The Real Dirt: why we grow food

We keep swallowing up this land–where do we think our food is going to come from? –The Real Dirt on Farmer John

Posted by blanchak.

Part of my celebration/participation in the Eat Local Challenge for August (and let’s face it, this entire summer season of abundance) has been to finally watch all of those food-and-farm-ish documentaries that I heretofore have just pretended to have seen. Take One: King Corn (watch it) Take Two: The Real Dirt on Farmer John (definitely watch it). Any movie about food or farming that I watch now makes me cry.  Not love stories, birth stories, death stories. Farms. Food. The devastating reality that we are unravelling a large thread of the very fabric of our humanity–but what an inadequate metaphor. You can’t put a metaphor around the fact that we are losing the knowledge of how to feed ourselves, our neighbors, our community, our children! No just the bucolic wonder of picking fruit from living trees and digging potatoes out of the equally vital dirt–but the essential understanding of what dirt even is, what soil means us, for our survival. Kids should be pledging allegiance to the soil of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation atop the holy humus. If I have nightmares, they include this apocalyptic saga: we continue down past peak oil, we’ve destroyed precious ecosystems and the climate in the process, fertilizer becomes a thing of the past, and then we’re left with ravaged lands, barren lands without an iota of organic matter or a speck of any micronutrient. I don’t think the entire Midwest can lay fallow while we wait for the topsoil to rebuild. This is where that resolve comes in: we must grow food. I must grow food. Not just because of nightmare disaster sequences, but because I always want to leave people better fed than when I meet them, and the soil too.

All that said, do see Farmer John if you haven’t already–it’s a delightful and inspiring story of farm rehabilitation as is happening and needs to continue to happen everywhere in rural and urban America.

And come see FRESH on Friday!

Rabbits

by Patrick at Duck Fat and Politics

When I saw the last bite of dinner on my plate – a bean, a piece of onion, a fragment of tomato, and a morsel of rabbit, all of which was improved by a most fragrant sauce – I was glad we bought a trio of rabbits last fall and have spent the past nine months figuring out how to manage their waste, breed them successfully, and keep them comfortable in our erratic weather. Saturday afternoon we butchered our first batch of young rabbits: they were eleven weeks old and dressed out at about 2 ½ pounds apiece. I hung a green tarp along the fence to make sure none of our neighbors saw anything they didn’t want to. A few came over and showed an interest and I was glad to show them what we were doing. Likewise with our kids. I told them that their involvement was voluntary, and wasn’t surprised by their active participation. In addition to the work involved with bleeding, gutting, and skinning ten rabbits, we also dissected an eyeball, saw how poop travels through a body, cut open a stomach, cut a gall bladder to smell bile, began curing several pelts, and marveled at the texture of lungs. Like anything I don’t do frequently, butchering the first few took longer than the last ones. But, I was done in a few hours and now our fridge is full of fresh meat; I also have a big bowl full of livers that I’ll cook tomorrow. We were doing yard work again today and I didn’t plan a special first meal with our rabbit meat, so I fell back on the familiar. After sautéing garlic in a little duck fat, I browned a few back legs, which are much meatier than the front ones. Then a sliced onion and a good pour of an Alsatian riesling, which I cooked down. A little water and I covered the dutch oven with a heavy lid and let it braise awhile. I went into the garden and cut a few large sprigs of tarragon and thyme. I added them and continued. My wife picked a colander of birthday beans from this year’s bumper crop, and I stewed them with a tomato and a little swiss chard. Finally, a handful of fresh parsley on the rabbit and dinner was ready. Why am I willing to wait nine months for dinner? What is it about growing vegetables and raising, killing, and cooking animals that fascinates me so much? I was never a farm kid and doubt I’ll ever be one. But tasting that last forkful of dinner, all mixed up with rabbit juices and tarragon, I feel like I can look into the past and begin to understand some of what we’ve abandoned as we’ve shifted from an agrarian to a mass-marketed society. In a very short time we’ve lost languages, cultures, traditions and foodways. Cooking beyond a recipe calls for more than an ingredient list; it requires a certain understanding of – and access to – raw ingredients and cooking techniques, most of which can’t be purchased in a store. And the stuff isn’t fancy or expensive if it’s part of your life and environment – making cassoulet in France in 1609 certainly didn’t cost hundreds of dollars and multiple trips to Williams-Sonoma and other specialty stores. I want to keep some of these older food traditions an active part of my life and culture because I think they’re just as vulnerable and perishable as a language or an endangered species.

