Bells Bend farmers & Yazoo Brewing Co. giving a more progressive meaning to "development"

The Tennessean has the good news on the first locally brewed beer to be brewed with locally grown hops:

this is the first time [farmer Eric Wooldridge] has produced a substantial amount of hops for brewing .... The next growing season, Wooldridge said, he plans to plant even more hops, and Yazoo intends to continue making beer with them.

“They’ve found a varietal they can grow out there,” said Neil McCormick, Yazoo’s director of marketing. “And the thing with hops is they keep coming back stronger and stronger.”

Meanwhile, the farm and Yazoo will celebrate their first batch with the Bells Bend Hops Festival and Square Dance on Saturday. It’s an event Wooldridge also hopes to grow — maybe even incorporating home brewers — in the years to come.

For those who can’t make the party, McCormick said some of the 18 kegs of Bells Bend Preservation Ale also will be served at the brewery’s annual Family Picnic and eighth anniversary bash on Oct. 1 ....

with its hops grown just a 20-minute drive from downtown, Bells Bend Preservation Ale serves as a reminder that we’re a town both cosmopolitan and farm-country.

“It’s a good way to raise awareness,” Hall said, “of what they’re trying to do in Bells Bend.”

There is a fledgling agricultural/urban market here for growing, producing, and buying locally that does not need to be interrupted with cockeyed developers' urbanized designs for Scottsboro-Bells Bend. This is the kind of conservationist alternative consistent with the vision and the community plans of May Town Center opponents who were once hated on and charged with "holding back progress." The haters should acknowledge that local sustainability and small-scale niche growth is progress consistent with community-based principles.