For 20 years, Letty Smith has operated one of the region's longest-running CSAs, or Community-Supported-Agriculture, programs.

Her Circle S Farm has produced produce, meat and eggs for 100s of CSA families; she's grown both seasonally and year-round in high tunnels.

Now?

"This year will be my last year," she said. "It's just time."

Later this spring, Letty will offer her final Circle S CSA. You can sign up - click here - for a full-share or half.

"Saving the Best for Last," she wrote on her Circle S blog.

Letty and Curtis own and operate Circle S Farm in Rising Fawn, Georgia. One thousand acres, beef cattle, long rows of produce, farm dogs, laying hens, a cabin built by hand with a front porch wide enough to square dance and two Belgian draft horses - Jane and Judy, sisters, by gosh - who Letty still harnesses every so often to work the land.

Our visit?

As beautiful a day as ever ...

Over the years - decades, now - their CSA has become a reliable friend for many families. Letty marries it with a beloved blog, recipes and that kind of generosity that thinks: what would I want to receive?

Back in November, with the season's last CSA box, she included a bottle of red from Scenic City Wines.

"A pairing with pumpkin ginger risotto, something to look forward to," she wrote. "Like a fire on cold wintry nights."

So, as the 2025 growing season begins, Letty's CSA takes its final turn. I panicked, too, but don't worry: she'll continue to farm and sell at the Wednesday market.

Nor is there anything ... wrong. Nobody's moving, sick or troubled. As any grower knows, things change.

"It's just time," she said.

"This is just the last year of my CSA, which is how it all started.  I have a heavy heart about this because I have made so many friends and it has been a big part of supporting our farm."

Plus, she's got one, maybe two, tricks up her sleeve, some surprises in store. You're gonna love them.

"I kinda want to go out in style," she said, "and make this year the best and last year."

To sign up for Letty Smith and Circle S's Saving the Best for Last CSA, click here.

• Following Sunday's post on regional planning and food policy - you can read it here - we heard from our friend Brad Smith.

"Unfortunately, Hamilton County seems to be overlooking the importance of preserving green-space and farmland," he said.

Brad would know.

Brad and Tara Smith own and operate the innovative Fresh Tech Growers: a Meigs County aeroponic tower farm that sells 1000s pounds annually of produce to regional buyers.

Brad's also a retired AICP certified planner, having built a long and storied career in Florida.

Brad kindly sent some suggestions.

First? Keep sounding the alarm about farmland loss.

As a possible solution, Brad had a suggestion: Transferable Development Rights, or TDR.

"Transfer of Development Rights [can be] a primary tool to overcome the trend by harnessing the power of a market-driven economy," he said.

What's TDR?

"By moving residential uses away from farmland, TDR preserves a critical and irreplaceable natural resource while still allowing for a limited amount of housing in the Agricultural Reserve," explained the Montgomery County, Maryland Planning Office. "The TDR process moves the dwelling units that would have been built under the Rural Zone designation to other, more appropriate, areas."

In Brad's words:

If a high valuation is given to prime agricultural lands, then developers who want to build higher density urban centers could purchase the development rights from the farmer. 

The local government would recognize this purchase and thereby grant the developer the right to develop at a higher density than would otherwise have been allowed. 

• The farmer gains economically. (Hopefully, more than he would have by selling out to a sprawl-expanding subdivision builder).
• The public benefits by ensuring the ongoing economic viability of local farmland (and a sustainable source of nutritious food – not subject to the supply chain interruptions that we experienced during COVID and now with the Bird Flu.)
• And the local government successfully has focused land development into areas that already have adequate infrastructure, thus avoiding sprawl.

He nodded towards the American Planning Agency's policy, the same doc we quoted in Sunday's Food as a Verb.

"Develop or modify policies, regulations and other tools such as agricultural land preservation zoning, purchase of development rights, transfer or development rights and partnerships with land trusts to protect prime agricultural land," the APA recommends.

He praised our Regional Planning Agency's Centers and Corridors Approach.

"Centers, Corridors and Green-spaces are the three lynchpins," he said.

Finally, he offered a novel idea that, honestly, we've been daydreaming on for some time now.

An urban tower farm.

"Tower farming is the future of farming in Tennessee, particularly urban areas, to compensate for the alarming rate at which we are losing valuable farm land," he said.

Last winter, we visited the Smith's Fresh Tech greenhouse.

"Inside their 26' x 96' greenhouse, the Smiths installed six rows of 132 aeroponic towers from Tower Farms," we reported. "Each tower stands eight feet tall and each tower contains 44 individual ports. Six additional micro green towers hold 88 ports each."

This allows for some 3,000 pounds of annual produce.

So, scale it up.

Take a 5,000 square foot building somewhere in our urban core and convert it to a tower farm using aeroponic and hydroponic growing methods. This would allow dependable, delicious four-season produce marketed to area restaurants and families.

According to Fresh Tech's own research:

• Our aeroponic towers use 90-95% less water compared to traditional soil farming.
• Our systems can save 75-90% of the space required for conventional farming.
• Depending on crops, you can see a yield increase of 10-30%.
• Our crops rank as high as the best ever grown in soil in terms of nutrient density, antioxidants and flavonoid levels.

"We envision a community of people united in our desire for wholesome, locally-grown, and pesticide-free food," Brad and Tara proclaim.

A good friend always likes to ask: what's possible?

In this case, it's entirely possible to launch and operate an urban tower farm while preserving and protecting rural farmland through a series of policies and approaches.

And it's entirely possible to begin to seriously evaluate TDRs as a market-based solution to regional farmland loss.

Thanks, everyone.

Enjoy the warmer weather.

And, thankfully, the daffodils are waking up.

See you Sunday.

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This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.