Posts Tagged ‘CSA’
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Farm, Bike!
It’s 7:15 am, mid-June, and a steady stream of bikers is rolling down Riverside Avenue into Burlington’s Intervale: farmers heading to work. While this image may not be a new one, the number of non-farmers hopping on a bike to pick up produce or simply pay a visit to nearby farms is on the rise. Bike-centri
c farm events (and even a farm-centric bike business) are sprouting up all over Vermont.You might wonder just how many people are both into cycling and a fan of small farms? Lots, it turns out. Last year, more than 500 people attended the annual Tour de Farms, a fall ride with stops (and samples) at a variety of Addison County farms. In July, I’m teaming up with Local Motion and the Open Farm and Studio Weekend to organize the first annual Heart of the Islands Bike Tour, a ride exploring Champlain Island farms, art studios and vineyards. One Revolution, a bicycle delivery service, recently launched its services with an impressive contract to deliver CSA shares for the Intervale Food Hub.
Vermont has a reputation for healthy food and healthy people: according to the USDA’s most recent Census of Agriculture, Vermont leads the nation in per-capita direct sales of produce from farmers to consumers. In addition, America’s Health Rankings put Vermont at the top of the charts in its 2009 review (almost a third of Vermonters are regular bike riders!). In a state where we’re increasingly eager to meet our farmers and move toward healthier forms of transportation, farm-biking is on a roll.
Here are a few opportunities to “veg out” while you ride this season:
Saturday, July 10
Heart of the Islands Bike Tour
Explore Champlain Island farms, art studios, food venues and vineyards during a leisurely (and spectacular) 10, 24 or 35-mile ride to support Local Motion. Lots of free samples from farms, vineyards and eateries along the way! 10 am to 4 pm from Snow Farm Vineyard, South Hero. Register here.Saturday, July 17
Valley Farm Ride
Riders visit farms in the Mad River Valley to sample locally grown produce in an event to benefit and raise awareness for the Vermont Food Bank. 9 am to 1 pm, begin at the Waitsfield Farmers’ Market. For more info, call Peter Oliver 802.496.5538.Sunday, September 19
3rd Annual Tour de Farms
Cyclists choose from one of three routes that wind through the beautiful Champlain Valley and offer stops and sampling at farms along the way. Expect lots of hot food options, farm and craft vendors, along with entertainment and merriment! Tour de Farms registration forms will be available July 1 at www.ruralvermont.org.One Revolution
Get your CSA delivered by bike! One Revolution is a new bicycle-based pick-up and delivery service serving the greater Burlington area. Jericho Settlers Farm, Intervale Food Hub and Pete’s Greens shares are all available for delivery. Visit www.onevt.com or 877-4BIKEVT (877.424.5388) for more info.See more great images of Bike & Food events on our flickr page!
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Chard Times
There’s Swiss cheese, Swiss chocolate, Swiss Army knives. But what’s so “Swiss” about chard? It’s a mystery. That’s not the only curious aspect of chard. Why does chard, especially the ruby-red variety, taste a lot like beets? And, most
importantly, are Swiss CSA-members as inundated with Swiss chard at this time of year as their Vermont CSA counterparts?Renowned produce expert Elizabeth Schneider is even mystified by the “Swiss” in chard. In her Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables: A Commonsense Guide (William Morrow, 1990) she speculates that “Swiss” could be a long-forgotten seed variety name that stuck to chard, aka Beta vulgaris, subspecies cicla. Which leads us to the next conclusion: Chard and beets (aka Beta vulgaris, subspecies vulgaris) aren’t just cousins, they’re practically clones. Somewhere along the way, plant breeders encouraged one plant to put out fleshy leaves and thick stalks, while other breeders encouraged a second plant to develop roots the size of tennis balls.
While we don’t know of any Swiss CSA-members or FarmPlate followers in Switzerland, we can imagine that a number of Swiss-French vegetable lovers are buying chard at this time of year for a lovely gratin de blettes topped with Gruyère or a tourte aux blettes, a rough pie filled with chard and currants.
We find that a lot of chard preparations benefit from a hint of sweetness to counteract the dominant flavor of the vegetable. When you’re stir-frying chard, for instance, add a teaspoonful of balsamic vinegar or pomegranate molasses (available at City Market and Middlebury Co-op) to balance the flavors in the dish. Slow-cooked Vidalia onions or a handful of dried currants do the job as well.
Check out a farmstand or farmers’ market near you for fresh Swiss chard. Or, you can always beg a bunch or two from a friend whose CSA share has had a lot of chard in it lately.
Swiss Chard Stuffed with Spicy-Sweet Rice
from the FarmPlate Kitchen
Larger chard leaves are good for stuffing like the grape leaves in Greek dolmades. Plan ahead for this recipe—the peas need to soak overnight.
