A beautiful Friday morning at the American chestnut nursery at the Catawba Sustainability Center.

High on a ridge at the Catawba Sustainability Center grow 54 American chestnut(Castenea dentata) trees. These trees are expected to die a few years from now, succumbing to chesnut blight(Cryphonectria parasitica), but not before a local arborist and other community volunteers can collect their pollen. You see, these trees, while not resistant to chestnut blight, are an important step on the long road to restoring our forests with a blight resistant American chesnut.

If you look hard enough and know who to ask, you can find mature American chestnut trees in Virginia. These trees may not be completely resistant to the blight, but have been resistant enough to survive and continue to grow, flower, and produce seeds. Restoring the species, however, is not as simple as collecting and planting seeds from these resistant trees, because not all of the tree’s offspring have the perfect genetic combination of dominant and recessive traits that give the parent tree its high level of blight resistance.

The process will take years and begins by backcrossing an American chestnut with a Chinese chestnut, a completely blight resistant species. The American/Chinese chestnut offspring are then innoculated with chestnut blight; the survivors are resistant. This process is then repeated multiple times, backrossing the resistant offspring with mature, resistant American chestnuts until the result will be a 15/16 American chestnut, possessing the blight resistant dominant trait.

These restoration efforts are taking place throughout the tree’s original range and are being backcrossed with trees native to the area where they are being grown. This way, the genetics of the regional strain are kept. This is important so that trees with the perfect genetics to grow in the climate and soils of Catawba and southwestern Virginia are planted regionally where they once thrived.

For more information on the restoration of the American chestnut, check out the American Chestnut Foundation website:  http://www.acf.org/ and the American Chestnut Restoration Project website: http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/chestnut/index.php

A young American chesnut blows in the breeze at the CSC in the Catawba Valley.

From the website: http://conference.virginiafarmtotable.org/

Virginia Cooperative Extension and Natural Resources Conservation Service, in cooperation with community partners, are hosting the 2012 Virginia Farm to Table Conference and Buy Fresh Buy Local Networking Mixer to address food and farming at a profitable and sustainable scale. The two-day conference will be of interest to producers, buyers, school and university officials, community and agricultural development officers, legislators, administrators, and other key food system stakeholders.

This conference will focus on encouraging collaboration, conservation, and community. The agenda addresses critical challenges surrounding a sustainable local food system. The first day will specifically focus on sustainable farming, conservation, soil health and a vision for Virginia agriculture with a particular emphasis on scale and mid-level farming.

Good conservation leads to healthy soils, which leads to healthy foods. We are pleased to welcome Ray Archuleta, a Conservation Agronomist with USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Soil Quality Team. Ray is a dynamic speaker with a passion for soil health.

The evening of the first day will also include an evening speaker (i.e., Michael Shuman, author of Local Dollars, Local Sense) and a Buy Fresh Buy Local mixer for producers and buyers.

The second day will focus on community-based investing, natural resource capital investment, models of collaboration and cooperation, along with discussion about how to move the Virginia Farm to Table Plan and initiatives forward.

Panel discussion and presentations of Virginia-based examples and work in the area will be interspersed with resource speakers over the two days.

As the days get shorter, so does the length of our growing season. As a result, the Catawba Valley Farmers’ Market, held on Thursday evenings from May – October, have come to an end. However, you have one more chance to get your favorite Catawba Valley products at the 2012 Catawba Valley Holiday Market on November 17.

The holiday market will feature the familiar faces and products of the Catawba Valley Farmers’ Market, plus many new local food, art, and craft vendors from throughout the region. Stop in for some early Christmas shopping and a hot lunch!

The Catawba Valley Holiday Market

Saturday, November 17, 2012

9:00 a.m.—4:00 p.m.

 Catawba Community Center

4965 Catawba Creek Road, Catawba, VA

Just off 311, past the Post Office

Visit the Catawba Valley Farmers Market Facebook Page for more information.

 http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Catawba-Valley-Farmers-Market/129469157077509?fref=ts

Registration is underway for the 2013 Growers’ Academy, an 8 week learning series focused on low-input crop production and launching your own agri-business!

Visit the Growers’ Academy website for more information: http://www.cpe.vt.edu/grac/

VT Daily News published an article describing Bobwhite quail habitat restoration projects in the Catawba Valley.

http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2012/09/091812-outreach-catawbaquail.html

The Virginia Tech Catawba Sustainability Center is an experiential showcase on 377 acres in the Catawba Valley, Va. With research plus demonstration projects from multiple Virginia Tech colleges, the center is creating a model for a sustainable world.