Category Archives: NOFA

Connecticut, locavore, NOFA, organic, politics

CT NOFA 2008 Annual Meeting

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Last January, I attended a talk by Michael Pollan in Madison, CT. The event included a Farmer’s Market, which included a CT NOFA display booth.They asked if I wanted to join and I admitted that I was not a farmer, just an eater. They said that was fine and I’ve been a member since. Membership in this organization has been particularly rewarding since it led me to local wheat, the 34th Annual NOFA Conference, At UMASS, Amherst, and most recently, CT NOFA’s 2008 Organic Harvest Celebration & Annual Meeting.

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.

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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.

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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.

Eat Local Challenge, locavore, NOFA

Final October 2008 Eat Local Challenge Post

The October 2008 Eat Local Challenge is coming to an end and I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t have a slew of gourmet local meals to share here. I’m disappointed that I actually ate more “away” meals this month than the month before simply because that’s the way the calendar played out with social events and food prep and storage activities. I found it rather ironic that with the business of storing up for the winter, I ate cheese and apples for dinner quite a bit this month! It was a great month for apples, though.

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!

NOFA, organic

PLU Stickers

At the NOFA Conference this summer, I learned that those stickers on produce mean more than I thought. I thought the PLU stickers were for checkout folks who really don’t know their fruits and veggies or a convenience for the self-checkout. It turns out they also give you a clue as to how the food was grown.

  • 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.

farms, NOFA, organic, raw milk

Raw Milk Detour

Sometimes, life just takes you to wonderful places.

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) .