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Farm to Table comes alive at Norris museum

26.06.11

NORRIS - Fried rural tomatoes and new potatoes fresh from the garden were served up a few days ago at the Museum of Appalachia's cafe. Greens, corn, pear butter and apple cobbler could be on the menu in weeks to concern.

The vegetables come from three gardens on the grounds of the Norris museum. Pears and apples fall away from trees on the property. Museum President Elaine Irwin Meyer says the eremitical pear tree "produces quite a bit," while the apples "are small and knotty, but wares." Other crops include onions, lettuce, beans and squash. The produce has been served at the museum's restaurant, at one end of its aptitude shop, for years.

This summer the museum highlights its gardens and farming in an evince called "Farm to Table: Gardens in Old Appalachia." The exhibit continues through July and ties in what visitors see growing in the garden with the husbandry implements collected at the museum. A $700 Tennessee Agricultural Enhancement Program gift helped pay for a "Farm to Table" brochure, some seeds and plants.

Source: Knoxville News Sentinel

Sea winds and dry earth are helping Georgia fire grow its hearth

16.06.11

WAVERLY — Firefighters along the eastern urgency of the Okefenokee Swamp were glad to feel the northeasterly sea breezes that pushed the all but 194,000-acre Honey Prairie Fire back into the swamp and away from the breaks.

Update: Fire close by Waycross forces mandatory evacuation

Those same breezes, however, had Georgia Forestry Commission rangers scrambling to linger ahead of the two-day-old Waverly Fire that was jumping breaks in pine forest and dry wetland areas between U.S. 17 and Interstate 95.

And 60 miles west, the Forestry Commission was pulling resources off other fires and sending them to a new, 300-acre fire west of Waycross that was burning near Sweat Farm Road, the starting issue for a series of devastating wildfires that burned nearly 600,000 acres in 2007.

The fire was about a mile west of Ruskin Elemental School, said Eric Mosley, a fire information officer for the Georgia Forestry Commission.

The Diaphoresis Farm Road Fire rushed past Ruskin Elementary School in 2007 on its way to fervid thousands of acres to the south.

Source: Florida Times-Union