"Loxley woman starts greenhouse business in her 50s"- Fairhope Courier

Posted: Friday, July 19, 2013 1:03 pm | Updated: 1:38 pm, Fri Jul 19, 2013.

By Jill Clair Gentry / Food editor

Anita Craine has always been passionate about providing safe, nutritious food for her family. Long before the local and natural food movement, she spent her time searching for local farmers who would give her food she believed was more healthful for her family. She grew the foods she couldn't buy herself.

Anita grew up in a farming family, and her grandfather developed the first farmers markets in Alabama.

“I cut my teeth on dinnertime conversation about a living wage for farmers,” she says.

However, Anita spent most of her adult life as a teacher, wife and mother — she grew her own food at home, but never dreamed she'd one day be a farmer who supplied other families with food. But at 56, she's doing just that. In January, Anita and her son Micah opened Craine Creek Farms, a hydroponic greenhouse business. They provide lettuces and herbs to local restaurants, markets and grocery stores, and in the future, Anita says she will sell directly to customers at the farm.

“We want to grow safe food, and we want to grow delicious food,” she says. “So it really has to be all about the product, all about the lettuce.”

Anita spent three years reading, studying and making contacts with businesses who were interested in buying locally-grown lettuce. She and Micah, who recently graduated from the University of Alabama with a business and economics degree, traveled to South Carolina to train on a hydroponic farm before they even started building. This preparation has led to a successful first six months.

“The learning curve is sharp and long, but we are way ahead of where we thought we would be,” Anita says. “We took the time to go out and meet people and develop relationships. We felt like we knew most of the people we're selling to before we ever built and planted, and that has made a huge difference.”

Literally Local... Online

A customer just introduced us to an online publication called Literally Local and we wanted to share. The e-zine says it mission is "celebrating foods grown and raised within a 200 mile radius of Pensacola and the restaurants, chefs and local businesses who use and sell them." 

This part of Baldwin County falls into that radius, and the publication features some of our favorite purveyors like Sweet Home Farm, Fiddler Farms, and more! The content is fun the images are beautiful. Worth a look...

Quinoa should be taking over the world. This is why it isn’t.

We love to love Quinoa at the Windmill, and it is a daily staple on the Sweet Olive menu. So we thought this article from the Washington Post was interesting and wanted to share...

By Lydia DePillis, The Washington Post, Published: July 11, 2013

In the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru, the broom-like, purple-flowered goosefoot plant is spreading over the barren hillsides–further and further every spring. When it’s dried, threshed, and processed through special machines, the plant yields a golden stream of seeds called quinoa, a protein-rich foodstuff that’s been a staple of poor communities here for millennia. Now, quinoa exports have brought cash raining down on the dry land, which farmers have converted into new clothes, richer diets, and shiny vehicles.

But at the moment, the Andeans aren’t supplying enough of the ancient grain. A few thousand miles north, at a downtown Washington D.C. outlet of the fast-casual Freshii chain one recent evening, a sign delivered unpleasant news: “As a result of issues beyond Freshii’s control, Quinoa is not available.” Strong worldwide demand, the sign explained, had led to a shortage. A Freshii spokeswoman said that prices had suddenly spiked, and the company gave franchises the choice to either eat the cost or pull the ingredient while they renegotiated their contract.

Quinoa is a low-calorie, gluten-free, high-protein grain that tastes great. Its popularity has exploded in the last several years, particularly among affluent, health-conscious Americans. But the kinks that kept the grain out of Freshii that day are emblematic of the hurdles it will face to becoming a truly widespread global commodity and a major part of Americans’ diet. It shows the crucial role of global agribusiness, big-ticket infrastructure investment, and trade in bringing us the things we eat, whether we like it or not.

In short, it’s hard to keep something on the menu if you might not be able to afford it the next day. And the American agricultural economy makes it hard for a new product to reach the kind of steady prices and day-in-day-out supply that it takes to make it big.