Many New York State farms have experienced devastating losses in the wake of Hurricane Irene. Wind and subsequent flash floods destroyed late summer crops and vegetables, while others have reported drowned cows and washed away barns. Many more farms are without power and, because of washed out roads, countless more do not have a means to distribute their milk.

The flood is particularly brutal because it comes at the height of harvest, which means it is not only a financial disaster, but also an emotional blow. In addition to losing direct sales through farmers‘ markets and grocery stores, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members might not receive further produce for months, since waterlogged produce is illegal to sell.

“Community Supported Agriculture is a partnership,” wrote Just Food’s CSA coordinator Paula Lukats in a recent newsletter. She added that investing in a CSA implies that you are taking a risk with the farmer, though Irene presents the most extreme example of what could happen. “No matter how skilled a farmer is, no matter how hard she works, no matter how hard he’s planned, there was nothing they could’ve done to prevent the severe flooding.”

Lucky Dog Farm in Hamden, New York, an organic vegetable operation that provides a local CSA and has a wholesale vegetable business, lost most of it’s summer vegetables. Scenes of waterlogged vegetable fields seem to be found all over the state, with the Schoharie, Mohawk, and Hudson Valley all experiencing extensive damage, along with the Catskills and Long Island. The black dirt area in Orange County, a region prized for onions and vegetable cultivation, sustained significant losses. “The whole region is under water and most of the harvest destroyed,” said farmer Cheryl Rogowski. “We need to get the word out, this region needs help.”

“There is widespread damage to the best cropland along river valleys in the Catskills and Hudson Valley,” said farmer Ken Jaffe, from Meredith, New York, who was quoted in a Village Voice piece about the impact the flooding has had on upstate New York. “Transportation is under lockdown in most Catskill counties, and will be slowed indefinitely by numerous bridges that have been washed out, and roads that are literally gone. There are major losses to farmers who are literally underwater, and often under evacuation.”

The Schoharie and Mohawk valleys were hit hard by flash floods, where there were reports of drowned cows and destroyed barns. Unfortunately, confirmed reports are scarce because of the nature of the disaster–many are with out power and have limited access to open roadways. Darrel J. Aubertine, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets, told the New York Times, “Clearly, it’s not good. I’ve been involved in agriculture my entire life, and there have been times when the weather has wreaked havoc on livestock and farms, but I don’t think I have ever seen anything on this scale here in New York.”

The fact that so many vegetable and dairy farmers have been washed out by the storm speaks to the unique topography of New York, which is an important vegetable growing state. Schoharie County farmer and author Shannon Hayes explained in a recent blog post that the best soil for vegetable crops is generally located in floodplains. She also wrote about what the loss means for farmers’ businesses. “Vegetable producers around here make most of their annual income from July through October,” she wrote. “In addition to the incredible damage to their homes, they’ve also just lost half the year’s income, and an unfathomable amount of topsoil and accumulated fertility.”

The timing of the flood makes this particularly hard for dairy farmers, since the winter depends on a successful summer harvest of hay, corn, and alfalfa. The Albany Times Union reported on the devastating effects at one farm: “The water flattened a corn field, ruining $500,000 worth of feed for the farm’s 375 cows.” There have also been reports of barn fires because of wet hay.

The New York Farm Bureau has been compiling damage reports across the state and working with state and federal agencies with disaster designations. They also confirmed that many animals have been lost and barns destroyed.

Challey Comer, the Farm to Market Manager at the Watershed Agricultural Council, is helping to coordinate efforts to help farmers in the watershed area. “We have people going out to farms to access the impact the storm and flooding has had and to help farmers connect to available funding,” she said. She noted that the local extension agents are armed with information to help farmers with flood related issues, like what to do with water logged hay and damaged crops. She also compiled a list of resources and fundraising activities to help area farms.

If you have photos, stories or fundraising information please share them in the comment section.

Sue Ujcic is an innovative farmer and a champion of what’s possible when communities work together. She is as adept in connecting people to good food, good health, and good times as she is harvesting potatoes.

As co-owner of Helsing Junction Farm in Rochester, Washington, just outside of Olympia, Sue and her business partner, Anna Salafsky, have worked since 1992 with almost the same crew of 12 people to farm and grow 30 acres of organic vegetables, fruit, and flowers to serve their 800-member CSA program, one of the most established in the country. Much of their produce throughout the growing season is also donated to the local food bank where they deliver weekly CSA shares directly to recipients, a program funded by donations from their members, which they match.

What issues have you been focused on?

Linking low-income people with fresh organic produce. We’re a very established farm and that gives us a great opportunity to share our produce with food banks and soup kitchens. Volunteers come to the farm to glean and through our CSA we run a food bank farm. Our members donate funds and we match them, so that we can donate CSA shares to the food bank. That way people who rely on the food bank participate in the whole program. My other big focus is nutrition, linking low-income people to good food in particular.

What inspires you to do this work?

After more than 25 years of farming I’m still inspired by being with nature. The mystery of a seed germinating is still something that puts me in awe every year. I never take anything for granted and the fact that seeds carry so much information and have all this nutrition for you and can feed your soul and your physical body… that alone motivates me to start out every spring. And then with running a CSA program, my relationship to the farm and the community of eaters that we created also excites me.

What’s your overall vision?

