It's Survey Time - Make Your Voice Heard! Happy New Year! We are heading out across the state in the coming months for our biennial farmer and rancher Listening Sessions. We held our first one in mid-December in Salem with farmers from throughout the mid-Willamette Valley attending. Stay tuned to our Farmer and Rancher Listening Session page for future dates and locations. In the meantime, we also have two surveys we are asking FoFF supporters to take to help us determine our policy and program priorities over the next few years. One survey is for farmers and ranchers, and the other is for food system stakeholders, including eaters. Please take the survey that applies to you, help us track emerging issues, and make a positive impact for family farmers, ranchers and local food systems in Oregon. | |  | Supporting Oregon Farmers at Fill Your Pantry Portland 2017 On December 3rd, 2017, Friends of Family Farmers hosted our 3rd annual Fill Your Pantry at The Redd in Portland. Ecotrust, which manages The Redd, generously donated the space to help make the event happen. Fill Your Pantry is a one day Farmers Market-type event in which community members meet and support their local farmers directly through bulk purchases of produce, meats, honey, preserves and more. Most of the items were ordered online ahead of time which in turn helped farmers and ranchers with planning, harvesting, preparation and loading. Fill Your Pantry events take place all over the state, organized by different organizations, and have become a financial boon for producers during the slower, winter months. Hundreds of folks attended the Portland event and collectively helped generate over $60,000 in sales that went directly into the pockets of 24 local farms and ranches! We'd like to thank all the vendors and the hundreds of shoppers that came out to make this event such a big success. Check out our latest blog post for more info about the event and photos. In conjunction with the Portland Fill Your Pantry, Friends of Family Farmers also partnered with the Culinary Breeding Network and OSU’s Squash Project to host Oregon’s first Sagra, or food festival, to celebrate the abundance and diversity of winter squash grown in our state. Local chefs gave out samples of tasty dishes made with different squashes prepared in a wide variety of ways. There was a squash ‘butchery’ demonstration, kids activities, and OSU researchers were there to talk all things squash. For more background, information, recipes and videos, check out www.eatwintersquash.com. | | Forage Course Draws Pasture-Based Producers | | This past Fall, FoFF sponsored an 8-week "Forage and Pasture Management" course in Salem, led by livestock nutritionist Woody Lane, PhD. Forty-four producers participated in the class, with a wide variation of backgrounds and interests, including large and small ranchers and one veterinarian. Attendees came from all across the Willamette Valley and as far away as Nehalem. They had many types of operations: beef cows, feeder cattle, dairymen, sheep, bison, meat goats, horses, hay, etc. Roughly 1/3 of the attendees were members of FoFF's Oregon Pasture Network. FoFF was able to sponsor the event and provide a significant discount to OPN members through a generous grant from the Bill Healy Foundation. | | | | | | |
