By Becky Billingsley

Monday, July 30, 2012, Conway – Clemson Extension is publishing a guide to fresh local food sources, and agent Blake Lanford needs restaurant information.

Lanford and other Clemson Extension agents are compiling a local food guide, likely to be called the Waccamaw/Pee Dee Local Food Passport. Part of the guide will highlight restaurants serving fresh local foods.

“One of the features of the guide will be recipes provided by local chefs that utilize fresh local ingredients that may be acquired from local farms,” Lanford says. “We have a good idea of the Fresh on the Menu restaurants in the region, but beyond that, we are not certain how many restaurants there are in the Pee Dee Region…that serve dishes made with local foods.”

That region, Lanford says, encompasses the counties of Horry, Georgetown, Williamsburg, Florence, Marion, Marlboro, Dillon, Chesterfield and Darlington.

Any restaurant in these counties that serve dishes using local foods can contact Lanford to be included in the guide. He also wants to feature recipes from 10 of these restaurants.

This first-ever regional local food guide is being released at the same time Clemson Extension launches its local foods certification program called Waccamaw Grown.

“This program will certify farms that produce and sell products here in the Waccamaw Pee Dee Region and identify restaurants that are carrying those products, very similar to Fresh on the Menu,” Lanfor said.

Learn more about the Waccamaw Grown program HERE. It is free for local food producers to utilize.

In all, the Waccamaw/Pee Dee Local Food Passport will include many businesses that provide locally grown and produced foods.

“The end result will be a hard copy directory and a searchable Web-based directory,” Lanford says. “The information will be free to the consumer and feature listing for the following: farmers markets, U-pick operations, restaurants that serve local food, grocers that carry local foods, specialty product producers, wineries, distributors, roadside stands and more.”

A model for the Web-based directory is the Pee Dee Agritourism Passport project, which can be seen at http://peedee.agritourism.illinois.edu/main/results/horry.

Any local restaurant serving fresh local foods that wants to be listed in the Waccamaw/Pee Dee Local Food Passport and possibly have a recipe included can contact Black Lanford at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or at (843) 365-6715 Ext. 115.