March 2008 Archives

Gardeners of all sorts - including kitchen gardeners - will want to visit the Mobile Botanical Garden's Spring Plant Sale. The sale begins tonight with the opening night party. Tickets are $20, or free to Botanical Garden members at the $60 level or above (a $60 donation gets you one free ticket). The opening night party includes food and drinks, as well as a chance to be first to get your hands on all those plants. The sale continues with free admission Friday through Sunday. More information and a plant list (pending availability) is at the Botanical Garden web site.

Edibles include vegetables and herbs, fruit and nut trees, bananas, berries, and grapes. You'll find varieties you can't get elsewhere, and plants selected specifically for their suitability to this region.

Even if you don't go to buy, or to buy very much, it's great fun to just stroll the grounds and look at the wonderful variety of plants. The flowers and perennials are beautiful on opening night, before the tables start to get cleared. I've volunteered at past sales, and it's a pleasure to see clouds of butterflies hovering over the impromptu flower garden.

In today's Press-Register, Bill Finch launches his Great Banana Growing Challenge asking local readers to share their banana-growing tips and successes, and tantalizing us with a mention of the 350-400 bananas that he harvested in his own yard.

We have a "Grand Nain" banana that we bought last spring at the Mobile Botanical Garden plant sale. It's in a nice, sunny spot and did beautifully last year. We left the stalk intact through the winter, but it hasn't put out new leaves yet and I don't know whether that's a bad sign. The top feels rather dried out, but the base still has a solid feel to it. I think the trunk is still alive as it's put out a couple of pups, but I don't know how long to give it before deciding if it's a lost cause. How I would love to get bananas in our yard! It may take a couple of years of experimenting, but we'll stick with it!

Also from Bill Finch today, an article about fava beans. I've never grown or even eaten them myself, but they are supposed to be quite a delicacy. Finch writes they should be planted in October for harvest in February through May.

Have banana stories you'd like to share? Are you a fava bean fan?

I had my first local strawberries (from Baldwin County) on March 1. I called B.J. Farms today and they said their u-pick would be open the first week in April. You can buy harvested berries there now.

OK, this is not exactly about local food, but it's obliquely related. The anthropology department at Indiana University (one of my alma maters) is introducing a PhD in Food Studies, the first such program in the country. There was a nice article in the latest College of Arts and Sciences magazine, and Professor Stacie King had this to say:

Students will read ethnographic studies of the importance of food in contemporary cultures and then touch on a variety of topics to explore these same issues across time... We'll be able to look at how people have used food to create identity and meaning in their everyday existence.

Professors in the program also plan to have students do field work in the community, "researching a solution to a real, local, food-related problem." Political science professor and co-director of Slow Food Bloomington Christine Barbour says that "Many people become farmers or chefs because they feel passionately about food and the land. They may be very good at farming or cooking, but they do not necessarily have great organizational or marketing skills. If the food studies program can provide interns to assist with matters such as these, it has the potential to greatly benefit the community."

This article is from 2004, so I'd like to see an updated version, but it's a useful primer on the significance of product labeling (e.g. natural vs. organic, etc.).

Original article on The Green Guide.

Originally published for the Eat Local Challenge 2006, this entry contains some helpful guidelines for eating locally - and if you can't, what choices to make next.

The Slow Food Blog points to The Food Chain,

an audience-interactive newstalk radio program that airs live on Saturdays from 9am to 10am Pacific time. The Food Chain, which has been named the Ag/News Show of the Year by California's legislature, is hosted by Michael Olson, author of the Ben Franklin Book of the Year award-winning MetroFarm, a 576-page guide to metropolitan agriculture.

You can subscribe to their podcast, listen to individual episodes, or listen live online.

From the Washington Post, a farmer addresses the issue of fuel efficiency in tractor-trailers vs. the fuel expended in getting food and consumers to farmers markets. His conclusion: buying local food is a sensible way to eat well, save fuel and reduce your carbon footprint.

From Culinate, a reminder that spring is the best time to harvest and eat what some consider a delicacy and some consider a weed: dandelion greens.

Do you like to eat dandelion greens?

We're enjoying a plentiful harvest of snow peas - but then again, if you plant snow peas you're almost bound to enjoy a good crop. They have got to be the easiest vegetable I've ever grown; they don't require much space (a trellis is handy), seem to have very few problems with disease or pests, need little more attention than steady water, and yield handfuls of tasty pea pods.

If you're not familiar with snow peas (commonly used in Chinese restaurant cooking), or have only had the limp, flavorless ones available in the produce section, it's worth growing them in your own garden. Like sugar snap peas the entire pod is edible, though with snow peas the pod is much thinner and they appear flat (though if the peas mature they will start to round out). They can be eaten raw (I sometimes use them in salads or just munch them straight from the garden) or lightly blanched; cooked in stir fries; prepared as a dish on their own (I'll pan-saute them with sesame oil, soy sauce, fresh grated ginger, and a garnish of sesame seeds); or even substituted for peas in other dishes. We recently used them in place of shelled peas in a spring vegetable soup, and it was delicious. They are delicate and cook quickly (in a matter of minutes), so you must be careful not to overcook or they will turn limp, losing the delicious sweet crunch that makes them so wonderful.