5 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
¾ cup white rice (Texmati or basmati)
1½ cups water
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
A big pinch ground cardamom (optional)
¼ cup yellow split peas or chana dal (split chickpeas), soaked overnight in water
About 20 stalks of white Swiss chard with large leaves
1/3 cup dried currants
¼ cup chopped fresh mint
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
Freshly ground black pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
Greek yogurt for serving
Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a saucepan. Add the onions and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the rice and cook a minute or two until the rice grains are slightly translucent. Add the water, salt, cinnamon and cardamom. Bring to a boil. Drain the split peas or chana dal and add to the pan as well. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan and cook for 20 minutes.
Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Cut 15 to 18 leaves from the chard stems. Stack the leaves in a colander. Pour the water from the kettle over the leaves followed by running cold water. Spread the leaves on paper towels.
Chop the stems and the remaining leaves. Set aside a couple handfuls of chopped chard. Sauté the remainder in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil until it wilts. Add the currants and cook for a minute or two. Add the chard mixture to the cooked rice/split pea mixture. Stir in the mint, parsley and a generous grinding of pepper.
Drop about 2 tablespoons of stuffing onto the center of one leaf. Fold the wider end up over the stuffing. Fold in the sides, and then roll into a tight cylinder. Repeat with the remaining filling and leaves.
Spread the reserved chopped chard in the bottom of a deep (not cast iron) skillet. Set the chard packages on the chopped chard, seam-side down. Combine the lemon juice, the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons of water in a small cup. Drizzle over the chard packages. Cover the pan tightly and cook over very low heat for 30 minutes. Transfer the packages to a serving dish and chill.
Serve chilled or a room temperature with a dollop of Greek yogurt.
Serves 6 to 8 as a first course or 4 as a main course
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Crop Mobbing: A First Attempt At Urban Farming
I was a little nervous about what my Sunday afternoon would be like when I got a message on Facebook that included the instructions, “Eat a big breakfast, this ain’t your 9 to 5 desk job! We’ll be doing physical labor!”
I was gearing up for my first ever Crop Mob–a volunteer phenomenon that took off in the New York City area after a New York Times magazine article about the initiative ran in late February. The concept, as detailed on the Crop Mob website, is simple:“Crop mob is primarily a group of young, landless and wannabe farmers who come together to build and empower communities by working side by side. Crop mob is also a group of experienced farmers and gardeners willing to share their knowledge with their peers and the next generation of agrarians. The membership is dynamic, changing and growing with each new mob event.”
For me, a Crop Mob sounded like a great way to meet like-minded people, learn about the food system and the unique challenges of urban farming firsthand, as well as help an important cause. I was sold.
Crop Mob planting lettuce
Shortly after the February New York Times piece ran, I did a quick search on Facebook for “crop mob” and found a New York City chapter had recently been organized. In two days, the group had over 60 members. My confidence was boosted reading the group description: “For aspiring farmers or the merely ag-curious.” Since watering houseplants was the only way I had ever challenged my green thumb, I consider myself to be on the ag-curious side of the spectrum. I joined.
In less than a month, the first round of Crop Mobbing was set-up, with four farms requesting volunteers. I signed up to participate on April 11th at the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. Other mobbers (approximately 100 in total) took on the Youth Farm at the High School for Public Service, the Red Hook Community Farm and the Brooklyn Rescue Mission Farm.
The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm is a 6,000 square foot organic vegetable garden planted on the roof of a warehouse that houses a film production company. The farm, which overlooks the Manhattan skyline, is in its second planting year. It also boasts the first rooftop-based CSA in the country, an on-site farm market and farm education workshops. This year, they will introduce chickens and an apiary.
Greens growing at Eagle Street Rooftop Farm
The farm is an active part of New York City’s farm to table movement, delivering produce via bicycle to nearby restaurants: Eat, Marlow & Sons, Manducatis Rustica, Anella and Paulie Gee’s.
My Crop Mob group was under the direction of Eagle Street Rooftop Farm’s co-founder Annie Novak. Annie, an energetic and highly knowledgeable farmer, is the program director at the farm’s partner organization Growing Chefs, which provides classes and workshops on farming and gardening for all ages. She also is the children’s gardening coordinator at the New York Botanical Garden.
After a brief introduction to the farm, and a warning not to clump together in large groups of people so the roof wouldn’t cave in, Annie split us into groups of three to be led by more experienced Eagle Street volunteers.
Crop Mob hard at work at Eagle Street Rooftop Farm
While other Crop Mobbers worked on building the structure for the apiary, composting and planting lettuce, my team worked to gather loose dirt that due to high winds had blown into the gutter area that surrounded the garden. The soil, Annie told us, is made up of compost, fungi and brick debris.