To come from a place of gratitude and generosity. I truly believe that if you’re a really generous person and you have the resources to be generous, you’ll just have more to be generous with. I feel that the process of abundance is very real to me as a farmer. It just feels like the more we are able to give food away to people who are in need, the more we are given to give away. That’s been my consistent experience.

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

I was reading a book called Northwest Weather, a really great book about weather. I’m reading a book by Irène Némirovsky, a collection of short stories, she was the author of Suite Française. I’ve been reading about organic farming methods and different tillage methods, since we’re making some changes on the farm. Civil Eats is the one blog I read regularly. I read the New Yorker regularly, the Sunday New York Times (we take turns going out to the town to get them for each other, it’s been a ritual for years).

Who’s in your community?

Certainly my family. My immediate community is a really great group of farmers. Our whole valley is almost all certified organic now, so I live amongst dairy farmers and produce farmers. My diet is essentially a five-mile diet. Then there’s the community of eaters with the CSA—half of our members have been with us 10 or more years. So I feel connected to them as community.

What are your commitments?

My commitments are to my family, to my immediate community and I’m really committed to always making decisions from a place of love and faith instead of from fear. I think decisions made from that place are most successful.

What are your goals?

Ultimately to put really good, positive energy out in to the world and appreciate all the beauty around me.

What does change look like to you?

A place where people are in closer relationship to one another and are more integrated in their community.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

The most important outreach is to engage children first and foremost and in regard to changing our food system and our relationship to farming and food in particular, we have to engage children. That’s why we have all these places and programs on the farm where we work with children to teach them about agriculture, nutrition, healthy eating, and whole foods.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

Food banks and Boys and Girls Club of America, K-Records which is a local music label with which we co-host a musical festival on our farm, which is also a fundraiser for a food related cause. Local schools. And, we have several farms that partner with our CSA.

What projects and people have you got your eye on or are you impressed by?

I am really impressed by anyone who is saving seed and developing new varieties suited for wherever they are. I think the magic in creating life through seeds is fascinating and I’m totally inspired by that work. Vandana Shiva and her ability to synthesize and impart so much information in such an integrated way. It’s beautiful.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility?

I don’t see a lot of real change in food policy. I think fundamentally corporate ag will try to hold on as long as they can. But that said, I think in 20 years, farms are going to become more important and there will be far more mid-sized farms. They will also be more widespread despite any blocks in policy simply out of sustainable need. That said, marketing and distribution models like CSAs aren’t involved in any kind of policy, we’re just farming. People are paying you to grow their food and it takes out the need for any subsidies or loans. Just creating an alternative model and showing it can be successful. That’s new agriculture.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be more effective?

We need to have some way to help people become aware of who farmers are. Rather than subsidize crops, the government should subsidize farmers. I’d love to see farmers drive their tractors to every state capital, not even farm anymore, and create the awareness that people need to understand who is exactly growing their food. We need to change food in schools, we need to feed children healthy nutritious food while they are developing so they will develop curiosity and be able to question things.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

Some amazingly made eggplant Parmesan and my Mom’s blueberry pie.

Learn more about Sue and Helsing Junction by checking out Leslie Hatfield’s podcast interview with her today on the Ecocentric Blog. Yay Sue! We love you.

Founder Benzi Ronen spent 15 years developing systems for Microsoft, Netscape, and SAP. Three years ago, he jumped off the corporate train to marry his passion for food to a sustainable business that he hopes will “make the world a better place.” Ronen delved into the world of food policy and emerged with a vision to share a hi-tech solution with farmers. He began his journey by visiting more than 100 CSA farms to learn firsthand what could make their businesses even more successful. Along the way, the farmers he met all shared common traits: an entrepreneurial spirit and the desire to grow the best quality food possible. Enter Farmigo—a tool designed to help farmers do what they love best: be in the field and not behind a desk.

Ronen’s research revealed that most CSA farms already use customized systems for their member lists; usually a hodge podge of e-mail, FileMaker, Access or Excel spreadsheets and they all have a basic Web site presence. Farmigo (its tech partner is Google) is designed for the unique needs of farms and leverages the Internet to provide farms with an affordable system (“software as a service”) while creating a transparent and convenient experience for their customers. The company, based in San Francisco, with research and development based in Israel, serves about 25 CSA farms nationwide, varying in size from 15 to 3,000 members.

“Farmigo provides the farmer with a system to effectively manage their customers and reduce the logistics overhead involved in the back-office operation,” Ronen said. “It also provides the farm’s customer with a Web-based experience so that they can interact directly with the farm and manage their account.” Ronen wants to be seen as a partner, not a vendor, to the farms, and as such, he views Farmigo as each farm’s friendly tech-team. He noted that the farms are already using Farmigo to manage their members for sign-up, payment, delivery, and ongoing communication, which, he said, is resulting in growth opportunities and happier customers.

Annie Salafsky and Sue Ujcic own and operate Helsing Junction Farm, a 30-acre organic farm in Rochester, Washington with a 900-member CSA, serving Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. They previously ran their CSA program on an Access-based data system and index cards. (Full disclosure: I worked for Helsing in the summer of 2006 and I am all too familiar with their index cards.) According to Salafsky, the most obvious and beneficial financial gain for Helsing has been the synchronized payment center that Farmigo provides: members join and pay online, the farms’ records are automatically updated, and members create and have control over their own accounts. Farmigo also now tracks their harvest in real time and then provides a clear record of what has been harvested, delivered, and how much was charged for the whole season. Harvest lists can be printed in both Spanish and English.