“Fresh” Showing for One Night Only in Northfield

Food has been in the news a lot lately, from problems with our food system to the struggles of farmers. A new film called FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are reinventing our food system. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision of our food and our planet’s future. FRESH addresses an ethos that has been sweeping the nation and is a call to action America has been waiting for.

Just Food Co-op, the Northfield Arts Guild, and the Cannon River Sustainable Farming Association Chapter will be showing the film “Fresh” at the Northfield Arts Guild Theater at 411 West 3^rd Street in Northfield on Friday, August 7 at 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30 p.m. Please purchase your tickets in advance to guarantee a seat).

The film will be followed by a lively panel discussion, moderated by local CSA farmer John Ostgarden. Panelists are Atina Diffley (Consultant, Organic FarmingWorks, and former farmer and co-founder of Gardens of Eagan), Matthew Fogarty (Executive Chef for Bon Appetit at St Olaf College. His crew serves 32,000 meals per week while fulfilling Bon Appetit’s mission to provide fresh food grown sustainably, and purchased locally whenever possible), and Erica Zweifel (Northfield City Council Member, Third Ward). Tickets are $10 and are available at Just Food Co-op (516 Water St S, Northfield) or online at www.freshthemovie.com. Seating is limited, and we expect to sell out, so get your tickets early!

FRESH empowers us to realize that our individual actions in fact do matter. Throughout the film we encounter the most inspiring people, ideas, and initiatives around the US. And thus, FRESH showcases real people first and foremost, connecting audiences not with facts and figures or apocalyptic policy analysis, but with personal stories of change.

Producer Ana Joanes is a Swiss-born documentary filmmaker whose work addresses pressing social issues through character-driven narratives. After traveling internationally to study the environmental and cultural impacts of globalization, she graduated from Columbia Law School in May 2000, awarded as a Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow. Thereafter, Ana created Reel Youth, a video production program for youth coming out of detention. In 2003, Ana and her friend Andrew Unger produced Generation Meds, a documentary exploring our fears and misgivings about mental illness and medication.  FRESH is Ana’s second feature documentary.

Among several main characters, FRESH features:

Will Allen – 6ft 7” former professional basketball player Will Allen is now one of the most influential leaders of the food security & urban farming movement. His farm and not-for-profit, Growing Power, have trained and inspired people in every corner of the US to start growing food sustainably. This man and his organization go beyond growing food. They provide a platform for people to share knowledge and form relationships in order to develop alter

natives to the industrial food system. Joel Salatin– world-famous sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, made famous by Michael Pollan (also in the movie) – author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Joel Salatin writes in his website that he is “in the redemption business: healing the land, healing the food, healing the economy, and healing the culture.” By closely observing nature, Joel created a rotational grazing system that not only allows the land to heal but also allows the animals to behave the way the were meant to – as in expressing their “chicken-ness” or “pig-ness”, as Joel would say. David Ball –supermarket owner, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy. With the rise of Wal-Mart and other big chains, David Ball saw his family-run supermarket dying, along with a once-thriving local farm community. So he reinvented his business, partnering with area farmers to sell locally-grown food and specialty food products at an affordable price. His plan has brought the local economy back to life.

FRESH empowers us to realize that our individual actions in fact do matter. Throughout the film we encounter the most inspiring people, ideas, and initiatives around the US. And thus, FRESH showcases real people first and foremost, connecting audiences not with facts and figures or apocalyptic policy analysis, but with personal stories of change.

