Piedmonte Day Tours

Cooperative Extension program shows how agriculture affects daily life

Each summer, the N.C. Cooperative Extension offers a variety of classes, workshops and tours through the 4-H Summer Fun Program. Youth in third through sixth grades learned how agriculture impacts their daily life through the Farm to Table day camp. Farm to Table was held June 27 through July 1. Each day brought a different experience.

On Monday, participants created a pizza garden with tomato, basil and oregano plants in a container garden to take home. We discussed how each part of the pizza comes from a different agricultural product. In the afternoon, Family and Consumer Science Agent Toi Degree helped them make their own pizza using the fresh herbs from our garden. Youth made homegrown play dough and played play dough pictionary to wrap up the day.

Tuesday was designated as our “Grower’s Day,” where youth visited local farms to see vegetables in production. We visited Patterson Farm and Correll Farms to learn about local produce and animals. County Extension Director Darrell Blackwelder shared his knowledge with the group while we toured the fields.

The “Market Day” began with a visit to the Salisbury Farmers Market where youth visited with the vendors and made some purchases of their own. They also worked in teams to complete a farmers market scavenger hunt. We then traveled to a Pinetop Farm, a local blueberry and Christmas tree farm, to pick blueberries. After picking the blueberries, we returned to the extension office to make blueberry muffins with Toi Degree. That afternoon, the group was able to tour Harris Teeter. While there, youth learned more about the produce, meat and bakery departments.

Thursday was spent at N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Piedmont Research Station. While there, youth were able to watch the dairy cows being milked and tour the fields of corn, other small grains and horticulture crops. Brad Johnson, livestock and dairy agent, and Scott Tilley, field crop agent, led the tour.

Following the tour, youth were able to taste test various dairy products ranging from goat cheese to chocolate milk. Upon returning to the office, we were able to make ice cream in a bag.

The final day, youth competed in an Agriculture Olympics and made their own Farm to Table lunch, completed with grilled hamburgers, grilled corn on the cob, grilled vegetables, fruit and yogurt parfaits and zucchini strudel for dessert. During the afternoon, we made our own butter and whipped cream, had a taste test of lamb and different cuts of beef and tried our hand at dairy quiz bowl, buzzing in to answer dairy-related questions.

Forza Piemonte 2: (Part 1/4) One day in Aosta! « Jonathan Beagle's ...

Having spent a stressful time, verging on 13 hours of travelling/sitting in train stations/waiting for delayed TGVs, we eventually got to our hotel in Milan and were able to meet our great friend and Piemonte trip organiser, Birger Vejrum of http://www.langhe-vine.dk fame! And swiftly set off as a group of 14 to the Vallee d’Aosta or in French, Valle d’Aoste (I’ll explain why in a moment) for our afternoon and evening in this area.

Aosta

Aosta, is a prefecture in Italy which borders France and Switzerland, and sits at the very top of Piemonte, almost direct North of Torino, and directly West of Milano. It is an old Roman outpost and whilst not the highest part of the Alps by any means, contains spectacular views because one is right down at the bottom of the river valley surrounded by the Alps on both sides heading in the direction of Chambery or Briancon in France. Historically, the region has been part of France for periods of time, and as such, you will notice that wine labels are in French and road signs are in both ITalian and French. In fact some of the road signs are only in French, because they have never been changed. The population all speak French as well, and at times with the elder generations, one gets the feeling that they would rather speak to you in French than in Italian, and the architecture of the town very much reminds me of where we are currently living in the Alps, GAP , and in that sense the culture and atmosphere is very similar as well.

Our first stop on this whistlestop tour, after collecting some members of the group who had driven down from Copenhagen at the hotel, was to get ourselves to the tiny village up the hill called Introd , in order to visit our only producer that we would see here, Lo Triolet .

“Sweet Wines are for Old People”

Lo Triolet, is for the region (with only 300,000 bottles produced in total) considered to be medium sized at production levels of 45,000 bottles on average per year. The current member of the family who makes the wines is Marco Martin , and he has been doing this for nearly 18 years now, and he does a good job of making good to great wines in a region that due to the climate is not an easy place to ripen grapes fully. Vintage variation is certainly an issue… An example of this, is the frosts that have damaged some of the buds and vines in 2011. The winery sits at 800 metres above sea level, with the vines at 900 metres along a long, narrow, twisty mountain road that makes the Route Napoleon feel like a motorway and at an incline that would be testing for many of the group mountain cyclists who take part in the Tour de France every July!! In one sense, we were half way up the mountain, and that perhaps really puts into perspective the nature of the Alps as a whole. Marco makes 10 different wines from his 7 hectares (of which 5 are planted with vines) of sandy soils. Three of these are 100% Pinot Gris (steel tank, barrel and a sweet wine), two are mono-varietal whites (Gewurztraminer & Muscat a Petit Grains), and Five Reds made from either a blend, or monovariatals including Gamay, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Petit Rouge, Nousse & Furmin (the last three being local grape varieties). You can certainly see the connection to France in the grape varieties and on the wine labels that are pretty much entirely written in French.

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