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Johnson’s Backyard Garden teams up with Whole Foods
As one of the area’s community-supported agriculture programs, Johnson’s Backyard Garden is always looking for new pick-up locations for its CSA subscribers.
CSA subscribers pick up boxes of produce once a week instead of buying that produce at a grocery store, which makes a new partnership between Johnson’s and Whole Foods Market particularly interesting.
Farmer Brenton Johnson met staff from Whole Foods Markets after the Slow Money Showcase at City Hall last week.
Johnson says they were able to work out an agreement where, staring next week, CSA members could pick up boxes of Johnson’s produce at the customer service counter at Whole Foods Market downtown. (You can sign up for the CSA online.)
Johnson also says that starting in about a month, Whole Foods wills start buying wholesale produce, starting with tomatoes and eggplants, from them on a regular basis to sell in area stores.
(In the photo above, farm intern Marissa Lankes weaves string around stakes to shore tomato plants on Thursday at Johnson’s Backyard Garden, where farm staff have planted about twenty-thousand plants in the ground.)
“They want to help us get equipment like a greens harvester and a bagging and wash line to grow and process stuff that they want to sell like baby spinach and salad mix,” Johnson says.
Another benefit, Johnson says, hopes to see come out of this new working relationship is that Whole Foods can train his staff in food safety as well as harvesting, packaging and post-harvest handling.
Photo by Alberto Martinez for the Austin American-Statesman.
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By Suzanne Santos
April 30, 2010 9:17 PM | Link to this
Congrats to Brenton! He also has pickups of CSAs at the SFC Farmers’ Market at Sunset Valley and Downtown on Saturdays, and at the market at The Triangle on Wed. nights. He and the interns sell regular stuff at the market too, a la carte.
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June 22, 2011 12:19 PM | Link to this
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