2010 at the Jackson Career Center located at 6800 Browns Lake Road in Jackson. More details will be posted as they develop.

Workshop session proposals are being accepted and are due February 19, 2010. Please send your submission electronically to reau@msu.edu. Put "FSEP Conference Proposal" in the message subject line. A workshop description of 150 words or less must accompany your proposal. Areas of interest include business innovation, food access and security, and nutrition and health.

Conference presenters will receive a complimentary conference registration which includes lunch. There are no funds available to cover travel expenses.

To submit a session proposal visit www.fsepmichigan.org - there is a submission form detailing all the required information.

Marketing to Kids: Let's Make it an Educational Experience!

Marketing to children has always been a commercial endeavor instead of an educational endeavor. Kid-focused marketing has long had a negative connotation caused by the commercialization of education by big business interested in increased profits. It has been concerned with selling soft drinks and high-caloric low-nutrition foods in schools to establish a life long customer relationship at an early age. Needing funds to support school programs, administrators have opted to improve revenue for the school system in exchange for exploding obesity rates and a decline in the overall health of the student body.

Marketing local food in your school food service program can be a positive educational experience and a fundraising program for your school.

Marketing for your school food service program should be directed toward the students and also to school administrators, teachers, parents and the community. Students should be encouraged to follow a healthier way of eating and their peers, teachers, parents and community members should be encouraged to support this effort. The adults in the community have a special responsibility to ensure that children are being educated about healthy nutritious food choices and not being exploited as a life long consumer.

Ways to market your school food service program:

Develop a marketing plan to support your program. Devise a program name, menu, signage, educational information to promote menu items and local food.

Establish fundraisers involving local food and food related merchandise.

Cultivate on-site school garden - use the White House garden as an educational example!

Host Harvest Lunches and invite the entire community!

Host Local Farmers visiting the schools

Create family surveys to foster family participation in the program. Keep in mind if you use a family survey you must be prepared to publicly address the feedback and your application of that feedback.

Create games involving local food.

Initiate raffles involving local food.

Plan field trips to local farms and orchards and incorporate lessons about the source of your food.

Publish recipe cards and cookbook from the school lunch program, encouraging families to eat nutritious meals at home.

Publish a school calendar with recipes, food purchasing tips, and food safety tips.

There's Room at the Table with Choices 2010

Collaboration is defined in Wikipedia as a process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals – by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. This year, collaboration is at the heart of the Michigan Nutrition Network’s Choices Conference with the theme, “Collaboration: There’s Room at the Table”.

Choices 2010 will be held March 10 & 11 and is expected to draw more than 200 attendees to the Michigan State University campus. Attendees will include school educators, MSU Extension educators, community and nonprofit organization members, healthcare workers, nutritionists and dietitians – with room at the table for all voices and backgrounds.

At CHOICES 2010, you'll:

* Learn how to conduct a successful urban garden project
* Discover food trends that are on the horizon
* Learn how to cook heart-healthy meals for families and vegetarian recipes
* Get on the food preservation band wagon
* Explore strategies for teaching nutrition education through school gardening

At Eat Local Food, we’re proud to be working with the Michigan Nutrition Network on the Choices Conference for the 4^th consecutive year. Eat Local Food’s “Garden Girls” was selected by the organization as the image to represent this year’s conference. Attendees will receive, among other materials, an Eat Local Food conference tote featuring the Garden Girls.

In addition to the Michigan Nutrition Network, sponsors of the conference also include Michigan State University Extension, Michigan Food & Fitness, and the United Dairy Industry of Michigan.

For the press release and more information regarding Choices 2010, click here!

Hope to see you there!

Google Chrome

I know this is way off the topic of local food, but during the development of the new Eat Local Food Store (http://www.eatlocalfoodstore.com), I tested the site with the major browsers in use today: Internet Explore, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome. I found that Chrome is typically twice as fast as the other browsers. I recommend that if you haven't, you should download Chrome and give it a try, you can always go back to the browser you use today if you don't like it. But for me, Chrome makes using the internet a more enjoyable experience.

Bob

P.S. This is an unsolicited endorsement of this product, Eat Local Food or myself have not received any consideration for posting it.

Michigan Good Food Summit in Lansing

Eat Local Food is proud of the work it is doing in support of the Michigan Good Food Summit in Lansing on Thursday, February 25. The summit will assemble food system stakeholders from across the state to shape a plan that propels Michigan towards food production, distribution and marketing to support equity, sustainability and thriving economies. Good Food is about building on our assets in ways that enable Michigan residents to thrive and our communities to prosper.

For more information, go to http://www.michiganfood.org/

The summit is being sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food & Community Program.

2010 Top Restaurant Trends include Locally Sourced Food & Drink!

I received this information via e-mail today and thought it was interesting enough to share. It's a Chef Survey from the National Restaurant Association, and shows the top 20 trends of 2010. The latest survey, conducted in 2009, was based on the input of more than 1,800 Chefs.Respondents ranked 214 items by how trendy they would be in 2010. What's interesting is that over 50% of the trends listed relate to locally sourced food & drink, sustainable sourcing and nutritionally healthy menu choices. It looks like local food producers will continue to see an upswing in consumer interest in their products. We hope this translates into higher business profits for you in 2010!

Here's the link to the entire list: http://www.restaurant.org/pdfs/research/whats_hot_2010.pdf

Top 20 trends:

1 Locally grown produce

2 Locally sourced meats and seafood

3 Sustainability

4 Bite-size/mini desserts

5 Locally-produced wine and beer

6 Nutritionally balanced children*s dishes

7 Half-portions/smaller portion for a smaller price

8 Farm/estate-branded ingredients

9 Gluten-free/food allergy conscious

10 Sustainable seafood

11 Superfruits (e.g. acai, goji berry, mangosteen, purslane)

12 Organic produce

13 Culinary cocktails (e.g. savory, fresh ingredients)

14 Micro-distilled/artisan liquor

15 Nutrition/health

16 Simplicity/back to basics

17 Regional ethnic cuisine

18 Non-traditional fish (e.g. branzino, Arctic char, barramundi)

19 Newly fabricated cuts of meat (e.g. Denver steak, pork flat iron, Petite Tender)

20 Fruit/vegetable children's side items

Top 5 Kids Trends:

1 Nutritionally balanced children's dishes

2 Fruit/vegetable children's side items

3 Kid cuisine/gourmet children's dishes

4 Children's entrée salads

5 Ethnic-inspired children's dishes

Happy Holidays from Eat Local Food!

We would like to extend our appreciation to everyone who stopped by our booth at the Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable & Farm Market Expo. Bob and I really enjoyed the week - it's always enjoyable to visit with friends, meet new people and share ideas about how to market local food.

To help with your marketing plans for 2010, we are offering a special discount for 10% off any order from now until February 28, 2010. Please see the coupon below for details. Our banners, tote bags, reusable price cards and posters are all proven marketing tools to show off your locally grown fresh produce!

Place any order through our Eat Local Food on-line store and receive 10% off your total bill (excluding shipping costs). Just enter EXPO09 (all caps) in the discount coupon box during the checkout process. Shop on-line at ww.eatlocalfoodstore.com.

You can also enter our on-line store through our web site at www.eatlocalfood.com. In the upper right hand corner, just click on "Shop Online" to get started.

This offer cannot be combined with any other discount offer - in other words, only one discount coupon can be applied to an order. But please feel free to share this coupon with your friends!

Wishing you and yours a very Happy Holiday Season

and the best of luck in 2010,

Joan Tobin Rozelle

Eat Local Food LLC

734.341.7028

jtobin@eatlocalfood.com