We prepped a section of the garden for planting, removing wood chips and building up the bed that would be home to a salad mix and three varieties of sunflowers—all grown with seeds from High Mowing Organic Seeds, in Wolcott, Vermont.
Under Annie’s direction, we learned how to properly space and plant the seeds for the salad mix and the sunflowers. Later this spring, beans will be planted in the same bed. The idea is they will twist their way up the sunflower stalks as they grow.
I’ll definitely return to the Eagle Street Farm. I feel connected to the garden, even though I only contributed a few hours of work on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. The farm is open for volunteers every Sunday, and I want to buy the produce I planted to cement my new role as an urban farmer.
See the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm’s website for details on volunteering. To find a local Crop Mob chapter, check out their website or their Getting Started guide to organize a Crop Mob in your area.
Visit our Flickr album for more photos of the Crop Mob at Eagle Street Rooftop Farm.
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Federal Funding Coming for Farmers’ Markets
The USDA’s Know Your Famer, Know Your Food initiative has earmarked $5 million in funding from the 2010 Farmers’ Market Promotion Program for grants to develop new farmers’ markets and enhance existing markets, roadsides stands and CSA programs as part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign.
USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan announced the grant funding on a visit to New York City last Thursday, where she said, “The benefits of direct-to-consumer marketing are two-fold. Consumers are provided with fresh, healthy, affordable and locally grown products, while meeting the farmers that produce it. Farmers, on the other hand, are able to expand their economic opportunities and grow their incomes.”The grants are an effort to reduce what the first lady has labeled as “food deserts,” areas in the country that don’t have access to healthy foods from supermarkets or farmers’ markets.
According to the USDA, there are 5,274 farmers’ markets in the country. This figure marks a 13 percent increase in farmers’ markets since 2008. Despite this increase, there are still many areas nationwide that do not have farmers markets. Click on the Local Foods tab then select “Farmers’ Markets” on the USDA Economic Research Service’s recently launched Food Environment Atlas for a visual representation of the so-called “food deserts.”
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One Big Block Party
Move over Crescent City. It’s Burlington’s turn to let les bons temps rouler. The Magic Hat Mardi Gras Celebration in downtown Burlington, Vermont, opens with music at Higher Ground on Friday night. On Saturday, live bands on Church Street will fill the air with Cajun/Creole sounds as pubs and cafes will serve up tasty New Orleans fare.
The King & Queen of Mardi Gras Costume Contest begins at noon outside City Hall. Winners are each awarded $500 and will help lead the Grand Parade with Magic Hat’s Alan Newman and Mayor Bob Kiss. The event, now in its fifteenth year, will benefit the Women’s Rape Crisis Center.• If you go, keep in mind: Smart revelers park their cars at Magic Hat HQ on Bartlett Bay Road in South Burlington or Burlington High School and take the free Mardi Gras shuttle into town.
• Buy your beads to throw at the Magic Hat Mardi Gras Headquarters located in the old Maplehurst Florist shop on Church Street in Burlington. Sales benefit the WRCC.
• It’s going to be chilly! Fingerless gloves are best for catching the beads, authentic Louisiana moon pies and Lake Champlain chocolates as they fly from the floats!
• Families with children under 7 years old are welcome to catch the parade from the Little Jambalaya Viewing Zone, on the corner of Main Street and South Winooski.
More Regional Events
(All events take place in Vermont unless otherwise noted.)
Thursday, February 25
Ron Krupp, local author of Lifting the Yoke: Local Solutions to America’s Farm and Food Crisis offers up practical actions for Vermonters. 7 to 9 pm at Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier. Free. -
Pete Johnson: Year-Round Farmer and Innovator
Spring is only three weeks away–at least for the savvy Vermonters who’ve already signed up for their Spring Localvore Share from Pete’s Greens’ Good Eats CSA.
Pete Johnson, the Pete in Pete’s Greens, is a rock star among New England organic famers, and his year-round CSA concept is spreading across the country. By growing salad greens in unheated, movable greenhouses on his 230-acre farm in Craftsbury, Johnson has made fresh local produce a cold-season reality here. Johnson is one of “a critical mass of new, innovative farmers” at the heart of “a massive wave of change,” says Dave Rogers, national policy director of NOFA (the Northeast Organic Farmers Association).The Spring Localvore Share begins on February 17 and runs through the first week in June. Good Eats CSA members pick up their weekly share at the farm or at one of 15 convenient pickup locations across northern Vermont. Members can look forward to a
wide variety of roots, potatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage, celeriac, kohlrabi and other storage crops from the PG cellars plus shoots, sprouts and mesclun that are growing outside throughout the colder months. Frozen vegetables that were harvested and frozen at their peak of freshness last summer augment the fresh veggies. Tomatoes, spinach and braising greens, frozen squash puree and pesto are just a few of the sun-kissed delicacies on ice. By May and June, a wider variety of fresh grown crops will be available—pac choi, baby beets, turnips, scallions, Asian greens and many more.In addition to flavor-packed vegetables, share members also
receive a wide variety of localvore staples from more than 30 producers in Vermont and southern Quebec. Offerings can include artisan breads, eggs, cheeses, organic Vermont flours, oats, cornmeal and other local grains, cooking oils, vinegars, sweeteners, miso, tamari and other basics.CSA members may also opt for a meat share, which features meats grown on the farm and meats and fish (yes! fresh trout!) from local producers. All meats are pastured and grass fed where applicable, and all are sustainably and naturally raised. Many products are certified organic.
