field notes: news & resources for re-linking the food chain

Very cool infographic from 1 Block Off the Grid.

(via Mark Bittman’s weekly New York Times food roundup.)

I was quite sure of myself, telling him that the way he had been doing things
for 50 years was all wrong.

From guest contributor Rebecca Noffsinger: My grandfather, Howard Wing, with his three children: my aunts Norma (the blond on the left) and Martha (the braids on the right), and my father Paul Wing on his father's lap steering.

I put my first organic garden in several years ago. My plans were pretty ambitious, so my father agreed to help on groundbreaking day. He drove 120 miles from our family’s small dairy farm to bring the rototiller and bales of straw I needed. We spent the day working together.

We butted heads a little bit. He is firmly planted in the conventional farming world, with its nutrient rations and chemical controls. Now as Dad helped spread bone meal and greensand on the fresh soil in my yard, there was some grumbling going on. Where are you going to get your nitrogen without any N-P-K? Are you sure you don’t want to Roundup to get rid of weeds?

And with a new convert’s hubris I explained to him the reasoning and science behind going chemical-free. I was quite sure of myself, telling him that the way he had been doing things for 50 years was all wrong. After a while Dad quieted down.

As we were spreading the groundcover seed, he said thoughtfully, “My dad used to plant buckwheat,” and told me what he could remember of how my grandfather farmed when my father was a child. read on

I’ve been looking at visualizations of local food systems and ran across Aaron Newton’s 2007 post on the bullseye diet. It’s one of the clearest, most pragmatic approaches to being conscious about eating food that’s produced closer to home – while taking into account the realities of our global food system. Making good food choices can be complicated – but this approach simplifies the process.

Newton, who co-wrote A Nation of Farmers, …needed a conceptual way to organize my increasingly entangled way of thinking about local food…imagine sourcing your food as a good game of darts where the dart board represents your geographical region. A great shot ends up in the bullseye- your own home- eating food you have grown yourself. As you move outwards on the board, your next nearest food source is usually your best bet. How much food can you grow in your neighborhood? How about buying food from a farmer just outside of town? Can you get other foods from your surrounding region? How much can you obtain from within your own state? The idea is that the closer to home – the closer to the bullseye – the better.

Sharon Astyk, co-author of A Nation of Farmers, adds:  Like a darts game, you won’t always hit your circle. But with practice, you can get a little closer every time. The more food you create in your community, the better off we all are.

The White House has posted a video about the progress and impact of the garden.

Michelle: “The garden is really an important introduction to what I hope will be a new way that our country thinks about food.”

White House Chef Sam Kass: “Thomas Jefferson, more than any one man, changed the way we eat in this country and the way we grow food.  When his ambassadors would go out in the world, he would ask them to bring back seeds.  And he’s the first person to start seasonal growing, that is something people are coming back to now and thinking about ways to use a diversity of crops and keep  growing throughout the year.”

via The Ethicurean

Obama Foodorama writes of the “under the radar” coordination of the White House efforts with Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.  Merrigan’s recent memo, Harnessing USDA Rural Development Programs to Support Local and Regional Food Systems, takes an “imagine the possibilities” approach to three USDA funding programs that, as Eddie Gehman Kohan points out, has an echo of Michelle Obama:

Imagine an NGO receiving USDA grant money to construct a community kitchen where farmers drop off produce and families join cooking classes that teach about healthy eating while everyone prepares fresh nutritious meals to bring home…Imagine a community using USDA money to construct an open-sided structure to house a farmers market…Imagine a school using USDA loan money to set up cold storage as part of a larger effort to retrofit the school cafeteria to buy produce directly from farmers and return cooking capacity for school lunch…Imagine…

I was talking to a new gardener who’s dealing with a healthy crop of tomatoes right now and doesn’t have time to can or cook them. She’s been giving the extras to friends and family, but wants to save some for the winter.

The quickest solution:  wash and dry the tomatoes, put them in a freezer bag and stash them in the freezer until you’re ready to cook them.  When you take them out of the bag, run the tomatoes under warm water and the skins will fall right off.

Whether you’re growing your own food or shopping the farmers markets, August and September are months of abundance, and you can easily freeze local produce to enjoy through the winter.  My five core freezer foods are blueberries, tomatoes, basil, corn and winter squash.  They freeze well and easily last until the next year’s harvest.
read on for how to’s and recipes…