They are a cool weather crop, so we are getting to the end of the season, but plan to put some in your garden next fall. I use Oregon Sugar Pod II.

Also in the garden, some potato shoots are appearing and the salad greens are doing well.

If you're like my husband and consider one of the major benefits of living on the Gulf Coast to be the oysters, you'll be distressed by the report that "Alabama's oyster reefs are just about dead." Sunday's Press-Register reports that the two-year drought conditions upstate have resulted in decreased freshwater from rivers flowing into Mobile Bay, which in turn means increased salinity (exacerbated by the cut created in Dauphin Island by Hurricane Katrina). Saltier water means conditions are right for the predatory oyster drill to thrive. Local oystermen have appealed to the state for disaster relief. The only hope for a change in conditions is rain to the north.

I make an effort to get my daughter, a toddler, involved in our garden. She has helped plant seeds, cultivate soil, pull weeds, and harvest the produce. She knows about our compost pile. She's familiar with the animals that live in the garden: lizards, toads, worms, beetles, bees, butterflies, and moths. She's learning how the weather can affect the garden - the importance of sunlight and rain. It's a great outdoor activity for her, and I know she's getting a very basic introduction to biology and science, as well as developing wonder and respect for the world around her.

But beyond all the practical benefits, there's something much more deeply satisfying about gardening with my daughter; it's the connection to my own family experience and history, even the ancient human tradition of life bound up with the earth and its rhythms.

From early childhood I remember having a vegetable garden in our suburban backyard. It was my mom's project, mostly, in a sunny 12' × 12' corner of the yard, but I remember helping plant seeds and playing among the rows of tomatoes - always tomatoes - carrots, radishes, peppers, and corn.

My grandfather, too - my mom's father - had a garden in his backyard, though that was in later years after he had sold his farm. They lived in a small, rural southern Illinois town, and though he never lived on the land he owned a farm nearby. When my mom was growing up he had a large garden patch there, and even in my childhood he still kept a herd of Angus and Hereford cattle. I remember looking over the fence with him, and agreeing that the little black ones were 'mine,' and he could have the big red ones. Even after he was too old to manage his own farm, he still loved to go out to u-picks. A child of the depression, he gloried in the bounty of strawberries and peaches that he could harvest with his own hands.

In fact, there's still a farm on that side of the family. My mother's cousin still lives on the farm where she was born and raised, and while she's out of the farming business herself the land is still active; she leases it to local farmers who pasture cattle and grow hay.

Looking back down the family tree, plenty of ancestors on both sides were farmers, or involved in farming at some point in their lives.

A friend passed me a link to Culinate, a web site that's "an ongoing conversation about how to eat well." The authors define their name as follows:

cul·in·ate ('kələ-nāt), v. 1 to live better by eating better 2 to consider health, the environment and community when deciding what to eat 3 to integrate and enrich one’s day-to-day experience through food—from farm, to market, to kitchen, to table

So while not strictly about local food, their mission certainly encompasses that, and it's a wonderful site, deep in content that will take me a while to comb through. Monthly columnists include "kitchen luminary Deborah Madison; humorist and seasoned cook Matthew Amster-Burton; chef Kelly Myers; dietitian Catherine Bennett-Dunster; food blog aficionado Liz Crain; and master juggler Carrie Floyd, Culinate’s food editor."

They also have a good Resources page, with links to many other quality food sites and blogs, some of which are already listed in the External Links, some of which are not.

Sweet Home Farm
27107 Schoen Rd
Elberta AL 36530
251.986.5663

PRODUCTS

A variety of natural farmstead raw cows' milk cheeses. Other products (such as vegetables) are sold on a seasonal basis, and availability is limited.

WHERE TO BUY

Sweet Home Farm cheeses are sold only at the store on the farm, located in south-east Baldwin County between Foley and the Florida border.
Friday and Saturday, 10am - 5pm
Other days based on season and availability; please call ahead.

GROWING/PRODUCTION METHODS

Natural (no herbicides, pesticides, or growth hormones); sustainable agriculture; grass-fed with some regionally-grown supplemental grain; no preservatives or colorings in the cheeses; handcrafted.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Today I'm pleased to present our first producer profile, Sweet Home Farm, makers of natural farmstead cheese. We were lucky enough to have friends get several varieties of the cheese for dinner at their Baldwin County home on Saturday night. It is truly outstanding.

Sweet Home Farm was established in 1985 and is run by owners Alyce Birchenough and Doug Wolbert. They are a leading name in southern artisan cheesemaking.

Read these articles on Sweet Home Farm to learn more about their history and methods.

Sweet Home Farm profile on Cheese By Hand (June 10, 2006)

Sweet Home Alabama: A Labor of Love Founded On Cheese from the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (July 1994)