Farming | Page 8 of 9 | The Rambling Epicure

Wendell Berry: Daily Food Quote, June 30, 2011

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, June 30, 2011 Permalink 0

“A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us… What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of earth, but also the earth’s ability to produce.” — Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry was born in Kentucky in 1934. He has always promoted a responsible kind of agriculture that is fully integrated into one’s everyday life. Because he promoted this vision of food and agriculture long before the Slow Food movement started, he is considered by many to have laid the foundation for the American Slow Food movement and the move toward a more sustainable and ethical agriculture.

The American Poetry Foundation says of Berry: Critics and scholars have acknowledged Wendell Berry as a master of many literary genres, but whether he is writing poetry, fiction, or essays, his message is essentially the same: humans must learn to live in harmony with the natural rhythms of the earth or perish. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, which analyzes the many failures of modern, mechanized life, is one of the key texts of the environmental movement, but Berry, a political maverick, has criticized environmentalists as well as those involved with big businesses and land development. Berry strongly believes that small-scale farming is essential to healthy local economies, and that strong local economies are essential to the survival of the species and the well-being of the planet.

You can view his books and biography on the official Wendell Berry site.

Click here to listen to the 2-part series “Building a Slow Food Nation,” including an interview with Wendell Berry.

Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, June 8, 2011

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, June 8, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own where I have planted vines and orchard trees, and in the heat of the day climbed up into the healing shadow of the woods.–Wendell Berry (1954-)

Wendell Berry is a Kentucky poet, novelist, essayist, philosopher and farmer. He has always remained close to the land, continuing to farm on his family farm, and this is reflected in much of his work. His most well known book, The Unsettling of America, provides a classic critique of industrial agriculture which is foundational to today’s agrarianism and a precursor of the Slow Food movement and the current food revolution taking place in the U.S.

Market Analysis: Organic Food from Supermarket vs. Straight from the Producer

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, April 28, 2011 Permalink 0

by Eric Burkel

Don’t allow the wool to be pulled over your eyes by supermarket organic food!

While discussing the issue of sustainable agriculture and the virtuous model of direct-channel (straight from the producer) with a friend the other day, she told me proudly that she usually buys organic food at her supermarket.

It made me think that most of us do the same and therefore we are content in the knowledge that we have most duly earned some sacrosanct “organic” brownie points!

However, it is a pact with the devil for dupes, when you boil it down. In a direct-channel model, whereby middlemen are cut out, the producer/breeder/grower gets decent compensation for his or her efforts. In a supermarket chain, the same “squeeze-the-supplier-till-he-squeals (or dies!)” modus operandi applies. How else can you explain that the major chains in France are offering organic deals at 1 € a day, for instance?

Organic growing is inherently risky and mechanically more expensive than intensively grown food. Weeds? They have to be pulled out by hand, not sprayed with the latest and greatest herbicide. Bugs? You can’t just spray the nasty freeloaders with a new-fangled pesticide.

When I asked our favourite organic Bordeaux wine-grower if he had sold out of his 2007 production (there was none to be found on his price list), he responded matter-of-factly: “We had a fungus that year and lost our whole crop.” You can imagine that it would have been soooooo much easier to spray some fungicide and make it all go away.

After factoring in such vagaries of organic farm life (without forgetting that yields are invariably lower on organic farms), someone needs to explain how in an ideal world you can have the cut-price organic prices we see in commercials all the time. Unless of course, someone is still getting shrift in the loop, as is often par for the course in our zero-sum world.

Some supermarket chains have understood the nuance and are trumpeting their programs to promote “local” procurement. This is a step in the right direction, no doubt.

So great, the chains have brought organic food to forefront our collective conscious and that must be goodness. But we must keep them on their toes to ensure that they are not just surfing the latest fad and using it their sole advantage, to sucker us once again.

Or better yet, go out of our way and support the direct-channel by joining a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) or buying directly from local producers.

Help us support the cause! The Young Farmers Movement in the U.S.

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, April 27, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Countdown: 66 Hours to Go!

Cozette Russell’s documentary film-in-progress, Brookford Almanac, about a year in the life of first-generation farmers in the U.S. needs funding before April 30, 2011.

Take a peak at our article Back to the Land: From City Living to Farming, the Young Farmers Movement and if you support the cause, why not donate a few dollars, euros, pounds or other.

Another way to help is to tweet this post and ask your friends to retweet it.

