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. Read More
In neighborhoods around the globe people gather on their front porches to commune, but our busy street, while friendly, is not like that. Yet a landscape change Blue and I made for environmental reasons brought us unexpectedly closer to our own community.
A few summers ago we took out our front lawn, and by removing the weed and gopher-ridden turf and disabling the sprinkler system, we started saving 18,000 gallons of water a year. We put in a drip system whose sprinkler heads consumed a couple of gallons per watering, versus the hundreds per watering of conventional sprinklers.
We replaced the lawn with vegetable beds that soaked up the sun bathing the front of our house. Read More
Anna Chan, 37, has outgrown the title, which doesn’t begin to describe the difference this anti-hunger activist has made in less than a year in her one-woman campaign to get fresh produce into the mouths of people in need in her community. Read More
There’s a little red schoolhouse up the road from my house.It is picture perfect, quintessential in every way of any number of historic schoolhouse stereotypes in design, and our neighborhood has immense pride for it.The one room space holds a piano, an antique wood stove, some old child-sized desks bolted to the floor, a few glass cases with local natural artifacts (think owl talons, mountain lion teeth, hawk feathers, snake skins, etc.), and lots of black and white photos of past students, teachers, and residents.The Alba Road Schoolhouse was in session after being built in 1895.It now serves us as a library, meetinghouse, lecture hall, and general gathering place for our small mountain community.And best of all, for a monthly potluck where we come together, old and young, organic and conventional, to break bread and get to know the people we live near. Read More
On a recent Sunday evening, nearly a hundred and fifty people decided to drive out to Brentwood, Ca to have dinner and enjoy the harvest hospitality at the Brookside Farm. Farmer Welling Tom was busy running about – harvesting fruit for the small vegetable stand set up on the edge of the orchard where his mom Anne would sell some pears before being called over to help serve the grilled fish and meats that accompanied their local bounty. Read More
When I first moved to Auburn, Alabama from Los Angeles almost a year ago, I immediately set out to find healthy, humane, local, and sustainably grown food sources. My quest was not easy. In a state where the obesity and heart disease rates are the second highest in the nation, I wasn’t sure what kind of healthy food might available, much less easily accessible. As it turns out, there is a growing local and sustainable food movement that, if nurtured, may turn into a revitalizing force for the environment, rural communities, and citizen health in Alabama. Read More
Today’s world is budding with innovation…brand new systems created by a generation of people that find technology as familiar to their fingers as I find a wooden mixing spoon.We are seeing an emergence of people taking this newness and coupling it with craft, with older, perhaps simpler ways of life.Preserving traditional methods of quality by injecting a bit of adaptive contemporary sheen is introducing what may be a key to saving our planet.A perfect example of this in my own town goes by the clear-cut name of Santa Cruz Local Foods, an online Ebay of sorts where food and technology meet.Essentially, on a weekly schedule, farmers and producers register their items into the database while consumers login to shop.There is a single drop off and pick up location, money is handled through the facilitators of the website, and everyone goes home happy. Read More
In recent years, farmers’ markets have flourished as consumers look outside the corporate, industrial food system to feed their families. We have an organic garden on the White House lawn, and in backyards everywhere, small gardens are nearly ready to bear Mother Nature’s summer fruit. The warm weather is finally here, and around the country farmers’ markets are in full swing. Strawberries, corn, pole beans and apricots have arrived in most places, and soon, tomatoes and figs will also find their place on the dinner table. This summer, two different organizations are celebrating the American farmers’ market tradition and raising awareness through summer-long contests. Read More
The second installment of Kitchen Table Talks was held last Tuesday in San Francisco. The evening featured Jessica Prentice, a professional chef, local foods activist and author and a clip of Edible City, a forthcoming documentary which follows the lives of Bay Area residents who are creating a local food system in their neighborhoods and communities.
