Archive for the ‘People On the Move’ Category
Portage Bay Grange welcomes urban farmers
Joshua and Annette make whole-grain waffles
Portage Bay Grange in Seattle’s University District recently welcomed The Urban Farm Handbook authors Annette Cottrell and Joshua McNichols to their first Open House on November 19. While we enjoyed fresh-pressed cider, Joshua and Annette described local grain sources, grain mills, and whipped up delicious spelt, sourdough, duck egg, and goat milk waffles.
Urban farming tastes great!
Portage Bay Grange hosts Seattle 4H at Open House
Portage Bay Grange sells small livestock, feed, and a variety of thoughtful urban homesteading mercantile including BPA-free Weck canning jars.
A great place to visit with young kids, the Portage Bay Grange Open House also showcased the very urban and active Cooped-Up in Seattle 4H Club.
Winona LaDuke Promotes Native Crop Diversity
This is Ivan, a member of the White Earth Anishinaabeg people, holding a Lakota squash. Lakota squash are one of the foods Winona LaDuke spoke about February 3, 2011 at a John and Jesse Danz Lecture at the University of Washington.
LaDuke, who may be best known as the VP Green Party running mate of Ralph Nader in 2000, is a Harvard-trained rural development economist in northern Minnesota. She’s been actively promoting schemes to address climate change, peak oil, and local resilience: wind farms, solar panels, and most relevant to Urban Farm Hub, preserving seed genetic diversity.
Which gets us back to that Lakota squash Ivan is holding. LaDuke favors this species because it is drought tolerant, high in anti-oxidants, tastes good, and most significantly, stores unrefrigerated for six to eight months.
LaDuke has led the charge to protect wild rice and other crops from depredations of genetic modifications through her non-profit Honor the Earth. “Seeds are our history. We used to grow a lot of food here people,” LaDuke said.
These days LaDuke focuses on crops that are adaptable in the face of climate change. “It’s not just growing locally, it’s what you choose to grow.” Like that squash.
Corn species – Blue Island Flint, beautiful Seneca Pink Lady Flour, Pawnee Eagle – are selected by LaDuke for resistance to the frost and heavy winds we are starting to see our increasingly unstable climate. “Change is inevitable. It’s a question of who controls the change. We need to plan our change with moral outrage and hope.”
LaDuke began and ended her talk with blessings and some sage advice: “We need to pray hard, savor the wins, and tell the stories. These aren’t the stories you are going to see in People magazine, but stories about us that we are longing to hear.”
Firefly Lights Up Good Food Awards
Firefly Kitchens was excited to learn last week that it was a finalist in the National Good Food Awards in the Pickle Category for their Yin Yang Carrots.
Although this is the first year of the Good Food Awards, 780 products were entered from 41 states, in the categories of beer, charcuterie, cheese, chocolate, coffee, pickles, and preserves.
Lucky judges selected 130 finalists that met the criteria of being “tasty, authentic, and socially responsible”. Finalists, including Firefly Kitchens, move on to the winners’ competition. Winners will be announced on January 14, 2011 by Alice Waters in San Francisco.
Experimenting with probiotics and enzymes, as well as making use of a broad assortment of local, organic, produce, Firefly Kitchens has pushed creative boundaries and created a number of distinctive pickles, kimchis, and salsas.
At a recent University District Farmers Market, pickler Julie O’Brien, pictured here, offered me a sample of a colorful cranberry kimchi, still at the experimental stage. It should be ready for production in the next month or so.
In addition to the University District, Firefly sells at Ballard and West Seattle Farmers’ Markets during the winter and several other markets during the warmer months.
In Washington State, value-added products, such as pickles, need to be produced in a commercial kitchen. Firefly Kitchens will soon be locating to a new home in a commercial kitchen in Ballard.
Farmers’ markets have a clear multiplier effect on our local economy. Firefly Kitchens is great example of how. Firefly buys from local farm producers, sells at farmers’ markets, supports a commercial kitchen, employs several part-time workers, and reaches out to both local and national audiences. This is how sustainable, resilient, local economies are built, one “tasty, authentic, and socially responsible” business at a time.
Report Out from New Orleans Food, Culture, Justice Conference
A big thanks to Michael Seliga for sending us this post from the Gumbo That Unites Us All conference taking place now in New Orleans.
I will admit I had ulterior motives for coming to this conference in New Orleans, well known for its delicious foods and energizing music. Both of these found us within an hour after arriving into town.
An ally from Community Alliance for Global Justic (CAGJ) , Andrew, an I—were fortunate enough to borrow bikes from a friend of his. The friend happened to live in the more affluent part of town with large houses with old architecture, and work at a (mostly) all white Catholic Girls school. Two (2) blocks away was the (mostly) black public school. This binary will become more vivid in a minute.