We’ll keep you posted about the project!

Wild Woman on Feral Acres: Thirty Green Living Skills You Can Gain Today

Published by Esmaa-Self + Tuesday, April 26, 2011 Permalink 0

by Esmaa Self

We are expanding the farm –and along with that our self-sufficiency*– this spring, thus have been busy away from the computer. Jonell asked me to jot ten things a person could do to begin a green lifestyle. I sat down and thirty came out.

Walk more. There is no better energy to spend than your own.

Wash your hair 4 times a week rather than every day. Commercial shampoos are mostly chemical. So very ew.

Turn off a light and an appliance. ‘Nuff said.

Shop the produce aisle for less packaging and fresher, more nutritious food.

Buy items in simpler, recyclable packaging.

Recycle that packaging… and everything else your local facilities accept.

Eschew one-use items. Do this again and again.

Sell your TV. Spend more time talking, gardening, hiking and reading.

Keep your car. Clunkers are cheaper to insure, sure, but just think of the manufacturing energy saved if you buy one car per decade rather than 2 or 3.

Plan a staycation. While avoiding pat-downs may be one reason to stop flying, wasteful jet engines is higher on my list of reasons.

Just say no. To new drapes, your fortieth pair of shoes, whatever. Do you really need them?

Live within a budget. Less is so much more.

Skip the makeup. If he doesn’t see your beauty without it, he does not deserve you.

Find uses for old things. Give them away, sell them, turn them into something new.

Cook from scratch for better family time, superior nutrition and less production energy per serving.

Don’t get a pet. Pet foods and waste are huge contributors to our environmental woes.

Don’t have another child. 6 billion, ya know?

Grow some of your own food. Dude.

Share seeds. Two can grow for the price of one. Or something like that.

Buy direct from an organic farmer. Cut out the middleman and not only pay the farmer what she’s worth, but purchase a fresher, better product as well.

Plant a shade tree. Or four; you may have heard about climate change.

Plant edible landscaping. Why water things you cannot eat? Seriously.

Turn your lawn into a garden. Ditto.

Learn to forage wild foods. Eat things you didn’t even water.

Don’t take antibiotics for a cold or sinusitis. Irrigate irritated sinuses with saline and wait out a cold. Then determine to eat well, exercise, wash your hands, and stop licking public restroom doorknobs and you won’t even miss the drugs.

Learn about homeopathic remedies. Willow tree bark can relieve pain. Yellow dock root can purge your lymph system. Motherwort can calm your nerves, instantly.

Use unscented toilet paper and tissues. Reduce the chemicals you swipe onto sensitive areas.

Use cloth napkins rather than paper. You knew this.

Flush with less. Put an 8-16 oz sand-filled bottle in the tank of your older toilet to reduce water use with each flush.

Gather ‘round. Spend evenings in one room. Together. What a concept!

* Here’s what we’re doing: growing more medicinal and culinary herbs (added motherwort, anise, black cumin, meadowsweet, borage, burdock, common thyme, goat’s rue, chamomile and two spearmint varieties to complement our already wide assortment of wild and cultivated herbs); installing two bee hives (can you just imagine the pleasure of one’s own honey?); raising our own chickens (three-day-old broilers and layers arrived yesterday!); farming fish (what can be so wonderful as one’s own responsibly farmed seafood?); growing more intensively in the greenhouse and expanding the outside gardens, which is where we grow tomatoes, squash, peppers, corn and potatoes. In addition we are selling a few extra tilapia fingerlings and potted plants. We are struggling to fit in workouts, sleep and at-the-table meals between all this activity, and usually not getting to the social media portion of life. This, too, shall pass. Eventually.

Back to the Land: From City Living to Farming, the Young Farmers Movement

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, April 26, 2011 Permalink 0

by Cozette Russell

Brookford Almanac: A Documentary Film about a Year in the Life of First-Generation Farmers in the U.S.

I’m a filmmaker interested in the relationship between people and landscape, so in 2008 when I read an article in The New York Times about the trend of young people moving out of the city to farm, I knew this was a story I wanted to film. I wanted to find out why highly educated people would walk away from specific career paths to choose a life of farming. Why would they embrace the risks of a life of hard work that offers such little security?

My film, Brookford Almanac, a cinema verité documentary currently in production, tells the story of Luke and Catarina Mahoney and their lively farm apprentices who run Brookford Farm in Rollinsford, New Hampshire.