Friday Night Dilly Beans, Grandma-Style

Most of my favorite memories of my grandmother are also memories of my favorite food. Inextricable from my thoughts of childhood summertime are lunches on my Grandma’s porch on Hubbard Lake (MI), thesun shimmering off the lake and through the wooded front yard onto the the round, red table set with midsummer royalty: Potato Salad. Sliced Tomatoes. Dilly Beans.

Certainly the pull home to Michigan, to my grandmother’s house, where I have yet to return this summer, was one reason, but it was not the only explanation for what I, a 21-year-old college student, did this past Friday night.

I pickled and frozed 14 quarts of green beans.

I know I know I know—I’m a college student. College = dining hall, foodfoodfood, 10+ choices every day, 3 times a day, all I could ever hope or care or not care to eat. And I’m canning? Strange? Perhaps. But to not seize the bounty of the seaon as a yong person with lots of time and little money seems stranger still. I am currently a single, childless, landless, unapprenticed undergrad, and while summer is certainly busy, these are beach days compared to the chaos of a usual term at Carleton.

So then, seeimg no reason to pay for a meal plan when I can merrily cook my own for a fraction of the price, and seeing no reason to buy Chilean beans and Californian dill in February when I’m got plenty of time to stock up with local produce now, I began the journey of filling my pantry. My goal? A cabinet of edible wonders before the first frost this fall. Here’s step one:

A Complete Recipe for Friday Night Dilly-Beaning

1. Go to the farmer’s market with a large bag. It definitely pays to be a regular customer. The farmer who I bought my beans from is the same woman I bought raspberries from last week and snap peas from the week before that. She certainly gave me a deal on the half-garbage-bag of beans I lugged away from her stand.

2. Recruit friends if this is going to be a team effort, or get some good music if you’re at it alone.

3. Imagine the finished product: a quart jar full of beans. At the bottom: snipped dill flowers and leaves, 3-4 cloves of garlic, 5-6 small wedges of onion. At the top: 2-3 more cloves of garlic & onion wedges. It’s filled with brine. Get enough of the above ingredients to suffice for your desired quantity of jars.

For my $20-Ace-Harware-canner-full of 7 quart-size jars I needed 3 heads of garlic, 6 small onions, 1 large bunch of flowering dill, and LOTS of beans (I froze everything I didn’t pickle). For the brine: 3 quarts of water, 2 cups of white vinegar, a scant 1c pickling or sea salt.

So then,

4. Clean and sterilize the jars in the dishwasher.

5. Clean the beans, snip off the ends, and snip in half if they are really long

6. Place dill flowers, garlic cloves, onion wedges and snipped dill leaves in the bottom of the jars. Fill with beans. *My friend suggested using foot-long beans and curling them inside the jars. I want to try this.

7. Bring water, vinegar and salt to a boil.

8. Simmer jar lids and rings.

9. Place jars in the rack of your canning pot. Fill each jar with boiling brine. Leave a half-inch of head space. Tighten rings and lids onto jars. Lower the rack into the canner.

10. Cover the jars with cold water. Bring water up to a boil and boil for 5 minutes.

11. Turn off heat, remove jars, let them cool and seal.

12. Suffer through a painful couple of months waiting to consume the beans. They are so much better after a couple of months on the shelf.

