These are just a few of the noteworthy upcoming events listed in this issue:

• 10th Annual NOFA Course in Organic Land Care
• CT NOFA Getting Started in Organic Farming
• CT NOFA’s 28th Annual Conference ~ Sustaining Connecticut: Growing Local, Eating Healthier, Living Smarter

Their tagline is “Cultivating an Organic Connecticut since 1982.” They were organic before organic was cool. Just to put it in perspective, the U.S. President in 1982 thought ketchup was a vegetable.

Being a member of this organization has proven to be rewarding. Here’s what membership gets you:

• Gleanings, a quarterly publication full of Connecticut organic agriculture news and coming events, regional NOFA activities, educational programs and practical knowledge.
• The Natural Farmer, published four times per year, containing news and features on organic agriculture throughout the seven states which make up NOFA.
• Reduced admission to CT NOFA events and the Annual NOFA Summer Conference.
• The Annual CT NOFA Farm & Food Guide.
• The Annual NOFA Guide to Organic Land Care.
• A statewide and regional voice for your organic values.

The Natural Farmer alone would be worth the membership fee!

Consider joining this exceptional organization. You do not have to be a farmer to be a member!

I got a fresh chicken at Holbrook Farm from a local farm in Roxbury—not sure why they didn’t say where. The chicken came with everything (head, feet, and the innards neatly packed in a baggie). We don’t generally get fresh chicken in CT because we don’t have slaughterhouses so farmers who raise meat products send their items over the border to NY to get processed. Part of the processing deal is that everything is flash-frozen and vacuum-packed, lest a germ get out into the population.

I cut up the bird into parts. Those in the picture got grilled. I sprinkled some salt, pepper and paprika on them. The paprika is from Amy LeBlanc’s Whitehill Farm in East Wilton, Maine. (I came upon Amy and her paprika at the NOFA Summer Conference 2008.)

I saved the breasts for some cutlets in the future and the rest of the parts got Ziplocked so I can make my own broth.

Here’s my dinner: a grilled chicken thigh and spinach sauteéd with ramps (both from Holbrook Farm).

For dessert, strawberries from Pell Farms in Somers, CT

The program began with a farmers market and Expo, included a pot luck lunch from the local harvest, went on to the annual business meeting and election of officers, and closed with the keynote speaker.

Farmer’s Market

My market take:

• pears, Macoun apples, and cider from High Hill Orchards
• celeriac and rutabaga from Wayne’s Organic in Oneco, CT
• bee’s wax candles and skin care products from Three Sisters Farms
• raspberry jam from Hay House

Business Meeting

James Roby, president of CT NOFA (and owner of Roby’s Organics in Berlin, CT) shared his vision for the organization: that CT NOFA should become a leading educator of farmers, saying “the strength of a community lies in its ability to feed itself.” Noting that there are 88 different health districts in Connecticut, he challenged us to educate ourselves on our town’s ordinances and regulations and that if there was something we could not do that seemed like something we should be allowed to do (for example, own a Berkshire pig), to find out why and get involved.

Keynote Address

This year’s keynote speaker was Claire Criscuolo, founder and owner of Claire’s Corner Copia, an extremely popular organic restaurant in New Haven, CT, who’s topic was Good Food is Never Cheap, and Cheap Food is Never Good.

She spoke of the tremendous (and not so well-hidden) costs of cheap food: disease, environmental, and economic. She pointed out that while local and organic foods had a higher price point, they also had more features than other foods and that our job was to market those features. She quoted Michael Pollan’s Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief :at the end of World War II, home gardens were supplying 40% of the produce consumed in America. She called on farmers to teach people how to grow their own victory gardens, which, rather than competing with local produce, would foster an appreciation of what it took to grow good, real food.

She also shared information about The Growing Connection Earth Box project, which is a solution to  situations where planting gardens in the ground may not be safe or feasible for a variety of reasons and also provides the ability to bring the garden into the classroom.

The only disappointment of the day was that I forgot my bag of a dozen red hot paper lantern peppers in a little brown bag under my seat.

I am still happy to be a locavore and am not imagining all the exotic foods I can return to on Saturday. In fact, I’ll be going to CT NOFA’s 2008 Organic Harvest Celebration & Annual Meeting.

Some dinner highlights since the last post included a beef short rib ragout (beef from Stuarts) with homemade fettuccine (Wild Hive whole wheat flour from local wheat. Really!)

Another dinner included a sampling of squashes I have never tried before. Here’s my current squash collection:

I cooked the Cinderella squash and a Turban squash. Since I’d never tasted either of these before, I left them plain to experience their natural flavors. I did half of each in the microwave and roasted the other halves in the oven.

The Cinderella squash had a mild chestnut like flavor. We had this with a ham steak from Ox Hollow Farm and I found that the flavor of the ham overpowered the squash. Eaten by itself, the squash had plenty of flavor of its own.

The Turban squash didn’t have much flavor at all–in fact it tasted like the outdoors (leaves, acorns, that sort of thing). I ended up stir-frying roasted cubes in the ham steak pan, deglazing the pan with apple cider (from Park Lane Cider Mill,  in New Milford, CT) and sprinkling a bit of cinnamon. Quite tasty after that.

As you can tell, we’ve quite a bit more squash to consume and I suspect we’ll get more!

Thanks to Jen for organizing this challenge!

• Conventionally grown produce bears a four digit code.
• Organic produce bears a five digit code, leading with the number 9.
• Genetically modified food produce bears a five digit code, leading with the number 8.

I buy all of my produce from farms and farmers markets and none of it has a sticker. So, I just ask the farmer and they tell me.

By the way, the ONLY way to ensure your corn is not GMO is to buy organic corn.

We left the NOFA Conference and segued into our summer vacation: visiting friends and enjoying some down time in the great state of VT. I decided to pick up some raw milk at a farm along the way–well, slightly off the beaten path. This required us to move our driving plans off of a major interstate and on to a local “highway.” (It has a number, so it’s a highway…other than that, it’s a back road.) Good move–the scenic route was the better way.

Chase Hill Farm is in Warwick, MA (Google map) and has organic raw milk, farmstead cheeses, grass-fed beef and veal, and whey-fed pork. They are members of NOFA MA (that’s how I found them–in the NOFA guide!). The milk has an excellent creamline and tastes great. For more information, see the dairy page of the NOFA MA site (scroll down to the bottom of the page) .

The workshop topics were varied enough that anybody could have attended this conference and found something of interest. There were practical and instructional “how to” topics, environmental topics, political and theoretical topics, and more. It was anything but boring!

Kudos to the UMass Amherst kitchen staff that served exclusively organic meals, with Saturday night’s dinner being both organic and local!

I’ll probably post more about the specific workshops I attended and my impressions of the keynote speakers in upcoming blog entries.