“Farmigo has allowed us to expand from 650 members. We now offer six different shares and via our Web store, can offer as many add-ons to the basic shares as we can dream up. We have a weekly fruit share, which has been bought via Farmigo by over 350 people,” Ujcic said. “We sell it, track it, and distribute it all using Farmigo, something that would have been downright impossible using our old system.” Helsing is now busy connecting with other local farms and producers, and plans on expanding their product line to include locally made sauerkraut, honey, nuts, and grains.

Terra Firma Farms, in Winters, California, is a 200-acre organic farm with roughly 1,300 weekly CSA boxes. They deliver to 40-drop sites in the San Francisco Bay Area year round and have three different size shares. Co-partner Paul “Pablito” Underhill said they have a relatively flexible CSA compared to most of Farmigo’s clients, whereby they only require a month subscription and allow subscribers to take “vacations” without suspending their subscriptions. Prior to Farmigo, Terra Firma used multiple technologies, which were not linked, including e-mail, Peachtree accounting (for accounting, billing, box labels, and delivery reports), Excel (to generate harvest and packing lists), and PayPal for online payments. According to Underhill, they wasted a tremendous amount of time transferring data and communicating via e-mail with subscribers about very basic issues.

Calling it a work in progress, Underhill said, “Farmigo is an ambitious program to reconcile all of these needs,” Underhill said. “I think some of the more complicated problems we have with it are a result of our flexibility with our customers, which makes issues about timing very critical. Once a CSA is up and running, it’s not just the farmer who is accustomed to the way things work, but also the customers.” Underhill believes that Farmigo will eventually allow farmers who might be intimidated by the amount of administrative work involved in a CSA to start one without having to hire extra staff or create their own systems from scratch.

“After one season of adjusting, growing, and tailoring this new technology to our operation, I am happy we have it,” said farmer Thomas Broz of Live Earth Farm in Watsonville, California. “Farmigo has helped us from field to delivery, in many aspects of our operation. As a result we not only are able to handle our current number of members more effectively, but it is giving us capabilities and opportunities to expand and diversify in the future without increasing staff hours.” Live Earth was one of the first farms with which Farmigo worked and experienced some of the start-up’s growing pains, but Broz noted that Farmigo staff has been transparent and very receptive to feedback and helpful with technical support.

Ronen noted that Farmigo is only as good and effective as the farms ask them to be. Therein lies what Ronen referred to as the “innovator’s dilemma”: listening to customers and finding the best possible solution to their needs. “Farmigo is built by the farmers, for the farmers, and continuously captures best practices into new software,” Ronen said. “It’s a guidebook and provides the best way to build a box.”

Broz of Live Earth noted that Farmigo and other services such as Local Harvest are not just tools, but more of a partnership supporting small scale, diversified, direct market-focused farming operations. “In the big picture these services will play a factor in helping to build sustainable farming operations and food systems,” Broz said. “Which ultimately is what we all aim for.”

On a recent Friday morning, Wheatberry Bakery in Amherst, Massachusetts, was humming with activity. Behind hand-built wooden counters set with delicate French tiles, co-owner Adrie Lester dealt a brisk business in organic scones and muffins, loaves of fragrant artisanal bread, soups, and sandwiches. In the bakery’s kitchen, her husband, Ben, kneaded a batch of dough, then paused to slip a tray of sourdough baguettes into the oven.

The Lesters opened their business in 2005 and quickly established themselves as a neighborhood fixture. But in early 2008, everything changed. Commodity crop prices went haywire, sending the cost of flour soaring. “It was catastrophic,” Ben said. The Lesters decided that basing their products on an ingredient produced thousands of miles away in the Midwest no longer made good business sense, and they began to ask what it would take to source grain from local growers.

Two years later, an estimated 10 percent of the grains they use are locally grown, a number they hope to increase over time. In the meantime, the Lesters have poured their energies into a related endeavor: organizing the region’s first grain CSA, which in 2009 had approximately 115 members, with a waiting list to match. Last October, Ben and Adrie installed an electric mill in their bakery; now, a day rarely passes without a member stopping by to say hello and grind some grain into flour. The Lesters offer a remarkable example of the creative, community-focused thinking that has driven the local foods movement for the past decade, and they are not alone. From Maine and Vermont to New York and Pennsylvania, a growing number of farmers, bakers, brewers, distillers, and food educators are working to create a regional grain network throughout the Northeast.

Of course, there are the old-timers, like Daisy Flour in southeastern Pennsylvania, which has milled local wheat continuously since the late 19th century, and the relative old-timers—like Vermont’s Butterworks Farm and Gleason Grains, which have been growing grain for human consumption (as opposed to livestock feed) since the 1980s. Then there is the “new” generation. In 2006, veteran baker Don Lewis, of Wild Hive Farm in Clinton Corners, New York, began exclusively sourcing local grains for his breads and rugelach. Rochester’s Small World Bakery launched a bread club in 2007 that provides members with a weekly loaf baked from New York flour. And Cayuga Pure Organics, a 600-acre grain and beans farm, was founded in 2003 by two long-time Ithaca farmers, Erick Smith and Dan Lathwell.