For more information about the farm or to find a CSA sign-up form, click here.
For more images from Pete’s Greens, check out FarmPlate’s flickr gallery (Pete’s, too!).
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Applecheek Farm’s Creative Viability
In the early 90s, Hyde Park dairy farmers John and Judy Clark felt worn out from working so hard and still having a hard time paying the bills. Instead of selling out and moving on, they got creative. Today the Clarks and their two sons continue to milk 70 cows on the 243-acre organic farm but they’ve diversified into grass-fed meats, pasture-raised poultry, raw milk and agri-tourism.
So along with the mooing, visitors can now hear gobbling, clucking, quacking, whinnying, bleating and the deep-throated drumming of emus and llamas.Applecheek is a busy place. The farm offers old-fashioned horse-drawn sleigh rides in the winter and llama trekking in the summer. Thousands of school children come each year on field trips to learn about agriculture and where their food comes from. Members of Applecheek’s meat CSA stop by to pick up their shares. Restaurateurs and cooks-in-the-know come to buy guinea fowl, heritage turkeys, Muscovy ducks or a couple dozen farm-fresh eggs.
Applecheek Farm has become an important focal point of the community. The Clarks have built a barn with a large dining hall and meeting room that has become a gathering place for meetings, reunions, conferences and weddings. Son Jason Clark, a graduate of Johnson & Wales University, operates JDC Just Delicious Catering from there featuring farm-fresh ingredients.
Recently, John and Judy decided to sell their development rights to the Vermont Land Trust to pay down debt and help transfer the farm to their sons. Neighbors have also jumped in to help: The Freeman Foundation has pledged $215,000 to the project, and the family and locals must raise the remaining $95,000—they’re close the halfway mark. Judy Clark said the neighbors’ response has left the family “amazed and grateful. Even though most of these neighbors aren’t involved in agriculture, they see the importance of sustaining land and sustaining farms.”
On Saturday, January 23, Applecheek Farm will be hosting a localvore dinner to welcome in the New Year in mouth-watering and foot-stomping style. Chef Jason’s feast will showcase products from area farms. The band Knotwork will play traditional Irish music. For more information and reservations call 802.888.9407 or email jdccatering@yahoo.com. Reserve by January 21 for the early reservation discount.
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A Food Resolution
There are lots of ways to improve your health, realign family values and better support your local economy–but making a commitment to purchase more regional, in-season foods is one way to knock off all three objectives in one simple, sustainable New Year’s resolution. Here’s what we at FarmPlate have
come up with for our own resolutions for 2010.Emily: My resolution is to incorporate seasonal produce into my weeknight meals—even if it means I have no idea how to cook what I’m buying. I walk through Union Square Greenmarket each day, so I have no excuse not to pick up fresh, local foods for dinner each night.
Eric: To buy more food direct from farmers and producers.
Heather: I will learn to make two new recipes every week, doing my best to focus on local, seasonal products. By next year, I hope to be done “trying to learn how to cook” and have moved on to “cooking.”
Kim: I want to get my kids back in the kitchen cooking at my side. This year has been a busy one for our family. (I refer to FarmPlate as my fourth child.) But spending time in the kitchen as a family, enjoying the rituals of preparing and enjoying food together, is something not to be compromised.
Sarah: One of my few resolutions is to join a CSA that provides meat, bread and veggies. Beyond supporting my local farms and eating the freshest food, joining a CSA will mean getting creative when it’s Brussels sprout and turnip season. I just hope my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter is up for the adventure.
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USDA Invests in Local Food System
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced this week it would provide over $5 million for 16 organizations that work to make healthy, local food accessible for low-income Americans.
The organizations receiving grants were chosen through the Community Food Projects Program, which is administered by USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The funding is a part of the Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative that launched in September 2009.“Building local sustainable food systems is a key step in fighting hunger and obesity, a priority for USDA and for the Obama Administration,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Vilsack stressed that by investing in a local food system, low-income individuals can eat healthier, nutritious foods while strengthening the economy at the local level.
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