Do you remember ever eating an Albemarle Pippin or Buckingham apple picked fresh from a tree? What about a Power’s Heirloom tomato, or Turkey Craw Cornfield beans?
These are a few of the fruits, vegetables and other farm products that generations of central Virginians once grew, but that are now disappearing. Some are gone already.
No comprehensive survey or documentation of the food and farming heritage of central Virginia exists, and we are slowly losing the opportunity to gather home-grown knowledge about hundreds of plants native to our region from a fading generation.
That’s where the Virginia Food Heritage Project comes in. A collaboration of growers, gardeners, community planners, historians, conservationists, scholars and many others, the project seeks to gather local knowledge about local agriculture and food heritage, and to use this knowledge to inform decision-making that will shape our landscape and our lives for years to come.
We are saving the past for the future. We hope you will join us.
(Banner photo: USDAPhotostream/Flckr)