Last year, Cayuga joined New York City’s Greenmarket system as its first supplier of whole grains, beans, and flour. Greenmarket publicity manager, Sabine Hrechdakian, said customers have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic. “In recent years we’ve seen [local vegetables and] grass-fed meat take off,” she said. “Grains are the new frontier.”

Once upon a time, of course, local grain was de rigueur. Before America’s amber waves settled in the Great Plains (Kansas and North Dakota produce most of the country’s bread wheat, each harvesting over eight million acres annually), the East was America’s original breadbasket. This early production was, by default, hyper-local—grown by individuals and ground at home, or in small communal gristmills.

In 1825, the Erie Canal opened up trade routes that enabled New York’s fertile Genesee Valley to emerge as a leading wheat producer. The canal also helped establish cities like Rochester and Buffalo as early centers of industrial milling. According to the late Blake McKelvey, a former Rochester city historian, Rochester boasted 21 active flourmills by 1835, enough to earn it the title Flour City.

A few vestiges remain, like Birkett Mills, which has ground buckwheat in Penn Yan, New York, since 1797. “I guess nobody told them that flour milling was moving out west,” joked Luke Stoldola of Small World Bakery. For the most part, however, the mills have long since closed or been converted for other uses.

Today’s grain advocates hope to restore the vibrant regional grain economy in the Northeast, and—with people like the Lesters on board—they have reason to be hopeful. Still, there are potential stumbling blocks ahead. The movement is relatively new, and despite organizing efforts (like the Northern Grain Growers Association in Vermont and the Northeast Organic Wheat Project), it is still largely fragmented. Lack of infrastructure—mills and processing facilities—is another limiting factor.

Then there are the seeds. Several of the Northeastern wheat growers have begun to experiment with heritage or “landrace” varieties. Cayuga Pure Organics, for example, grows the ancient wheat ancestors emmer and freekeh (roasted green spelt) along with more familiar grains. These heritage varieties are heralded among the converted for their genetic diversity, adaptability, and complex flavor. “Modern wheat tastes like cardboard in comparison,” said Eli Rogosa, a baker, farmer, and heritage wheat advocate who is regarded as the unofficial high priestess of the movement.

Nonetheless, heritage wheats can pose challenges in the kitchen—particularly varieties that contain less gluten, which helps form chewy, fully raised loaves. “Some people say you just have to revise your expectations from the Midwestern flour standard,” said Erik Andrus, who founded Good Companion Bakery in Vermont. “But as a baker, I’m not ready for that.”

Additionally, many heritage varieties are currently available only in tiny quantities. Grains were commoditized over 100 years ago and never favored by backyard gardeners, said Elizabeth Dyck, who coordinates the Northeast Organic Wheat Project under the umbrella of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York. As a result, many varieties exist only in gene banks or on small experimental plots.

Growing out the seed populations is possible but will take time, organization, and funding. In the meantime, consumers and businesses are left waiting. Take King Arthur Flour, the beloved Vermont-based flour company with significant nationwide distribution. King Arthur’s bakery director, Jeffrey Hamelman, said the company is 100 percent behind using local wheat, and last year the company started baking a “Vermont Grains” loaf at its on-site bakery. For now, however, the flour sold under its label still hails, by necessity, from the Midwest.

Grain was a latecomer to the “eat local” movement but has proven a compelling addition. Whether or not it moves into the mainstream relies on how well the key players can work together. This January, the Northeast Organic Wheat Project and the Greenmarket co-hosted a “local grains tasting” in New York City. Farmers and millers from across the Northeast met with some of the city’s best chefs, bakers, and distillers to sample heritage wheats and discuss their common goals and challenges.

According to Dyck, these continued dialogues are critical to realizing the vision of a vibrant Northeastern grain economy. “People are good at figuring out how to get from A to B, but without more conversations, it will remain a very niche thing,” she said. “Still, do I think we can produce a substantial amount of grain in the Northeast with the right support? Absolutely.”

Photo: JapanBlack/Flickr

Originally published on The Atlantic Food Channel

A reader recently asked me if I could expand the post I did last year on “choosing the right milk” to include eggs, another food for which there a lot of confusing buying options. Although there are more details below, the short answer is that you should look for eggs that are “pasture-raised” from a farm near you. Pasture-raised is pretty much what it sounds like — they are eggs laid by hens that are raised with open access to pasture where they can scratch, peck, bask in the sun, eat and run around to their hearts content.

Unfortunately, “organic”, “cage-free”, and “free-range” classifications/certifications do not guarantee that the birds are fed a natural diet or that they live the life of a normal chicken, complete with keeping their beaks (egg-laying hens raised in factory farms routinely have their beaks cut off–a truly horrible practice that is done to prevent them from hurting each other in their extremely close living quarters), having enough room not just to turn around but also to run around in, as well as unlimited access to the real outdoors and all the sunlight, yummy grass, and nutritious bugs they desire.

For example, the USDA defines “free-range” as meaning “allowed access to the outdoors.” Unfortunately, for many “free-range” birds, this merely means that the factory farm leaves a tiny hatch on its shed open to a bare external concrete yard for a certain number of minutes each day, an “opportunity” the chickens have likely never even learned to take advantage of.

“Organic” certification refers solely to the certification of the birds’ feed and while it is certainly marginally better to buy factory-farm organic eggs than not, organic feed does not a healthy, happy chicken (or egg) make.

