by Ebony L. Morman 

Next week, as the spring/summer farmers market season kicks off, Mecklenburg County’s Cooperative Extension will launch Love Your Local — a series of events highlighting the area’s local food system. The inaugural week-long celebration is about two things: helping farmers and educating the community.

“We’re trying to help more consumers identify how to get to all the farmers,” says Samantha DeRosa, Local Foods Agent at the North Carolina Cooperative Extension, Mecklenburg County Center and 2022 UPPY Local Food Advocate of the Year. “Farmers are just really so close to my heart, and I want them to be as supported as possible.” 

With Love Your Local, that support takes the form of ten events throughout the city, encouraging consumers to shop with farmers, food producers, and small businesses in the area. 

The kickoff dinner on April 22 is strictly for the farmers, bringing them together for a night of learning centered on maximizing opportunities in the profession. Chef Chayil Johnson of Community Matters Café will curate locally-sourced dishes for the event. The rest of the week will include gardening and cooking demonstrations, a brewery trivia night, and a farmers market shopping tour. The series wraps up with a youth cook-off.

“That dinner at the opening night is about the idea of building, educating, and supporting farmers, making sure they feel the support and understand that we’re trying to make sure they get the best they can for their labor,” DeRosa says. “That way, they can continue to farm and continue to support our regional food system with their efforts.”

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Unpretentious Palate: What was the inspiration for Love Your Local? 
Samantha DeRosa: We wanted to increase consumer awareness of the importance of local foods. That’s the focus. Each of the ten things we’re working on is focused on building awareness around where food comes from, how to access local food, and the importance of local food for the regular consumer. 

UP: Why are local food celebrations like Love Your Local important to the community? 
SD: Local foods are really important for a couple of reasons. It’s the economic impact. Every dollar that’s spent in your neighborhood is spent in your neighborhood seven times. It’s also better for the environment, and it’s been proven that people who shop locally reap the health benefits. 

UP: Tell us more about the kickoff dinner. 
SD: We want the farmers who are selling at the market right now to be as successful as possible. So the dinner is geared toward them, helping farmers understand how to get their products directly to consumers. We’ll talk about how to sell at farmers markets, how to start a CSA program, and how to sell to Freshlist. chef Chayil Johnson will also speak briefly to farmers about selling directly to restaurants. We’re helping farmers understand how to get to the consumer, and then the rest of the week, we’re helping consumers understand how to get to the farmer.

UP: What are you most looking forward to? 
SD: We’re having so much fun with the trivia for the brewery trivia night. I love the fact that all three — Monday Night Brewery, Free Range Brewery, and Armored Cow Brewery — are in different neighborhoods. So we’re connecting the city simultaneously through this event. We have prizes from GotToBeNC, so whoever wins the trivia gets a super cool backpack cooler. I’m really hoping that everybody who plays comes away with an aha moment of ‘Oh my goodness, I have got to eat locally.’ 

I absolutely love that the North Carolina Extension Master Gardeners of Mecklenburg County are doing this beautiful gardening demonstration, and that people can walk away with the plants that the Master Gardeners are making for an extra fee. The same goes for cooking demos. On Friday, if you pay an additional fee, you’ll go home with a bottle full of syrup. I’m really excited about even taking people around to the farmers and the vendors at the Uptown Farmers Market, introducing them, and talking to them about how to use their SNAP and double-bucks dollars. 

UP: What impact are you hoping to see from the gardening demonstrations? 
SD: The North Carolina Cooperative Extension has three program areas — agriculture, food, and consumer science, which is part of our cooking section, nutrition information, and 4H, or youth development. So we’ve tried to plug in events that showcase each one of our program areas—having the Master Gardeners come in and do a gardening demonstration, and then having our family and consumer science team come in on Friday and do cooking demonstrations. The Master Gardeners will show people how to grow herbs in the first demonstration and vegetables in the second one. On Friday, the first demonstration will be on how to turn herbs into syrup that you can either use for cooking or drinks. The second cooking demonstration will use the vegetables that are in the gardening demonstration. 

UP: The week ends with a Youth Cook-Off at the Charlotte Regional Farmers Market. Tell us more. 
SD: The Can-U-Cook team, with chefs Gillian Howard and Jonathan Rhodes, is helping us produce a youth cook-off where high school students shop at the farmers market, bring a special ingredient back to a demonstration area, and some teams compete to see who does best. We’ve been doing a little bit of training with them before, and it’s exciting to hear how excited they are. We also want to show everybody that if a high school student can grab some ingredients from the farmers market and turn it into something spectacular, you can grab ingredients from the farmers market and turn it into an everyday dinner.

UP: What impact do you hope this week will have?
SD: I hope to bring awareness so that people will start purchasing from and supporting farmers. This is kicking off the farmers market season — and the local food season. The brewery trivia questions are geared toward having people say, ‘Oh my goodness, why am I eating this junk? I should eat what comes locally,’ and then go to the farmers market on Saturday, or even go and buy plants to grow their own stuff. That’s part of the effort as well — to really bring awareness to the benefit of supporting the local food network.

For full details or to register for events, visit go.ncsu.edu/readext?1061979.