By Kayla Williams
Kayla Williams is Georgia Organics’ Farmer Champion Senior Coordinator.
For the third year in a row, we’re excited to shine a spotlight on our six Farmer Champion Award Winners!
The Farmer Champion program began in 2019, and from its inception, we’ve prioritized highlighting and celebrating businesses that go out of their way to work with local farms across Georgia. In 2022, the Farmer Champion program expanded from brick-and-mortar restaurants and other storefront businesses to include caterers, pop-ups, and early care and education centers, but the definition of Farmer Champion remained the same.
So, what is the definition of a Farmer Champion? A Farmer Champion is a member of the food service community that strives to strengthen and grow Georgia’s good food movement by purchasing from local and organic producers while simultaneously verifying those purchases with Georgia Organics through invoice submission.
These six winners are shining examples of what dedication to their craft and valuing their local communities looks like. We got to celebrate them in person at our “Attack of the Killer Tomato Festival” on Sunday, July 30, but the celebration continues!
2023 Farmer Champion Award Winners pose for a photo at “Attack of the Killer Tomato Festival” hosted at Westside Provisions District in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Erik Meadows.
Join us in learning more about our 2023 Farmer Champion Awardees!
Top Local and Top Organic Local Spend Awards
*Jarrett Stieber and his team at Little Bear, based in the Summerhill neighborhood of Atlanta, talk tongue in cheek about their fine dining techniques. They never take themselves too seriously, although it’s no joke when it's time to turn their nearly 100% local ingredients into creative, low-waste dishes — inspired by Jarrett’s Jewish heritage and beyond.
Before February 2020, Jarrett ran an incredible pop-up called Eat Me, Speak Me for six years, and then opened Little Bear right before the pandemic started. The team navigated the unexpected shifts at the very beginning of the restaurant’s journey gracefully and artistically, per usual. Little Bear is both for special occasion feasts and a regular weeknight bite to eat. This will be the second year in a row that Little Bear has won awards in both the Top Local and Top Organic Local categories. It’s so well deserved, and it’s so fun to watch Little Bear grow!
*On Tuesday, Oct. 24, Jarrett Stieber of Littel Bear is the recipient of the 2023 MICHELIN Guide Atlanta Young Chef Award. Little Bear was also recognized as a Recommended Restaurant for the inaugural 2023 MICHELIN Guide Atlanta.
Top Organic Local Spend Award
When Stella Dillard decided to build Dandelion Food and Goods, she was thinking about her friends who missed fancy food, the farmers she’d built relationships with over her many years on the line at farm to table institutions across Atlanta, and her own needs to work as a chef in a way that prioritized her mental and physical health.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Stella started selling hearty and nutritious casseroles, soups, salads, and pantry goods — dishes she created using locally sourced produce. Even now, Stella decidedly leads the way in creating better access to fresh foods, procuring from farmers markets around Atlanta, as well as offering online pre-orders for pick up at the commercial kitchen space she shares with other makers through Fresh Harvest. The business has grown steadily over the past three years, with a wide net of supporters that continues to grow as Stella is awarded for her creativity, innovation, and delicious food.
Just this year, Stella was awarded Chef of the Year by Community Farmers’ Market for their annual Lady Locavores event celebrating womxn in the good food community of Atlanta. It’s time for Stella to add the 2023 Farmer Champion Award for Top Organic Local Spend to her accolades!
Top Organic Local Spend Award
*Miller Union has long been regarded as one of the central players in the farm-to-table movement in Atlanta and across the nation. Steven Satterfield — co-owner and head chef of Miller Union — has written two cookbooks celebrating local, seasonal produce; his 2015 release of Root to Leaf was joined by his latest work, Vegetable Revelations, this Spring. He’s usually very busy, but that doesn’t stop him from being in Miller Union’s kitchen as often as he can, alongside the talented team of chefs and cooks that accompany him on the line.
Steven understands the importance of his role as a leader and takes it seriously: he is passionate about teaching people how to cook with seasonal produce. He strives to support the organizations that preach the good food gospel, as well as uplift the local farmers he calls his friends — many of which he’s been working with for over a decade at this point.
Just to really drive home the point that he cares immensely about Atlanta's food community, he’s been on the board of Slow Food Atlanta for more than a decade. Steven’s unwavering hard work to push Atlanta forward through vegetables and more deserves so much praise. Congrats to Miller Union on winning the 2023 Farmer Champion Award for Top Organic Local Spend for the THIRD year in a row!