In addition to the fact that pasture-raised animals have lives worth living (which cannot be said of most birds raised on factory farms, even the ones that sell “cage-free” eggs), there are a lot of benefits to us, the egg eaters, as well.

Although the results vary slightly for each batch of eggs tested (since pasture-raised chickens’ diets do vary by farm and by season, unlike factory-raised birds that eat the same thing all year round), the benefits are clear: pasture-raised eggs contain significantly less cholesterol and saturated fats and significantly more Omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin E, Vitamin A, and Beta Carotene than their factory-farmed counterparts. If you’re interested in the research, check out the results of this Mother Earth News study as well as the additional studies listed in the Mounting Evidence section at the bottom of page 4.

The other criteria, buying eggs that are raised locally, is important for three reasons:

1. the eggs you receive will be fresher and more nutritious for you and your family,
2. you will be supporting your local farmers and your local economy, and
3. the carbon footprint of your egg-consumption will be lower since they only have to be transported a short distance to reach you.

We buy delicious, pasture-raised eggs straight from our CSA, Eatwell Farm. The eggs from their chickens (see the photo of “the girls”, as Eatwell calls them, right) have rich golden yolks that “stand up” — one sure sign of a fresh, nutritious egg.

If you can’t find pasture-raised eggs at your local farmers’ market, these sites can help you locate a good local source: Local Harvest, Eat Wild, and Eat Well Guide (if you know of a farm near you that sells pasture-raised eggs, encourage them to submit their listing to these sites as they’re always trying to build their databases.)

You can also raise your own eggs! This is as fresh and as local as it gets. Raising backyard chicken appears to be a quickly-growing trend. In addition to the chickens that belong to my back neighbors, Fran and Chip, and the flock at the Edible Schoolyard two blocks from our house, I know of at least three other small flocks of chickens being raised right here in my little North Berkeley neighborhood. If you’re interested in this idea, stay tuned as I will be doing a post on backyard chickens soon.

If you really can’t find pasture-raised, local eggs for some reason (they’re easier and easier to find), I would recommend buying an organic, free-range option from a more trusted brand, such as Organic Valley or Clover (see my milk post for a review of different organic brands) since they purchase from a network of smaller farms, increasing the chance that the birds are treated more humanely. Also look for a brand that is “Humane-certified”.

Originally published at The Garden of Eating

When my buddy Ian suggested we turn his ’86 Dodge half-ton into a planter, I thought the pickup had finally blown its engine.  When Ian said he intended to keep the old truck on the road in Brooklyn, I figured he’d blown his.

But now, four months later, we’ve got ripe tomatoes growing in the bed (a gas station attendant ate the first one last weekend), and the transmission is going strong.  Truck Farm, as we at Wicked Delicate call her now, is a mobile CSA, with twelve (increasingly skinny) paying subscribers.

The gray Dodge has already given us a bumper crop of arugula, lettuce, broccoli and herbs, and our habanero plants are rooting nicely.  Most importantly, Truck Farm is sprouting a steady supply of interested neighbors.  They pull weeds, add water, only occasionally steal parsley, and leave behind a calling card of plastic animals: toy cows and chickens that graze contentedly among the nasturtiums.  Part garden, part art installation, Truck Farm is getting invited to way more summer barbecues than its owners.

I like to think that the project’s curb appeal goes beyond its novelty (and if you’ve seen TheWhoFarmMobile or the Waterpod you know it’s not that novel).  The desire to grow food in the city goes back to Babylon and beyond: there’s a mental satiety that comes from starting a recipe when you plant a seed.

Now, our veggie truck wasn’t meant to be a model for any larger fleet of four-wheeled farmland (though a conversion craze might be Detroit’s last hope).  We wanted it to be a showcase for urban agriculture of the low-carbon variety.  On a recent trip to Added Value, adolescents from across Brooklyn were washing lettuce and harvesting collards at Red Hook Community Farm.  “I used to drink a lot of soda,” one said.  “But since I started at the farm, I’ve changed what I eat.”  Added Value’s opening-day market was rich in low-cost, high-quality produce, most of which had traveled less than 50 feet from farm to table.

Later, at Greenpoint’s Rooftop Farms, E-Trade ex-pat Ben Flanner showed us how New York’s decimated agricultural lands could be restored, four stories up on a Brooklyn warehouse.  With a Manhattan skyline in the background, butterflies flirted with the tomato blossoms and Ben took orders for zucchini by cell-phone.

Admittedly, the patchwork farms and gardens sprouting up like weeds in the sidewalk cracks around New York these days may be a ways off from feeding us all, but I think they’re bringing our food system something it sorely needs: a dose of fun.

Here is a preview of the Truck Farm food and film project:

I’m a huge fan of soup and stew. In fact, I make one every weekend with my pickings from San Francisco’s Alemany Farmers Market. A weekly soup is the perfect healthy option for a busy single gal about town like me. I want to eat at home, cheaply, wholesome food, every day. But, of course, I’m running around – there are meetings to attend and friends to see, yoga classes, sunsets. So, I rely on my soup to get me through. Refrigerate a little, freeze the rest. Eat it when I need the nourishment.

