In case you missed it, a few weeks ago USDA launched the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative. www.usda.gov/knowyourfarmer
This is a pretty big deal for the local foods movement, and has potential to have some real impact in developing local food systems and supporting small family farms. It’s also impressive that USDA a) acknowledged that people are interested in local foods and b) are actually considering cashing in on the opportunity. From what I know of the food system, this is a rather large departure from past agricultural policies. The initiative also plans to promote farm-to-school projects, which just so happens to be what I do for a living. Keep an eye on this. Hopefully it will be a worthwhile project.
I’ve been enjoying the creativity and new experiences that come with eating seasonally. “Well, we have a whole bunch of tomatoes right now. What should I do with them?” I don’t have enough to can for salsa or spaghetti sauce (which is my hope, eventually). Because I’ve been focused on eating what comes out of our garden and what’s available at the farmer’s market, we’ve had basil pesto, pico de gallo, and now bruschetta. I’ve never made any of these things before, and they’ve all been amazing.
The bruschetta is up there with the pesto on one of the best things I have ever made. I wish I’d taken a picture of the pesto, but I think it didn’t even make it out of the food processor. I ate half of it before Charlie even got home, and we polished the rest off with dinner.
I’ve recently introduced butter into my cooking. I know, how unusual. I never liked the taste of butter while I was growing up. Maybe we just always had low quality butter at home (sorry, Mom), but it just never tasted that good. That, combined with the saturated fat issue, and I became more of a margarine person. (Only the NO TRANS FAT type, of course, for those who think margarine is the devil. We can have this debate at another time.) Anyway, Charlie refused to give up his butter, so we always had some in the house. And now that I’ve tried cooking with it a few times, the margarine is gone.
Last night when I was cooking up the bruschetta (with lots of butter, oh my), Charlie was like, “Who are you? Where is my wife??” And the buttery bruschetta was totally amazing. BUT, not something that we should eat every day. All in moderation.
We went to see Food Inc. last night at the Ragtag, our local indie film theatre. I was a little apprehensive going into it about what I was going to see, particularly regarding animal production. I had heard from the Urban Homsteaders that the animal production portion of it was particularly disturbing. And it was, but not as bad as I had imagined it could be.
It’s certainly not a kid’s movie and has a PG-13 rating for good reason. But I think what was probably the most graphic shot was actually of chicken slaughter being done humanely. It was blood and guts, but not the purposeless type of blood and guts you see in violent movies. This at least was real, and brought home the fact that if we’re going to eat meat, the animal does have to be killed somehow. We’re so far removed from our food source that seeing an animal get slaughtered seems graphic and horrendous instead of just a fact of life and a step in how that chicken gets on your plate. Maybe we should be more aware of how that happens so we don’t purposely put a veil over our eyes and allow the food production practices to occur that we are having to deal with now.
I had never seen a CAFO before, and it was interesting to see the parallel of corn fields as far as the eye can see and cattle lots as far as the eye can see. And the cattle are fed corn.
It wasn’t as revolutionary as I thought it might be, but that may also be because I’m fairly familiar with the topic and read about these things on a daily basis. It made me really happy that a) we don’t eat a lot of meat, b) almost all of the meat that I purchase now comes from local sources and c) I’m beginning to grow our own fruits and vegetables and d) I’ve been able to buy good local produce at the Wednesday farmer’s market. By the way, after the movie a panel discussion was held and a man who is involved with our local Columbia Farmer’s Market mentioned that our market has higher attendance in 4 hours on Saturday than the average Walmart does in an entire day. That’s pretty awesome.
People in Columbia are pumped about this type of thing. Last night’s show was almost completely sold out. It makes me feel like this is where I was meant to live.
Another aside: it was also brought up that Hy-Vee is going to be phasing out their Health Market section and integrating those products into the regular aisles. This could be good, I guess, because then they’re with all the other similar products, but it could also make them harder to find. When this was mentioned in the panel discussion, the ENTIRE audience let out a loud GASP OF HORROR. Like, every person there. (This was Charlie’s favourite part of the evening.) BUT, then the storyteller went on to say that the manager of our Columbia store, though, has said that because the Health Market in the Columbia store is so successful, Columbia Hy-Vee will be the ONLY store in the entire country to retain the Health Market. Yup, hippie town.
So, yes. Go see the movie. It’s a must-see. The point was also brought up, though, that this type of film is often preaching to the choir. Get someone to go to the movie who’s not interested in this type of thing or doesn’t know much about food production or why buying local is important. If you’re not aware of what’s going on, the movie probably will be revolutionary. I had already determined to grow as much of my own food as I can and buy local as much as I can. But the film just helps solidify why it’s worth it to make these changes.
Farm biodiversity is disappearing. If we would just eat endangered crops and livestock now, restoring their role in the food supply, we could save them from extinction.
It’s been a long time since I saw this. Good stuff.
I like the Urban Homesteaders’ philosophy on homegrown vs. local vs. organic:
If not FROM BACKYARD then locally produced.
If not LOCALLY PRODUCED, then Organic.
If not ORGANIC, then Family farm.
If not FAMILY FARM, then Local business.
If not a LOCAL BUSINESS, then Fair Trade.
As much as I want to be a farmer’s market groupie, it’s been challenging because the big market is on Saturday. Yesterday, though, I managed to make it to the short local Wednesday market (4-6pm) and was able to pick up lettuce, zucchini, yellow squash and cherry tomatoes. I’m excited about my first farmer’s market purchase.
Here’s an article about one of the food preservation classes that I’m signed up for. I missed this one last week because I was sick, but hopefully I’ll still be able to get all the information.
This week I took the first workshop in a series of three on food preservation. The first one was on freezing and drying, then we’ll have water bath canning and pressure canning.
In class this week the Extension Specialist demonstrated making freezer jam and gave us some recipes from Ball to make it. Apparently a new type of pectin has just come out such that you don’t have to use as much sugar in the jam.
So tonight I made my first attempt at making freezer jam! So excited. I made strawbery banana blueberry jam. It smells extremely scrumptious. I’m pretty pumped that I’ve started at least a simple form of food preservation. I’m really looking forward to learning about canning. So much fun!
I think if it weren’t for the recession, the local movement and the increased interest in growing your own, canning would be a dying art. I certainly didn’t know anything about it before a few months ago. I’m glad I have the opportunity to learn about it. Good job, Extension.
Includes some agricultural propaganda, but so worth a watch. It’s amazing what can be accomplished on a small suburban lot.
My most recent AMAZING discovery, thanks to these people: ollas (oy-ya). 4000 years old, and still the best form of irrigation around.
Over time, modern systems were adopted, but these modern systems are not as efficient as irrigation by seepage from buried ollas. Modern systems, even surface drip irrigation systems loose more water to evaporation and more likely to clog than ollas. When ollas are used properly, plant roots will proliferate around the moist clay jar, intercepting water before it can move through the soil by capillary action. This water intercepted by plant roots will then be used in the plant transpiration stream. This results in almost 100% of applied irrigation water being absorbed by the plants.
AND, the Dervaes family are Sabbath-keepers and they tithe! Could it get any better??
A day of rest, a Sabbath request. We ask that wherever you may live to refrain from purchasing from this website between Friday sunset and Saturday sunset. (More info.)
Homegrown salad