Luke and Catarina are first-generation farmers. They came to farming through their desire for a connection to the land, not from their family’s expectations. The Mahoneys have embraced the rewards and frustrations of a life centered on the small-scale production of local food. But without inherited land, a major obstacle for first-generation farmers, they must lease their farm with little security for the future.

I discovered the Mahoneys through my father, John Carroll, a professor at the University of New Hampshire who has written several books about New England farming. I decided to spend a year documenting the Mahoneys lives at Brookford Farm because they are not only new to farming but also run a biologically diverse farm and organic dairy. Before long I found myself filming at the breakfast table, riding in the tractor, slogging through cow pastures, attending business meetings and farmer’s markets, and hanging out in the pasture with the cows well before dawn. I learned the dedication it takes to farm and how the rigorous labor of each day is always interrupted by an inevitable drama such as animals breaking out or tractors dying or storms approaching. For a filmmaker the tensions of life on a farm are exciting and unexpected.

Every documentary filmmaker starts out with one idea for their film and watches that idea ebb and flow as life unfolds in front of the camera. When I began, I envisioned Brookford Almanac as a celebratory portrait of a year in the life of a farm family. At that time, I could not have predicted the changes that would take place both on the farm and in my film. Luke and Catarina have expanded their operation considerably. With this expansion has come problems with their landlord, a strong-willed, retired farmer who holds different opinions as to how things should be done. Sadly, because of these divergent philosophies, the landlord has decided not to renew the Mahoneys’ lease.

The issue of land access – something almost all first-generation farmers struggle with – is now no longer just a looming issue for Luke and Catarina; it is a harsh reality in their lives and it has come front and center in my film. The making of Brookford Almanac continues as I film life at Brookford Farm for a second farming season.

To continue this second year of production I am raising money through Kickstarter, a popular online crowd-funding tool. To learn more about the film and to join the production, please visit my Kickstarter page by clicking here below by April 30th.

_________________

Cozette Russell is a documentary filmmaker. She is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Film Study Center, and she lives with her husband and creative partner Julian Russell in Lee, New Hampshire.

National Sustainable Development Week in France, Paris AMAPs in Full Swing

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, April 8, 2011 Permalink 0

by Eric Burkel

Without actually achieving that holiest of grails, sustainable development, and without going doing the path of ascertaining whether Mother Earth really needs more development, sustainable or otherwise, a world-leading auditing firm outside Paris opened its doors yesterday at lunchtime to host an event to offer up a few solutions that might help its employees reduce their environmental footprint.

Switzerland: MarketDay, April 6, 2011

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, April 6, 2011 Permalink 0

A Thought for Food: One Woman’s Journey into the World of Slow Food

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, April 5, 2011 Permalink 0

by Meeta Khurana Wolff

A Thought for Food – Slow Food

Eating poorly or inadequately in our fast food culture is easy. Overworked and stressed, we rush out to find a quick bite and often find solace in a burger or a hot dog. The temptation of sugar, salt and fat feel good while we are eating it, but it really does little to satisfy us. It is convenient at the time and stills our hunger. Dinner might be a quick microwave meal, frozen pizza ready in minutes in the oven, or even take out. Looking at the long-term effects, it will make our family and us fat, lazy and sick!

Wild Woman on Feral Acres: How to Keep Eggs 4 Months Without Refrigeration

Published by Esmaa-Self + Friday, February 18, 2011 Permalink 0

by Esmaa Self

Backyard hens are an integral part of our sustainability efforts here at Middleground Farm. I feed ‘the girls’ wild greens, table scraps and essential nutrient-rich gruel; in return they give us incredibly healthy eggs. Our free-range flock reduces the property’s bug population and we protect them from chicken predators. It’s a beautiful relationship, and one that blesses us all.

Select fresh, clean, unblemished eggs

Perhaps you’ve heard that happy hens lay eggs. While flock contentment is relatively easy to attain (simply provide food, water, shade, soil to scratch, safe spaces in which to lay eggs, roost and roam), I am here to tell you that there is a poultry discontent beyond human control.

Some hens are better layers than others and will vigorously produce eggs come what may. Others find it too taxing to lay when the mercury rises above 92° F or falls below 32° F. A few breeds lay through the molt and when days are short, but many do not. Nearly every mature hen will lay eggs in abundance during spring, so productive are they then your refrigerator may become overrun by eggs.