Well, my routine changed a bit this week because of two events: the arrival of Spring and my first CSA box from Two Small Farms. I’m sharing the CSA bounty with my neighbor and friend Mike. He ordered it by himself last year and found he couldn’t use all the produce in one week, but liked the weekly fresh veg. This time around we split the goods. Last week he got to pick first (he took the beets) and this coming week I get to first dibs (let’s hope for more beets!).

Back to the soup. I picked the fat parsnips precisely because they are a wonderful addition to any soup – they have a sweet flavor and earthy texture that I just love. And, they became my inspiration. To celebrate the first of Spring I tried to create a light and fresh stew balanced with hardy ingredients like barley and pork (sustainably raised of course).

The following recipe makes about 12 cups of soup. I froze 6 cups. I’m also trying to acknowledge the origin all of my ingredients. But, since I didn’t know I’d be writing about this soup at the time I gathered them, I didn’t record all the individual farmers, but I did note the market. Next time, I promise to remember the farmer. See, I’m learning!

The Ingredients

2 large parsnips, chopped in smallish pieces (Two Small Farms)
Extra-virgin olive oil (Italian, of course)
1 onion, diced (Alemany Farmer’s market)
3 garlic cloves, diced (roomies bought)
2 carrots, diced (Ferry Plaza farmers market)
1 lb pork stew meat (Avedano’s Holly Park Market, from Golden Gate Meat Company)
8 cups water (SF’s finest tap)
1 cup barley (packaged)
2 fresh rosemary sprigs, whole (from Sean and Rachel’s yard)
Fresh parsley torn by hand, (Two Small Farms)
Grey salt, to taste (Sel Marin, naturally harvested unprocessed from Brittany, France)
Freshly ground pepper, to taste (White peppercorns from Ho Chi Min City/Saigon Spice Market– I brought them back to the states myself)

The Preparation

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the parsnips in an oven safe roasting pan (or on a baking sheet), sprinkle liberally with olive oil. Roast for 30-40 minutes or until tender and slightly browned.

In a soup pot, over medium heat, warm 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Sauté garlic and onion until the onions are translucent. Add the carrots and sauté for a few more minutes, five tops. Add the pork and cook for about 5 minutes more or until browned. Add water. Bring temperature to high and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for as long as possible. Brings out all the fat in the pork. Once the parsnips are ready, add those and continue to simmer. I simmered my soup for about three hours.

Meanwhile, cook the barley (according to directions) separately. Set aside.

Add the whole rosemary about a half hour before serving to infuse the broth with the scent. Add salt and pepper to taste. Then, about ten minutes before serving, add the fresh parsley. Garnish with additional parsley if desired.

Enjoy!

When I think of Petaluma, California I think of a tiny little town 30 minutes or so north of San Francisco home to antique and outlet stores, many a poet and artist, dairy cows and rolling fields nestled next to quaintly rusted industrial-scapes. I have never really given much thought to the families and seniors in line at the free food pantries. The fact is though that Petaluma has changed a lot in the last five to ten years. In 2007 there was a 30% increase in the number of seniors visiting food pantries and a similar 30% increase in the number of children enrolled in the free or reduced price meal program at school. That’s one in three kids and a reminder that all is not as it may seem.

A job-hunting informational interview led me to Petaluma Bounty and Grayson James, the Executive Director of the non-profit dedicated to transforming the way the hungry get fed in Petaluma. He schooled me in the realities of Petaluma’s hungry when we met on a rainy March morning to tour Bounty Farm the urban farm arm of the organization’s four-pronged approach to addressing systematic change. “It’s the focal point for a healthy food system,” said James.

The other arms include: the Bounty Box, a weekly CSA sold wholesale to low-income families; four Community Gardens with three located on elementary school campuses; and, Petaluma Bounty Hunters (meaning one who chases down healthy fruits and veg all around town), a gleaning program targeted at backyard gardeners.

Each program has synergies with each other and with people and food. “You want to give people multiple options and many different ways to participate because that’s how you change the food system,” said James.

Bounty Farm lies along a stretch of Petaluma Boulevard North, one of the main arteries through town, and across the street from an RV sales business. It’s around the corner from Lucky’s supermarket and occupies land “donated” to the organization thanks to a charitable five-year lease at only $1 per year. The property is open to the entire community and is run by Amy Rice-Jones, the Farm Manager, and her forty some odd regular volunteers who come to weed, plant and build.

The day of my visit, two volunteers were planting seedlings and placing them in the sizeable greenhouse built at a one day “greenhouse raising” last October. It’s Petaluma’s first community greenhouse and was created by 25 volunteers including a 79-year old woman.

The system and the synergistic way the programs work together is a result of research into other cities around the country, who are doing similar things to make sure that everyone in their community has access to healthy, clean and affordable food. Most notably Portland’s which James said “is way ahead of other cities from the perspective of community gardens and includes a powerful statewide gleaning program. We’re not using their model but it was certainly inspiring.” Seattle’s P-Patch program was another inspiration.

When James started developing the program just two years ago, thanks to funding from the Hub of Petaluma Foundation that wanted to address hunger in Petaluma, he talked to all of the hunger relief organizations and educators in the area and realized that “if we really want to make a long-term difference we have to focus on more than just hunger relief.” The end result of his community meetings was that focusing energy on an emergency food system wasn’t going to cut it.