Slated for distribution in early 2010, Edible City is a project of East Bay Pictures, a film company committed to making motion pictures that inspire reflection, compassion and imagination. The film, which uses character vignettes, showed Joy Moore, a longtime activist and teacher, discussing gardening and nutrition with the students at Berkeley Technology Academy. To help bring this inspiring film about growing local food systems to a larger audience, East Bay Pictures is seeking funds to finish the film. Read More
What if I told you that America’s food system is broken? What would you say?
Would you defend it by pointing out the abundance of choices offered in today’s average supermarket, estimated to be over 45,000 items? Would you cite that per capita spending on food has dropped significantly over the last 50 years, freeing up incomes to improve quality of life? Would you talk about how American innovation is not only feeding our citizens, but is also feeding the world? Or would you quietly ask what a food system is? Read More
It’s possible, it the biggest and most anonymous city in America for dinner with a group of strangers to feel completely familiar and relaxed. The Ted and Amy Supper Club was my second foray into the underground supper club scene — amateur chefs hosting under the radar dinner parties in someone’s apartment, where they charge a relatively low flat fee for several courses and free flowing wine. (Check out my first experience at One Big Table here.) These supper clubs seem to me to be the social dining experience of both the now and the future. I think everyone realizes the cultural winds are shifting — formal, fancy, trendy, showy and gimmicky gastronomy is out. Home cooking, value, connection to your food and the people around you are decidedly, wholeheartedly in. Read More
The number of landless and itinerant young farmers, working alone or with a few other people, is a pretty large demographic in my world. What is sometimes missing is not only land ownership but the sense of community that can come from an agrarian culture. None of these farmers wants to farm alone, removed from the company of like minded people.
The reality is that the work of farming requires a lot of time, and extra time is not always available to pursue the sort of friendships and bonding with other area young farmers that make the experience more fulfilling. Farming might not be as sexy as the New York Times sometimes makes it out to be, but can definitely be as fun as it looks. However, it can also get lonely and monotonous. Read More
My obscure Community Studies undergraduate degree provided a multitude of lessons, but the main things I gained were these two ideas: 1. The personal is political. 2. To affect change you must begin right where you are. With these dictums in mind, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about communities that are coming together to become self-sustaining. With food safety threats, economic destruction, globalization, outsourcing of jobs, and the homogenization of our food sources, it is no wonder that people are starting to get more and more organized. It seems like just this week, I have heard about a variety of examples, not just nationally but really close to home here in my small-ish town of Santa Cruz. Read More
Matt McCue is a new farmer. He is also a returned Iraq war veteran and former Peace Corps Volunteer. Matt got involved in farming in California after meeting Michael O’Gorman, founder and Executive Director of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition. Now, he is starting Shooting Star CSA Farm in Solano County, having secured a lease on some beautiful and productive property. “What is your life going to be defined by?” he asks. “In the military, if you get into an altercation, your life is defined by tragedy. My life is defined by growing and harvesting things, and there’s a lot to be said for that.” Read More
One of the complex questions I have been living is the question of education. This is a question that has grown within me from my own education in the public school system and now ripens as I have the stewardship of nurturing my own four daughters. For their sakes, I have waded through the war-zone of educational philosophies with the cross-fire so thick that I could not clearly see who was wrong or who was right. At last I came upon a place of peace, where Dewey, Montessori, Steiner, Mason, Rousseau and Froebel all seem to call a truce. I have found a place where public schoolers, home-schoolers, and private-schoolers can amicably co-exist. This higher-ground is in the garden. Read More
Northfield has a rich agricultural history. The town’s motto, “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment” evokes agriculture’s influence on Northfield’s fields, factories, and culture. Founded in 1855, the Minnesotan town was central to the wheat industry. A sawmill for processing lumber and a gristmill for processing flour were both powered by the Cannon River flowing through town. As the wheat frontier moved westward during the 1950s, diversified farms and dairy operations become the town’s principal source of income. Read More
Growing up in Kansas, I was surrounded by wheat and corn fields. Driving from my hometown of Wichita to visit my grandmother in Kansas City, I waved and shouted hello to the cows along the freeway. I never gave much thought to where my food came from because when I looked around, all I saw were farms. No one talked about food miles or supporting local farmers. I had a romanticized notion of big red barns, farmers getting up at five a.m. to plow the fields with their dog by their side and sitting down to dinner each night with food from their garden. I had no idea that most of the farms in my home state grew rows and rows of genetically modified wheat, corn and soy. It saddens me when I think about all the times I drove past, waving to the cows because I now realize that those were confined feeding animal operations (CAFOs). Ironically, it took my move to the San Francisco Bay Area to develop an interest and passion for sustainable agriculture. When I was asked to write about the local food scene in Kansas, I wondered if anything had changed. In a state were Monsanto reigns, does anyone care about local food? Read More
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. Read More
The idea of community looms large in the current environmental debate. It offers a locus of action that complements both the national and international protocols and the individual behavioral changes that have, until recently, dominated the environmental agenda. Read More
I am trying to convince all of suburban California to buy animals whole.