*On Tuesday, Oct. 24, Miller Union’s Neal McCarthy and the front-of-house team received the 2023 MICHELIN Guide Atlanta Service Award. Miller Union was also recognized as a Recommended Restaurant for the inaugural 2023 MICHELIN Guide Atlanta.
Top Local Spend Award
The definition of kinship is blood relationship. And at Kinship Butcher and Sundry, it’s a family affair. Co-owners Rachael Pack and Myles Moody run their whole-animal butchery, wine, sandwich, and goods shop seven days a week. They share the space with Myles’ brother, Connan, and his outstanding coffee shop, Academy Coffee.
On any day, you can pop by the shop, located in the Virgina Highlands neighborhood, for one of Myles’ killer breakfast sandwiches featuring Georgia-raised pork. And why not pair it with one of his brother’s creative coffee drinks? Connan's Muy Duro, a cortado with fried plantain syrup, just might do the trick. For a full farm to table experience, mosey on over to Rachael’s curated wine selection and pick up a bottle to pair with a local steak you can pick out at the butcher counter. But don’t forget sides — you’ll find Carolina gold rice from their pantry, fresh produce from their fridge, and maybe even some flowers if you get there early enough...
You can nearly taste the dream that Myles and Rachael made a reality in the early pandemic, and it all began when they first met working at a Nordic fine dining restaurant in Brooklyn. Congrats, Kinship, on receiving the 2023 Farmer Champion Award for Top Local Spend.
Top Local Spend Award
When you walk into Evergreen Butcher and Baker in the Kirkwood neighborhood of Atlanta, everything is on display. The gorgeous, elaborate pastries, the technically sound loaves of bread, the butcher counter with hand-written signs poked into the cuts of beef, pork, and deli meats. The place has a perennial aura. The whole staff – butchers and bakers — quietly but efficiently move through the open workspace with large tubs of flour and huge trays of eggs, mathematically cutting animals into pieces for sale or to be ground or processed into pate and more.
On Sundays at one o’clock in the afternoon, the team is usually slinging cheeseburgers to a line of hungry, eager fans. Make no mistake, this well-oiled machine is solely fueled by Emma and Sean Schake’s steadfast dedication to their respective crafts – baking and whole-animal butchery. The Schakes have a true desire to work in the shop as often as they can.
Their shared values of sourcing food locally, along with creating a healthy work environment that teaches their staff these culinary traditions, leave a lasting impression that extends beyond Evergreen’s home in Kirkwood, Atlanta. This is Evergreen Butcher and Baker’s second time winning the 2023 Farmer Champion Award for Top Local Spend, and we couldn’t be prouder to have them as a member of our Farmer Champion family.
Farmer Champion Community Award, chosen in partnership with The Working Farms Fund
The Farmer Champion Community Award started in 2022 when we expanded our programming and realized that there were plenty of Farmer Champions who deserved recognition beyond local food procurement for their contributions to the good food community. We also wanted to highlight community partner organizations that we admire.
This year, we partnered with the Working Farms Fund, a project from the Conservation Fund, that protects at-risk farmland and creates a patient and equitable pathway to affordable farm ownership for next-generation farmers. The Working Farms Fund allows for more resilient regional food systems to take root across the nation, which can properly feed thriving local economies by supporting the expansion of sustainable agriculture and providing increased access to healthy, nutritious foods. In Georgia, Love is Love Cooperative Farm, Atlanta Harvest, Global Growers Network, Little Fox Farm, Pride Road, and Snapfinger Farm all expanded their operations through the Working Farms Fund.
Together, we chose our 2023 Farmer Champion Community Award winner – Little Tart Bakeshop. Little Tart Bakeshop was founded by Sarah O’Brien and has grown from a single stand at a farmers’ market into three storefronts across southeast Atlanta while continuing to sell to farmers markets around the city.
We chose Little Tart Bakeshop because of their outstanding commitment to supporting their community however they can. From hosting an annual “Cookie Grab” in support of Planned Parenthood Southeast to co-founding Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice, an organization giving financial support to Black-owned food businesses in the South, Sarah has made her mark in service to her fellow community members. Little Tart has participated in Wholesome Wave Georgia’s annual Southern Chef’s Potluck and even held a fundraiser for the Georgia Organics Farmer Fund in the wake of 2022’s Winter Storm Elliott.
Sarah and her team understand the role they can play in uplifting their friends, family, and neighbors through the power of delicious pastries. Georgia Organics and the Working Farms Fund are happy to present Little Tart Bakeshop with the 2023 Farmer Champion Community Award!
Sarah O’Brien, founder of Little Tart Bakeshop, photographed by Daniel Barcos.
All videos were created in collaboration with Xerophile Studios.