“We think the way to do this [feed a community in need] is to become as self-sustaining as we can.” While not quite there yet, Petaluma Bounty works a little something like this: The chard, kale, broccoli, carrots, peas, onions and other food from the farm is sold to local restaurants who get to brand it on their menus as a Bounty Special, thus educating their diners about the program. Flowers from the farm are sold to local businesses as a weekly subscription, also branded – so that each place they sell is an opportunity for education. The joint sales of the farm are meant to support the operating costs of the farm.

The weekly CSA, Bounty Box, which currently serves 25-35 families, works with existing programs that serve low-income families and sells to them wholesale. These families, jazzed in turn, volunteer to assemble the CSA boxes. The CSA is currently self-sustaining thanks to retail sales and some local corporate sponsors, namely Clover Stornetta Farms, Kaiser Permanente, Exchange Bank, Petaluma Poultry and North Bay Construction.

The Community Gardens and the wholesale cost CSA project got their start thanks to a prior relationship with one of the three schools, which each happen to be the lowest income schools in Petaluma. James met with the families of the students and asked them to participate in the planning process. He asked what they wanted and what they could afford and they all went out to research prices at the local grocery stores to see what they could reasonably grow and sell in the CSA boxes. Their research resulted in an agreement that the community wanted organics and that they could sell them at wholesale for the same price or a little less than the price at local retailers. One of the schools, McDowell School, is both the packing site and a pick up site for the Bounty Box program. The gardens include classroom beds and beds open to local families where they are invited to plant anything legal as long as they do so organically. This helps bring families into the schools. Today there are four gardens being used by 65 families, each with their own plots.

The Bounty Hunters program just reached its 100,000 pound of collected and distributed food, and has two collection sites (for dropping off gleaned food), one at Elim Lutheran Church and another church on the East side of town. The program asks people to drop off any surplus from their gardens and volunteer drivers take the food to local food pantries, senior citizen centers and programs that serve low-income families.

“In addition to its primary objective of connecting good food to people who need it, folks are discovering that gleaning is helping to connect neighbors to neighbors, to increase awareness of the potential bounty of local food systems, and to foster a greater sense of community,” said James.

It took a year to formulate the multi-pronged approach – one that addressed the question of how to build a community food program healthfully and affordably. The program is doing really well and the plan is to create 20 more gardens around town and launch a GYOB (Grow Your Own Bounty) Program that will teach people of all income levels about how to grow food, understand nutrition and educate them about the current issues facing the food system. “We want people to grow food in backyards, porches, balconies, bathtubs and sidewalks,” said James.

Buying whole animals might sound macho. It might bring to mind flikr photos of smug carnivores committing heroic feats of nose-to-tail cookery, and mewling over every last, high-stakes moment of it. (And to folks that tackle 500 pounds of beef with such gusto, I raise my PBR beer can in congratulations.) But unless you require such theatrics, the process does not need to be so excessive.

My confidence has been hard earned. For over a year and half, Ethicurian blogger Bonnie Powell and I worked to create a whole-animal purchasing model that we used to divide animals we bought directly from farmers into pre-purchased ten- to fifteen-pound shares, distributed through what we called the Bay Area Meat CSA. Over grueling months as a two-lady distribution-company—during which we realized that meat CSAs should really be administered by farms—we seeded ranch-based CSAs and developed a system that kind of, well, worked.

Now that a few fledgling meat CSAs have used the tools we developed, with the help of Slow Food Berkeley, I am trying to put our model online. If it works, the web-based toolbox (meat 2.0?) should relieve some of the trepidation (and drama) associated with the process of buying something nose-to-tail.

Buying an animal “whole” means that you get the total weight of one animal (not the whole hanging carcass and a hacksaw). When you buy all of an animal, you pay one per-pound price for all of it: three dollars a pound, for instance, for the chuck and the brisket and the flank and for the strip steaks and t-bones and filet mignon. And it shows up cut and packaged, just like it does to the grocery store.

Here is how it works: The new site represents an online community, still called the Bay Area Meat CSA (bamcsa.ning.com). It is a “Ning,” a free social networking site with easy-to-use message boards and forums. Once people have become members of the site, they can look along the home page’s left margin and find a “group” of concerned meat-eaters in their neighborhood. The rest of the site is dedicated to templates: butchery specifications, cut-descriptions, worksheets on which to divvy up meat, and local meat resources: ranchers, slaughterhouses, recipes, and helpful hints.

When Bonnie and I created our CSA-modeled buying group, the idea was to help people without big freezers get city-apartment-sized quantities of locally-raised meat as inexpensively as possible. People who had invested in their own industrial meat grinders and walk-in coolers, we reasoned, were able manage a quarter cow or half pig, the smallest quantities many ranchers sell. So we geared our model toward people who would only be able to buy direct if they shared with a lot of neighbors.

Our theory was that if we could give butchery instructions to ranchers, emphasizing a need for everything in as small and many cuts as possible, and create broad categories into which we would separate the cuts, we could divide anything up, more or less equitably, among members.

No matter how you butcher a cow, or pig, or lamb, there are always approximately the same percentages of cuts on them: whether a butcher chooses to grind it into hamburger or cube it for stew, about half of any cow is pretty tough stuff trimmed from other, more tender muscles. So every share we made would contain about half of that tough meat. The rest of the cuts we organized according to ease of preparation instead of their perceived values. For cows, all steaks went into one category (for pigs, all chops, shoulder chops, and sirloin), all two-pound roasts for braising into another, and all smaller braising cuts into another. If one share got only flank steak from the first category, we would try to make sure it also got short-ribs, an easily recognizable and recipe-friendly cut.