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. Read More
Just about every Saturday I enjoy a post farmers’ market brunch with two couples, three dogs and a two-year old boy. We gather at Sean and Rachel’s Bernal Heights home after each of us has finished shopping at the Alemany Farmers’ Market— a fixture in San Francisco since 1943 — share in our extra fruits, veg and herbs then create a meal with our odds and ends. These Saturdays bring a special tenor to what would otherwise be a single gal’s weekly errand. Read More
For more than a year now, I have been a subscriber to an excellent food listserv called Comfood, sponsored by the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC). According to its web site, Comfood is an electronic mail list created to link individuals and organizations involved with or interested in community food security. Co-founded and managed by Hugh Joseph, an adjunct assistant professor at Tufts University, the listserv is administered through the university’s School of Nutrition Science and Policy. Read More
Yesterday at Columbia University, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer hosted a conference entitled “The Politics of Food,” which he called New York’s next policy challenge. Stringer is known for his work paving the way for better health in East Harlem, and for the Go Green East Harlem Cookbook, a bilingual guide that is available free of cost to East Harlem residents. Sounding like Michael Pollan, he recognized that so many issues, from health, to energy, to environment all dealt with food in some way. So it was his goal, he said, to create a Food Charter for New York, based on community-oriented plans brought to scale. Read More
This Saturday, October 18, from 11am to 3pm, Slow Food Nation is hosting activities and workshops for kids and adults on how to grow food in San Francisco. The morning features hands-on educational garden activities for kids, including a puppet show on nutrition; the afternoon features short workshops on urban farming and a performance by the Brass Liberation Orchestra. Parents, bring your kids! Read More
Access to food that is good, clean and fair is an issue of great importance when we talk about changing the food system. Many would argue that education is the key to changing the way people think about food, but how to reach out to people in underserved communities? Last week, we featured a video on Growing Power, the Milwaukee-based non-profit farm education program started by Will Allen, recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant this year. Above is another video, featuring the work happening at the People’s Grocery in West Oakland, where as you will hear on the video, there are 50 liquor stores and not one grocery store. This disparity in food access is unjust, and cannot exist if we are to have a better food system. Read More
Urban agriculturist Will Allen recognized a need for the delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he lives. In 1993, he started working with neighborhood children on a gardening project. It was there that he planted the seeds for the farming methods and educational programs that would become the non-profit, Growing Power, that he now runs, and for which he is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship this year. Read More
You would be hard pressed to find a place where the divide between the “haves” and “have nots” is more sharply defined than Manhattan’s Eastside. The gap between rich and poor is not just evident in the number of nannies pushing Hummer-like baby strollers south of 96th Street, but more harshly revealed by disparities in the area’s health statistics. North of 96th, specifically in East Harlem where the population is 56 percent Hispanic and 33 percent African-American, 31 percent of the people are obese and 20 percent are diabetic. Cross the line south into the land of the healthy, wealthy, and thin, where 84 percent of the folks are white, the obesity rate plunges to 7 percent and diabetes barely brushes 1 percent. Read More
