"Farmer for a Day" Tour

Saturday, June 16 @ Double B Farm

originally published June 13, 2007

It’s no secret that Athens lacks a large local farmer’s market where lots of growers in the area can gather weekly to sell to folks in town. There are a few in Athens and nearby towns, but for some reason, a single clearinghouse for local produce hasn’t come together. That’s okay for the farmers and consumers who are members of Athens’ Locally Grown Internet co-op. They use the web to create a weekly market; co-op members order online and then simply pick up their order on a set day at a designated place. The system has its advantages over a traditional market, removing the usual uncertainty for growers and customers about what they’ll find at market.

But it has one admitted disadvantage in particular: it lacks the social aspect of a traditional farmer’s market, a place where the community gathers to do more than just buy food. That’s where Locally Grown’s “Farmer for a Day” tour comes in. Still not on the scale of a large market, the tour series - there’s one each month until September - is an expansion of a 2003 effort to get people in touch with local farms: the work, the food and the farmers.

Organizer Marc Tissenbaum says each month’s tour will highlight a farm of a different type. In the past four years, after all, Locally Grown has gone from six farms to 26. The small and somewhat unconventional Double B Farm in Oxford, GA - on the schedule for this Saturday, June 16 - has a small market garden plus chickens, medicinal herbs, honeybees and shiitake mushrooms. “They’re all really different from here on out,” Tissenbaum explains. At the other end of the spectrum, September will take the group to a 200-acre sixth-generation family farm with cattle and certified “naturally grown” status (USDA organic status isn’t logical for some of these producers).

At each tour, guests help out with farm chores for a couple of hours in the morning, eat a hearty lunch sponsored by local businesses, and then get a tour of the farm. The first tour, in May, was a success. Says Tissenbaum, “There were two people on the first tour that were there because they’re interested in doing organic and selling through Locally Grown… There are all these people that are coming in all around us, like, ’I’ve got an acre. I want to do something, and I want to sell it through that.’ ’I’ve got a half an acre, I want to do sustainable…’”

There’s the bigger picture to think about, too. “I always had this dream vision that sustainable agriculture would form a ring around Athens that would become so valuable that it couldn’t be touched by developers,” Tissenbaum says. “And maybe it’ll happen.”

Space on each tour is limited to 25 people per tour; interested parties can call Tissenbaum at 706-227-1343 or email him at farmerforaday@yahoo.com.

Ben Emanuel