Birthday beans

by Patrick at Duck Fat and Politics

I first planted these beans in the summer of 2003. We went to Paris the previous fall and bought these beans, Facila is the variety, on our daughter’s first birthday. When they grew that first summer, we reminded her that these were her birthday beans, the ones we bought in Paris. She ate them with relish right off the plant. I saved seed from the best plants and the following spring planted them again. And here we are, harvesting birthday beans for the seventh time. And they’re still my daughter’s favorite.
This, perhaps, is how things get named. When I list these beans in the Seed Savers Yearbook I’ll document that the bean was originally named Facila, and that it’s a variety sold by Vilmorin, the old French seed house that’s taken over a large share of the world’s seed trade, but I may call them Birthday Beans instead. It’s as good a name as any I’ve heard for a bean. I love the story we tell each other every year, and how we say Birthday Bean with more enthusiasm than, say, “zucchini.” Our daughter was born on 9.12.01, and the moment she was born I saw proof that life is irrepressible, that life itself will bourgeon and blossom and will not fail, even when people do. And as these beans grow and nourish us each year, we, too, are renewed each time we save seed and plant it; we midwife the seed from one generation to the next.
Last night I picked a bowl-full for dinner. I blanched them very briefly – they were in boiling water for less than 30 seconds – because they’re so tender and fresh and I just wanted to brighten them up a bit. I quickly doused them in cold water and turned the burner on high. Into the saucier went a teaspoon of duck fat; as soon as it was hot I added the beans, fresh tarragon, and a sprinkling of fine sea salt. Two minutes from the garden to the table, full of green and family lore.

Blueberries

by Patrick at Duck Fat and Politics

We picked blueberries on Sunday, twenty-three pounds of them. My wife and I said to each other, “Wow, ninety-five dollars is a lot to spend on fruit.” I thought about all the pancakes we’ll eat, all the pies I’ll bake, and thought “Hey, my pies are probably ten-dollar pies, maybe even more when I use a lard/duck fat crust.” We’ll get our money’s worth. We’ll stain our lips and eat pie before bed and then again for breakfast. I’ll pour a blueberry compote over roast pork and bake whole berries into muffins; in March we’ll still be eating blueberry pancakes on weekend mornings. They’re all in the freezer now, two stacks of ziploc bags on the bottom shelf. Cup by overflowing cup and bag by bag, we’ll eat July the whole winter long. We picked on the very first day of the blueberry season because last year our vacation coincided with the season and when we returned it was over. We head to Maine next week and we’ll pick wild ones along the mountain trails; the lure of them has turned my youngest into an avid hiker. She’ll keep going if there are blueberries ahead, even if the trail is a difficult one.

Anticipating corn

Posted by Patrick at Duck Fat and Politics

Last year I wrote about corn and wondered why we don’t have a deep tradition of corn-based recipes for the month of August. If corn was native to China or France, I feel certain there’d be a whole cuisine that revolved around its seasonal abundance. And while I love corn on the cob, there ought to be richer food traditions that everyone knows and participates in. I know there are people out there who swear by a recipe or dish they know, but my question is, “Why don’t all of us know it?” Why haven’t we been able to forge a lasting culinary tradition when we’re surrounded by mountains of corn for four weeks each year?
Corn season is just around the corner. I’ll be making my corn chowder, you can be sure of that. And eating it fresh off the cob. But what else should we be doing with it?

Swiss chard

posted by Patrick at Duck Fat and Politics

We eat swiss chard almost daily during the summer and fall. We grow the beautiful variety called Five Color Silverbeet, a variety that was maintained by the Digger’s Garden Club in Australia after it was dropped by commercial seed companies. It was first re-introduced to US gardeners through Seed Savers Exchange, and in the past few years it’s been picked up by many seed companies in the US. The multi-colored ribs and big crinkly leaves are as pretty as anything grown in a Minnesota garden.
Beets and swiss chard are different varieties of the same genus and species, Beta vulgaris. Over time, beets have been bred for their tuberous root while swiss chard’s ribs and leaves are prized by cooks. Marcella Hazan, in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, has a delicious swiss chard torte we’ve been making for years, but our daily standard is a bit simpler, and it’s quick and delicious. Here’s what I do:

Add a hefty pour of olive oil to a saucier or other fry pan;
Mince a few cloves of garlic and add them to the hot oil;
After the garlic cooks, add the diced stems of the swiss chard and sauté it like celery;
When the stalks are soft, add a whole tomato, preferably a paste variety with lots of meat and few seeds;
Mash the tomato a bit and turn the heat up pretty high to cook off the excess moisture;
Add a little salt;
Lay all the chard leaves on top of each other and roll them up like a fat cigar, then cut the fat roll of leaves into thin strips – maybe ½” or so;
Add the leaves to the hot pan, and stir it all around;
I usually cover the pan for a minute or two to let the steam wilt the chard leaves quicker. Cook the leaves for three or four minutes total.
When I come home from work and make this for lunch, I usually serve it with rice, and I always have a little bowl of nahm prick, a homemade, fiery Thai condiment, on the side.

