Full Circle Real Estate Group: Athens Real Estate, Sustainable Real Estate

As an avid viewer of Bravo's cooking competition reality show, Top Chef, for all eight seasons, I could not be more excited to learn that local Chef Hugh Acheson, of Five and Ten and The National, has been named the show's newest judge!

It was just announced yesterday that Acheson and Bam! man Emeril Lagasse will join the show's original judges, Gail Simmons, Padma Lakshmi and head judge Tom Colicchio for the Emmy-winning show's ninth season.

Acheson came in fifth earlier this year when he competed on Top Chef Masters, a spin-off show where well-known chefs compete for their favorite charities. His one-liners and personality on the show obviously garnered the attention of the show's producers.

The ninth season started filming in June and will take place in Austin, San Antonio and Dallas.

A local chef is rehabbing the old Amoco station at 815 N. Chase Street in the Boulevard neighborhood to open Heirloom Café & Fresh Market, a community-centered restaurant with a focus on sustainability and local food. The restaurant is set to open in late spring.

Heirloom is owned by Jessica Rothacker, a former sous chef at Farm 255 and pastry chef at Ike & Jane, and her father. Jessica has been passionate about food, specifically local food systems and sustainability for many years. She’s also a graduate of The Art Institute of Atlanta. Jessica is a board member of the local food activism non-profit PLACE, whose mission is to promote a strong accessible local food culture in Athens. During her time working with PLACE, Jessica has formed strong relationships with local growers and activists that would like to see the Athens food community thrive.

Jessica said it is Heirloom’s goal to become a community centered restaurant, focused on supporting the burgeoning local food community, preserving food traditions, and providing a high quality product and service in a neighborly environment.

Here’s the scoop from Jessica on the meaning behind the restaurant’s name and additional information about the concept and menu:

We are proud to announce our sponsorship of the Athens Farmers Market this year. The Market is an organization of local farmers, craftspeople and volunteers working to make local naturally grown food, crafts and works of art available for the good of all.

Make sure you visit the Market, located at Bishop Park, Saturday mornings from 8am to Noon. Click HERE for more information, including a list of what will be available each week. You'll also see a link to the Market website at the bottom of our homepage.

Go get your veggies and support our local farmers!

Backyard chicken coops in urban areas have been springing up more and more lately. As education about our troubled food system and the inhumane treatment of chickens in factory farms spreads, home owners are considering raising their own chickens for eggs, meat and fertilizer right in their very own backyards.

Although local laws prohibit farm animals and food crops in urban areas, the state legislature is considering a bill that would override those local laws and prohibit regulations on chickens, goats, rabbits or crops on private property, as long as they are raised or grown for personal consumption and don't violate any subdivision covenants, according to an article today in The Athens Banner-Herald. For more info on the bill, click HERE.

If you're wondering what kinds of chickens are good for backyard-living, check out this article in Mother Earth News.

UGA's Grady School of Journalism produced a new video explaining how Athens Locally Grown works. Check it out HERE and learn more about their online farmer's market and easy system for getting your veggies locally!

You can visit Athens Locally Grown online HERE.

Make sure you go down to Bishop Park this Saturday between 8am and Noon to check out a wide variety of locally grown produce, food vendors, free-range and  local poultry, live music and a much larger crafts section. This year's selection is supposed to be much larger, so bring a lot of reusable bags to carry your loot home.

For more info, click HERE.

Most of us, used to shopping in grocery stores that provide produce from around the world in all seasons, have lost touch with our local growing cycles. Just because you can buy lettuce all year round, doesn't mean that lettuce can be grown all year round in your region.

While the convenience and nutrition that comes from access to a wide variety of fruits and vegetables is nice, the environmental impact of shipping all those foods across the country or world can be steep. And many of us want to support local farms -- and the rural landscape -- by purchasing locally grown foods.

To help, Natural Resources Defense Council has created a new widget that allows you to search for seasonal produce by state and season. It won't tell you if that asparagus in the supermarket was actually grown locally, but it will tell you if it could have been, based on local growing conditions. It's a good place to start for anyone trying to reduce their "food miles" and a useful tool for anyone curious about where food comes from.

Want to know what you should be eating NOW in Athens, GA? Go here to get the widget in your favorite format -- then add it to your Yahoo! Widgets, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, blogs, bookmarks, and more. Source: The Daily Green News

A local guy named Kevin Yates recently started up a consulting business, Hungry Gnome Gardenscapes, to help people plan and maintain home vegetable gardens.

Click HERE to read an article in this week's Flagpole about Athens' growing demand for organic, local and sustainable foods and how Kevin is meeting the demand.