It worked. Dividing cuts of meat into the categories that we did enabled us to split a 500-pound cow into fifty small shares, instead of requiring Herculean meat-eating of any of our members. When we finally gave up the ad hoc distribution business, I vowed to make our lessons open source, so that people who had gotten accustomed to shares of local meat could repeat the process themselves.

On January 10, at Leo Cotella’s produce stand at the Oakland produce terminal, Slow Food Berkeley launched our new social networking/meat instructional/revolutionary meat-purchasing guide site. Its sixty members are already organizing whole-hog purchases and coordinated chicken pick-ups, and most of them have only met online, even though they live doors down from each other. We are hoping the very commonness of it all—the absence of fireworks or double-dares—gives it enough fuel to take off.

In this time of watching our wallets, our good intentions about eating sustainable food could easily descend into bad habits, cutting corners and disenchantment about the food system.  Instead, I’d like to offer a few ways I’ve been eating good, clean and fair on a reasonable budget:

1. Cut Out the Middle Man – Whether you sign up for a winter share of vegetables (look for one at Local Harvest), so that your money goes directly to the farmer in exchange for a weekly share of local, fresh food, or you shop at farmer’s markets (a tip is to go at the end of the day, when vendors are willing to bargain a bit more for the food they don’t want to bring home) cutting out the distributor or grocery chain will lower the price of your food, and still allow you to get the best produce.  As an example, my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share costs around $25 per week, and in the summer I’ve been receiving between 12-20 lbs of vegetables.  Also, buy less pre-packaged food (wine, olive oil and chocolate are my favorite exceptions) as it costs much more than unprocessed food.

2. Perfect your Kitchen Skills – Invest in one solid cookbook, like Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, or How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (you might even be able to get a used copy), and work on your home cooking.  On average, meals cooked at home cost less than half that of meals eaten in a middle-of-the-road restaurant.  Don’t have time?  A trick I like to use is to cook extra grains to add to future meals, and I always make lots of leftovers for lunch and dinner the next day.  Bringing lunch to work is always a good idea.  Home cooking is healthier, and you can be sure to know where you food is coming from.

3. Eat-In! – Have a regular Eat-in, or potluck, where attendees can bring their favorite dishes and everyone can eat well.  Eat-ins are a great opportunity to share ideas, whether about the change we need to see in our food system, or any good cause.  Empower your friends by helping them source the best priced good, clean and fair food and share the stories behind your dish.  (Yesterday I made pancakes, and my husband said they were the best he’d ever eaten.  Local eggs and butter, stone ground wheat from upstate New York, and Vermont maple syrup made it possible.)

4. Go for a Forage – This time last year, I spent a day foraging with the Wild Man Steve Brill in Central Park and came home with a booty of apples, spices, burdock root and edible greens.  Guide books are great, but don’t go nibbling on any mushrooms before you figure out which ones might kill you!  Having gone with a guide, I now feel confident that I could return to the park and locate and recognize a few edible species.  In places like Los Angeles fruit hanging over the fence is fair game for picking.  There is so much around us that is edible, we’ve just forgotten about it.

5. Plan Your Spring Garden – Collect the seeds from this year’s garden, or request seed catalogs and save money on seedlings by starting them yourself.  If you are like me and both suffer from a lack of a green thumb and live in an apartment in the city and lack soil, try this: What is the status of your roof?  Can you place planters up their without anyone noticing or with the permission of the building?  Get a book, like The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food by Tanya L.K. Denckla. Also, in my kitchen window I’m growing basil and occasionally sprouts, which are great in winter when there aren’t as many fresh local lettuces. Allotments are also a popular way to grow food in urban areas.

6. Eat Less – ‘Tis the season for loosening your belt, but is ritual overeating necessary?  Making a Thanksgiving feast to welcome friends and family to the table can be a celebratory moment, but savor it, and eat slowly.  The more you pace yourself the less you will ingest, as there is a twenty minute lag between when you are full and when your brain knows you are full.  And best of all, this leaves more leftovers for lunch!

7. Volunteer in a Kitchen or on a Farm – This is a great way to get some freebies, especially on the farm where you might get a meal and some of what you pick.  It’s the harvest season, and you’d be pretty hard pressed not to find a farm that could use a helping hand.  (Check out World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms)

8. Save Money Elsewhere Before Scrimping on Food – Okay, okay, so this is not so much of a tip about food savings.  But more of a plug for what good, clean and fair food can do to change our lives.  We don’t put enough value in food, and in turn our bodies and the Earth are in peril.  Supporting bad stewardship practices and corporate crops means there will only be more unhealthy food to go around. Americans now spend 11% of their income on food, the lowest percentage ever.  Yet if, instead of that 5th or 6th magazine subscription, or the television-phone, or extra pair of jeans, we could eat delicious, earth-conscious food and spend around 15 – 20% of our income instead, we should be willing to change our mindset.  This is switching from the “me” to the “we” mentality is unavoidable if we are to stay inhabitants of this planet into the future.

Finally, enjoy eating.  Taking pleasure in food is not a crime, even in dark times.  Reflect on the work that went into your dinner and you will appreciate every penny spent.  Now hop on your bike and head to the farmer’s market before it closes!

Photo: *patrick