Riding through New Orleans is awesome in that it has flat streets and a front porch culture, with people hanging out in semi-public space, very different than Seattle. It is also awesome both in the destruction caused by the Hurricane—and failed levy of the Army Corps of Engineers– and persistence and life. It is amazing to see how much reconstruction and population has happened since Katrina and Gustav in 2005, even if there are still a lot of decrepit and molding houses. The water line in the neighborhood where we were staying was at 4-5 feet. The place where we are staying has about a 3.5’ step up from the street, meaning about a foot was underwater-for over two weeks. More…
A New Deal for Urban Farms
Roen Hohlfeld dealt out a new tool for planning urban food systems – a deck of playing cards.
An excited roomful of designers, community activists, and government policymakers played with building parks into farms at a Brown Bag on October 14 at Seattle Great City.
Hohlfeld’s “card deck of ideas” comes in seven “suits” – grow, harvest, distribute, process, consume, recycle, and sustain. Trading cards with ideas as diverse as “seed exchanges”, “food forests”, and “mobile markets”, players try to build complete food systems.
The card deck is Hohlfeld’s Master of Landscape Architecture final project at the University of Washington. He partnered with Seattle Parks Urban Food System Committee and Seattle design firm SvR to design a deck of cards that lets Parks staff and designers consider new patterns of community food systems on public land. We’ll let you know as soon as the final decks of cards are available from Seattle Parks but we couldn’t wait to share this idea right away!
Applemania
Growing up in Arizona we had red apples and green apples and that was pretty much it. I never would have imagined sampling so many varieties the way we did this weekend at BelleWood Acres farm. We tried Tsugaru, a sweet apple from Japan, Gala, Honey Crisp and our favorite, Gravenstein, brought from Denmark to the US back in 1820. Paired with a sharp cheddar cheese it was one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.
After sampling we walked around the farm and met the owner, John Belisle. “I’ve done many things” said John “but running this orchard is by far he most complex; each tree takes about an hour and fifteen minutes of care per year. You multiply that by 25,000 trees and it’s a lot of time.” By the lovely look of the orchard that time is well spent.
Here is a virtual tour and if you are up around Bellingham visiting this Food Alliance approved farm is well worth the visit.
In addition to apples there is a pumpkin and gourd patch. I got a sugar pumpkin and am going to attempt to make a pie.
Some of those tasty Gravenstein waiting to be picked.
Freshly picked Honey Crisp ready to be washed and packed for market.
These young trees are being trained for maximum production. I wonder if I could get my home trees to do this?
New York City’s Urban Farmers
As a west coaster I often think of New York City as devoid of farms but clearly that is not the case. From the New York Restaurants blog here a map, links and profiles on some of the city’s many urban farmers.
Until the mid-nineteenth century, most of New York City was farmland. Now, thanks to the constant drumbeat of locavorism, some of it is going back to seed. Urban horticulture has long been practiced at hundreds of community gardens around the city. But a new class of growers is more concerned with bolstering a sustainable food system and, if possible, turning a profit than with cultivating a peaceful vegetable plot. In studiously trendy neighborhoods like Red Hook, Greenpoint, and Long Island City, the farming is done on rooftops and old basketball courts, mostly by the young, idealistic, and educated. Some still follow the old church-pantry model, but others are more entrepreneurial, relying on restaurant sales and CSA (community-supported agriculture) subscriptions to turn farming into a viable business. Here, a portfolio of the city’s most prolific food producers, and a map of where to find them. More…
A Celebration at Amaranth Urban Farm
Back in March, we did a post on recently returned farmer Nicole Jain Capizzi and her search for land to start up an urban farm. Well she did it! With perseverance and luck she found a lovely place at the south end of Beacon Hill and even had time to get a good planting in and start a small CSA program.
I had a chance to talk with one happy subscriber who said “I love being able to walk up from my house and get my weekly box. The produce is wonderful and I really like that it’s being grown in my neighborhood.”
Here are pictures from her land and harvest celebration. This year’s CSA is full but to inquire about signing up for next year you can contact Nicole at: njcapizzi@yahoo.com More…
Join the Seattle Tilth Garden Work Party!
At the Rainier Community Center Garden
Friday, May 28th, 1-4pm
Come get your hands dirty with Seattle Tilth staff as we beautify the Rainier Community Center Garden. We will be weeding, planting, and laying down new mulch in the pathways. If you are interested in getting involved, the garden would love your help! Your efforts will benefit the whole community. RSVP by emailing Maren Neldam at marenneldam@seattletilth.org.
Rainier Community Center Garden
4600 38th Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98118
Get directions:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Seattle&state=WA&address=4600+38th+Ave+S&zipcode=98118-1673&country=US&latitude=47.56177&longitude=-122.284913&geocode=ADDRESS
People On The Move: Becca Fong with Seattle Parks and Recreation
Who are the people behind the urban farming projects cropping up all over the Puget Sound Region? What inspires them? What foods nurture them?
Urban Farm Hub has launched a weekly spotlight series to celebrate the amazing people who spend their days creating a healthier, more sustainable local food system. This week we’d like to celebrate the inspiring work of Becca Fong.
Becca is a plant nerd. Her love of plants and the natural world are the main motivations for her work as an Environmental Stewardship Coordinator for Seattle Parks and Recreation, where she works to connect folks to the world around them. She’s working on bringing edible food gardens to Parks Programs as a way to help people get more connected to the environment. More…
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