Category Archives: growing

Peas be with you

The cooperative event between Debra Tyler’s Motherhouse and Bluestone Farm Living Arts Center was billed as such:

Women’s Wisdom: Sacred Agriculture

Mar 16,2013  –  Time:  9:00 am – 4:00 pm

Motherhouse and Bluestone Farm invite all women to join in a full day celebration of our connection to the earth through sacred agriculture. We’ll share our farming herstories, rituals, pea planting, pot-luck lunch, earth blessing way of the council, drumming circle and more.

In case you’ve never thought of sacred and agriculture together, here’s a good short read on the spirituality of farming. In case you don’t readily picture women when you think of farming, consider that the first farmers some 8-10,000 years ago were likely women and that the fastest growing group of those entering farming today are women.

My apologies for the pictures below. I used a phone (which is not a camera, despite what they say) and I was so caught up in the event, I forgot all about an illustrative progression. There are much better shots over at the Bluestone Farm Fans Facebook page and at Motherhouse’s blog.

We began with a fire and some food, mostly homemade from scratch. When I say from scratch, I mean the cheese spread was made from cream from their own cows. From scratch.

We blessed and sorted the dry peas, which are both food and seeds. These peas are not your garden variety peas, but a pea that’s more like a bean (whose name I should have written down but didn’t). Although much smaller, they have culinary attributes similar to a garbanzo, yet thrive in our climes. We were sorting through them to find the best specimens to plant—those that would produce the best plants. We prepared the beds, put up fences for the plants to climb, and planted the pea seeds in the still-frozen Earth.

planting_2 planting_1

We visited with the cows.

cows_1 cows_2

We ate a fabulous pot luck lunch.

eating

We smudged with sage, we drummed, we spoke.

drumming_2 drumming_1

While I left exhausted, it was a most excellent day. This was the inaugural event of the space that had previously been a school, which is now something new. It was a pleasure to be part of the energy transfer.

TEDx Manhattan

If you missed the TEDx Manhattan event on Changing the Way We Eat, you can catch the videos from the three sessions here.

  • Session 1: Inform
  • Session 2: Educate
  • Session 3: Empower

As you might imagine, some speakers were better than others. Here are some of my notes and observations, by no means exhaustive.

  • One of our issues is that governmental health departments do not have the kinds of resources that fast food companies do. Unfortunately, when we “shrink government,” our protection gets shrunk, not waste and fraud.
  • With respect to advertising and metrics, Anna Lappe told junk food corporations: “My kids, all our kids, are none of your business.”
  • Agreed with and loved Annemarie Colbin (of Natural Gourmet) until she said “Good food should be fresh and natural–not canned or frozen” (because they don’t have the right chi). No putting by?! Annemarie, this is how we have local fruits and veggies in the Northeast throughout the dark days of winter, chi notwithstanding.
  • We should insist that industrial producers pay for their damage!
  • People (eaters) need to be willing to pay what food is worth–really worth–without subsidies.
  • Shout out to our own Michel Nischan of the Dressing Room and Wholesome Wave.
  • Check out Founding Gardeners

a fascinating look at the revolutionary generation from the unique and intimate perspective of their lives as gardeners, plantsmen and farmers.

For the founding fathers, gardening, agriculture and botany were elemental passions, as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating.

  • Steve Wing, in his talk about factory farming, said we “We have to change policies to help local residents near factory farms. Not just eat local.” He probably didn’t mean to say “just” in that tone. Eating locally DOES matter and an achievable first step for many. In fact, if everyone did it, factory farming would be out of business! I believe (and hope) that his point was that we can do more. P.S. Locavores DO eat global food–just not the items that grow well in our local or regional food shed.
  • Farm to Freezer is an incredibly fabulous idea
  • With respect to food banks, Jeff Bridges astutely noted that, “Charity’s a great thing, but it’s not the way to end hunger.” As he pointed out, we aren’t funding the military through charity.
  • David McInerney of Fresh Direct brought out his farmers!

Overall, it was a positive event and we have much work to do.

Harvesting Garlic

I’m probably the last one on the block, so to speak, but I finally dug up my garlic today. In November, I planted cloves from bulbs from Maple Bank Farm, Holbrook Farm, Sport Hill Farm, and Cherry Grove in Newtown, CT. (Yes, I was late getting them in the ground too!) Anyway, today was the day to get them out of the ground.

Garlic yield from one 4x4 raised bed.

I get little bulbs because I live in the woods and photosynthesis requires photo to synthesize  (from the Greek photo, light, and synthesis, putting together). But this year, the bulbs were even smaller because of an experiment: I cut the scapes off half of them and allowed the other half to go on creating that bulbil. As everyone says, the garlic bulb is much smaller when you don’t cut the scape. Much. They aren’t kidding. However, that bulbil is edible and it’s mild enough to eat raw (like say, on a salad) even if you’re not a raw garlic aficionado.

The garlic is drying now, in a dark place with a fan running 24/7. It’s obviously not enough to get me through the year (this being my personal agricultural experimental station and not a real farm). Happily, the real farmers are beginning to put theirs out. Garlic is one thing you want to get locally if you live in the north.

In addition to being my favorite food flavoring, garlic is said to have tremendous health benefits. (Notice I wrote “is said to have” to avoid making any unsubstantiated health claims. I can’t risk having U.S. Marshals seizing my stash.) Garlic has an antibiotic called allicin that has antibacterial and anti-fungal properties. The antibacterial is the kind that only kills bad bacteria and those bacteria do not develop a resistance to it. Additionally, it’s an antioxidant. While it does not reduce cholesterol (if that’s something you feel is valuable) it is said to do the things that make a low cholesterol number desirable: cleaning arteries and reducing plaque. Note: I am not a doctor and this is not medical advice. Bottom line, anecdotal folklore or not, I loves me some garlic!!

Garlic festivals

CT Garlic & Harvest Festival
October 8 & 9, 2011 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Bethlehem, CT

Hudson Valley Garlic Festival
September 24  & 25, 2011, (Sat. 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.)
Saugerties, NY

Annual Garden State Garlic Gathering and Festival
October 1 & 2, 2011, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Olde Lafayette Village, Lafayette, NJ

 

CT Garlic & Harvest Festival
October 8-9, 2011 in Bethlehem, CT
Hudson Valley Garlic Festival

September 24 & 25, 2011, Saugerties, NY

 

CT Garlic & Harvest Festival

October 8-9, 2011 in Bethlehem, CT

http://garlicfestct.com/

 

Hudson Valley Garlic Festival

September 24 & 25, 2011, Saugerties, NY

http://www.hudsonvalleygarlic.com/

 

 

Grains Week 2010

Well whaddya know, it’s Grains Week in the northeast. From GrowNYC:

What started three years ago as a conversation about how to urge Greenmarket bakers to incorporate local flour into their baked goods has bloomed into a full-blown initiative to revitalize and sustainably scale up the production of grains in the Northeast.

Incredible! Wish I’d known about it sooner. I have northeast grains. I’d be making pasta and corn muffins all week. Still might.

There are a number of events scheduled to celebrate Grains Week, including a panel featuring my miller, Don Lewis.

Here’s a list of northeast grain resources (pdf) published by GrowNYC.