If there has ever been anything you wanted to know about farming, food or foodtopia, here's your chance to ask a farmer directly. Whether it's about regional crops, the benefits of local produce, growing produce, canning, raising livestock or how to select the perfect sweet potato, we can connect you to a local farmer to answer your question. Please note responses may take up to five days and could be posted online.

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Latest Ask a Farmer Questions:

Q: Is there any way I could pick up a weeks worth of vegetables without it costing me an arm and a leg? I'm on a fixed income, and have to be a little careful with expenses.
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Q: What are the main differences between meat that is local vs. meat that is organic? Is one better than the other, both in taste and health and in environmental impact?
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Q: I'm thinking of starting a backyard vegetable garden. Can you offer some tips and suggestions for easy-to-grow starter crops? 
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Q: I live in an apartment and would like to grow herbs in a container on my porch. What are my best options for success? Any I should avoid?
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Q: I have an herb garden high up on a private patio but ants have infultrated it, and seem especially to favor the cilantro. Are they harmful, to me and or the plants? Do I need to scrap the garden and begin again or is there a safe deterrant I can administer?
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Q: Will corn that is sold at discount stores to feed deer grow in a food plot? If so, do you have to soak the corn in water overnight to get it to sprout?
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Our panel of farm experts

Chris Owen Spinning Spider Creamery 4717 East Fork Road Marshall, NC Spinning Spider Creamery is a fully licensed farmstead dairy offering a variety of fresh and aged goat cheese. The Owen family hand crafts selected artisanal fresh, bloomy rind and raw milk aged cheeses. Spinning Spider Creamery cheeses and their goats have won recognition regionally.	Jamie Ager Hickory Nut Gap Farm 57 Sugar Hollow Rd. Fairview, NC Jamie and Amy Ager are the fourth generation to farm the 600 acres of Hickory Nut Gap Farm. On their 60 acres of pasture, they strive to mimic nature in a “perennial polyculture” that includes open fields and woodlands, grass-fed cattle, pastured turkeys and chickens, lambs and pigs, and even pastured egg production.
Walter Harrill Imladris Farm 45 Little Pond Rd. Fairview, NC Walter Harrill is owner and farmhand at Imladris Farm, a sixth generation sustainable farm in the community of Spring Mountain. Imladris grows blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries and processes them into handcrafted preserves, as well as growing shiitake mushrooms and rabbits for local chefs and individuals.	Alan Salmon Wildwood Herbal 817 Reems Creek Weaverville, NC Wildwood Herbal, located in the Reems Creek Valley of Weaverville, NC, has been growing 3 1/2" potted organic herb starts for 25 years. Wildwood Herbal has retail greenhouses located and also participates in the annual Asheville Herb Fest. Alan Salmon has been a teacher, TV garden show host and farmer.

Photos and biographies courtesy of Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project.

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