First Post…are you a rooster?!

Posted by snappeasinapod.

Hello Local Foodies! This is my/our first post on the local food blog since we joined a couple months ago. We are excited to jump in and we hope you enjoy what we have to say.

With that being said, my husband, Aaron and I purchased five laying chicks from Kathy Zeman two months ago. Kathy owns Simple Harvest Farm near Nerstand and her brother is Nick of Nick’s Eggs that are available at the Co-op. Kathy was kind enough to hook us up with a feeder and some motherly advice. It has been quite an adventure so far seeing this is our first dip into raising animals in an urban setting!

I was so enamored by the chicks when we first got them, I asked Aaron if they could sleep in bed with us. As you can imagine, the look he gave me screamed, “WHAT?!” I left them in the box that evening in the living room but woke up bright and early to check on their status. Although I have mixed feelings about naming animals that we will eventually eat, we just had to do it. We let our friends name a few and then Aaron and I named the last two. I named my chick, Fern. Fern was blanketed with beautiful butter and cocoa colored down. She was a bit bigger than the rest, somewhat of a loner, with a spunky streak.

Aaron and I spent many a breakfast and dinner sitting in the living room, hovering over the box, watching the baby chicks grow. One day, I noticed something was wrong with Fern. She was lethargic and her poop was sticking to her butt. We got out Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens and learned she had pastey butt. We called Kathy Zeman and she told us just what to do to help out Fern.

Well, to get to the title of my post, we were visiting Aaron’s grandmother a few weeks ago and we were telling her all about Fern. When there was a quiet moment after our rambles she asked, “Are you sure Fern isn’t a Frank?” We thought for a moment…maybe Fern is a Frank? Leave it to Grandma to be the voice of reason.

So, is Fern a Frank? Well, she looks more and more different everyday but we still cannot tell. I guess you will have to check in to find out.

Cluck, Cluck!

Succession planting

Posted by Patrick at Duck Fat and Politics

Last week I visited the Chicago Botanic Garden for the first time and their vegetable and herb gardens were beautiful. I was struck by the perfect spacing of broccoli, chard, lettuce and other greens, and noticed that everything had been transplanted from cold frames. The lack of bare spots got me thinking about starting more things – even warm weather vegetables – in flats so that each spot in my garden might be filled with a healthy plant. I think it would be nice if I could plant a row of beans from a flat and have no bare spaces. I always direct-sow my beans in the row where they’re going to grow, and I don’t always re-seed bare spots because by the time a row is growing I don’t think a two-week laggard will contribute much.
I do a good job starting tomatoes in my basement when the ground is cold and shovels are still by the door. But once the growing season starts, I tend to wait until a space is vacated before I sow anything new. My wife doesn’t like seeing bare dirt in the garden; she thinks something should be growing there. So, with about two weeks before my arugula bolts, I decided to start a few things in flats and be ready when my lush rows of arugula turn to bitter, woody stems. Perhaps I can shorten the time before the next thing is ready to eat. So this evening, after I put the kids to bed, and just before this now-falling rain began, I filled two flats with beets, kale, cucumbers and beans.
I’ve never started beans in a flat and have heard they don’t do well as transplants. Well, we’ll see. Just as I don’t mind losing a row or two of a too-early planted spinach or lettuce, it’ll be good to learn if I can transplant beans. More than anything, I think the flats can be a good idea because it’s easy to control the moisture for the germinating seeds. Until then, it’s still arugula for lunch!