The annual Neighborhood Co-op Grocery Farm Crawl is coming up this Saturday and Sunday around southern Illinois. The crawl features 9 local farmers who will open their farms to visitors.
Emily Yates is the brand manager at the Neighborhood Co-op who is helping organize the crawl. To participate, you buy a pass and get a map from the Co-op listing this year's farms to visit.
"People can just, drive through all these farms, and a lot of them have, like, sampling going on. Or they can see what the farms at different farms are doing."
The event is a fundraiser for Foodworks. A local non-profit whose goal is to grow the food system and food access in southern Illinois.
Jennifer Paulson is the executive director of Foodworks. They support farmers through business development, teaching farming practices, and even helping with peer to peer support. Consumers are also part of the equation to building this food system. And that means helping people understand where their food comes from and the role agriculture plays in the process.
"You know, there aren't many things in the world that are more important than food. And of course, agriculture is the basis for that. And so, you know, I think a lot of times in our society, we can be pretty removed from where our food is actually produced or who produces it. It can be just a, you know, an item on the shelf that we pick up at the grocery store, and that's fine. But there's so much that goes into it that, I just I just love it every time people get the chance to connect."
Yates says farmers give tours of their farms and a look at all that's need to get their products out to farmer's markets and even co-ops like theirs.
"You know, people are more and more interested nowadays in just making sure that their food, like, has no no antibiotics, no hormones added like that. It's organically grown and things like that. And when you're actually able to just ask the farmer, like directly, it's really cool. And I think it also gives people like insight into how much actually goes into farming. Like how many details these people are worrying about every day. And, a lot of times locally grown and organic food can be more expensive. And having people realize why that expense is necessary because there's so much that actually goes into it. It's much more complex than just throwing some fertilizer and some, you know, things on it."
To find out what the farms have to share, I stopped by The Flock Farm in Anna and talked with Brent Glays.
"These are babies from a sow and a boar from over there. And we're just going to use these for meat. So we're not going to breed with these."
Brent started the farm with his wife in 2018 having no farming experience. It's been a learning process the whole way.
"We had five lambs in the backyard and five turned to 11 turned to 22. And it was like, what do we do with all these boys? So we started, doing the farmers market in Carbondale on Saturdays in 2018 with Just Lamb. We, we showed up in October and brought three lambs with us and sold out in like two weeks."
From there, he worked with other farmers learning how to expand the variety of animals on his farm.
This is the second time Brent's farm has been part of the tour. The crawl gives him a chance to show what he's learned over the last seven years.
"They'll see the sheep. They'll see the cows. They'll see the pigs. They'll see, the chickens, some chickens. We're pretty much at the end of the chicken season, especially by then. But then they can also see the poultry processing plant so they can see where their food lives, where it's processed. They can see the, the growth that's happened on this farm since the last time we did the, the farm crawl, which is."
Jennifer says this is one of the benefits of the crawl - all the learning. Which means if you're new, don't worry, that's what the visits are about...Helping you learn.
"So one of the things I love about it is that it's great for, you know, if you're interested in farming or gardening, that's great. It's a wonderful time to kind of talk shop with the farmers. But if you're just curious to learn more, it's incredibly accessible to folks. You can come with no knowledge of agriculture and, and, have a great time."
Brent could have talked for hours about all he's learned to grow as a farmer thanks to the help of many people in the community. For him, taking part in the farm crawl lets him give back some of what he's gained.
"I've been, like, blessed by the community and the amount of help that I've gotten create this vision that it feels good to give back and like to share it with the community and to, to have involvement really feels good because I know that this is not just me, right? Like one person doesn't do this."
If you want to attend the Farm Crawl, you can purchase tickets from the Neighborhood Co-op Grocery either in person or online. If you purchase them at the Co-op you can do that through Saturday and Sunday. If you're purchasing your tickets online, those are only available through Friday and noon.Tickets are $20 for use on one day or for $30 you can purchase flex tickets which can be used both days or either day.
For more information including a list of farms and a link to purchase tickets, visit the Neighborhood Co-op's website - https://www.neighborhood.coop/farm-crawl
