July 17, 2014 / by mcufone / Make A Comment / Filed under Education, Organizational
It’s full on summer in New Orleans and our Growing Local NOLA food and farm center is starting to really heat up with all the public classes we’ve been offering. Last night, we hosted a natural pest and disease management seminar. It was a perfect evening, complete with a lovely breeze and some fluffy white clouds to provide just the right amount of shade. Louisiana Master Gardener and Botanist Ica Crawford led the group through preventative as well as curative ways to handle a wide range of garden troubles. She even brought samples of problematic insects and plants with common diseases to help people identify symptoms as early as possible, so they can treat them quickly and effectively. RFC and NOFFN are hosting a series of trainings for farmers and gardeners over the course of the next few weeks – check back for more great pix and info!
July 3, 2014 / by mcufone / Make A Comment / Filed under Education, Organizational
Exciting things happening at our Growling Local NOLA campus in Central City New Orleans! As our contribution to the annual NOLA Locavores Eat Local Challenge – we hosted an “all local” farm to table cooking demonstration. We had more than 50 people in attendance trying out our fresh and delicious recipes with ingredients from all local farms (including ours!) -
Zucchini and yellow squash “pasta” ribbons with pecan basil pesto
Herbed strawberries over mixed greens in a lemon honey pecan vinaigrette
Blueberry honey frozen yogurt with candied pecans and a sweet cream drizzle
We’ll be featuring these in our upcoming newsletter too – so be on the lookout for that coming your way soon. Not a member yet and want these great recipes and more? Join our mailing list!
Many thanks to the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation for all their support in developing Growing Local NOLA and allowing us to offer free health-supportive programs for our community!
April 22, 2014 / by mcufone / Make A Comment / Filed under Organizational
Recirculating Farms Coalition was chosen to participate in the Earth Day and Green Business Expo at Louis Armstrong Park in New Orleans, Louisiana on Saturday April 19th, coordinated by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. A host of wonderful volunteers worked our booth, where we provided free fresh cold lemon and mint water (helping to minimize the amount of plastic bottled water at the event!), various vegetable and flower seeds (courtesy of our partner New Orleans Food and Farm Network) and seed coasters (they turn into wild flowers when you plant them!). We had a recirculating hydroponic tower running on a solar panel displayed, and we made fresh salads and homemade dressing using the herbs, lettuces and vegetables in our tower. Samples of the salads were a big hit – many visitors came back for second and even third helpings. We had so many new people sign up for our e-activist and newsletter list and become members too! It was a fun day to celebrate sustainability and also raise awareness about recirculating farming.
Thanks to everyone for a wonderful event and HAPPY EARTH DAY!
March 30, 2014 / by mcufone / Make A Comment / Filed under Farm basics, Organizational
Hooray! This week, the weather finally warmed up, and we moved our newly sprouted baby plants into their raised garden beds at our Growing Local NOLA community food and farm center in New Orleans, Louisiana! We’ll be using our new beds to teach gardening and farming classes.
We decided to plant various herbs – rosemary, curly leaf parsley, Thai basil and Italian basil, along with some fun veggies – patty pan squash, eggplants, tomatoes, cucumbers, and blue lake bush beans and marigolds to help with unwanted pests.
Come visit our garden and watch us grow!
March 24, 2014 / by mcufone / Make A Comment / Filed under Education, Organizational
WOW! What an amazing Saturday we had. It was a mostly sunny, slightly cloudy, warm and breezy day in New Orleans, just perfect for us to host our very first event at our new Growing Local NOLA food and farm center site!
We held a “planting your spring garden” workshop. It was focused on peppers, tomatoes, starting seeds and transplanting – and an added bonus 
discussion on raising chickens for eggs – complete with cute, fluffy baby chicks (awwww). We had over 30 participants for our 2-hour class.
In preparation for the workshop, we finished construction of our raised garden beds and set them up with layers of composted wood chips for drainage and good soil for growing – yes we here at Recirculating Farms work with traditional soil-based growing too! Of course we did a recirculating hydroponics demonstration as well, to provide alternate growing options for small spaces, or rocky or paved areas, (or those just interested in soil-less farming).
We’ll be hosting programs regularly going forward – join our mailing list to get events announcements and sign up for our various classes – or better yet, become a member and support all our cool programs and projects!
Many thanks to the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation for the funding and support through their Challenge Grant to make these programs possible (and free).
It’s full on summer in New Orleans and our Growing Local NOLA food and farm center is starting to really heat up with all the public classes we’ve been offering. Last night, we hosted a natural pest and disease management seminar. It was a perfect evening, complete with a lovely breeze and some fluffy white clouds to provide just the right amount of shade. Louisiana Master Gardener and Botanist Ica Crawford led the group through preventative as well as curative ways to handle a wide range of garden troubles. She even brought samples of problematic insects and plants with common diseases to help people identify symptoms as early as possible, so they can treat them quickly and effectively. RFC and NOFFN are hosting a series of trainings for farmers and gardeners over the course of the next few weeks – check back for more great pix and info!
