New Highlands Grant Will Help Build Grain Hub
One of the most exciting aspects of our crazy River Valley Community Grains experiment is finding partners to leverage the impact of our work. Recently the Foodshed Alliance secured a three-year grant from the New Jersey Highlands Council Sustainable Agriculture Program to grow the local grain economy in the Highlands using regenerative agriculture. Through research, outreach, and (literal) field training, we’re looking forward to spreading the word about the possibilities local grains offer New Jersey farmers and how they play into the future of our food system.
We’ll be working with the Foodshed Alliance and Elizabeth Dyck of OGRIN to create a white paper, curriculum, and training program for farmers interested in raising heritage grains, targeted towards issues and conditions specific to the NJ Highlands region.
The next step is doing outreach and networking to recruit growers to the project, and spreading the word about the resources we can offer them. We’ll be encouraging farmers to attend educational events like a series of workshops on post-harvest grain handling, grain processing, and meeting grain quality standards. River Valley Community Grains and OGRIN staff will visit farms and mentor farmers who want to learn about small-scale organic grains. This project will also make mobile grain cleaning and processing equipment available that can be shared and transported to farms.
Once we’ve got new folks on board, the project will help those farmers put their new knowledge into action. We will host grain hub workshops on to cleaning, storing, milling, packaging, and sell local grains, using the commercial kitchen and educational facility at Marksboro Mills as a model that can be replicated throughout the region.
Then we start collaborating within our network of farmers, millers, maltsters, brewers, bakers, distillers, restaurateurs, educators, researchers, and consumers like home bakers and homebrewers. Each of these stakeholders is essential to the success of our local grain hub.
Our ultimate goal is for these three years of work to culminate in a branding campaign to have “A Product of the Highlands of New Jersey” added to the packaging on grains grown and processed here. Supporting New Jersey farmers, building the local economy, and sharing that pride of place are all pillars of our work here at RVCG, and we can’t wait to see where this grant leads us.