As a little girl, I loved sitting on the kitchen counter while my mom cooked. While I kicked my feet against the cabinets, she taught me how to peel an onion efficiently and how to crack an egg and use my index fingers to get all the white out before tossing the shells into the compost bin. And I still vividly recall the excitement I felt over the beautiful, golden, sesame seed-studded  loaves of braided challah we baked in my second grade class at the Woodstock Children’s Center–they were like some kind of miracle. Childhood is such an important, impressionable time of life when the vast majority of our lifelong habits are formed, or at least pointed in the direction in which they’ll head. That’s why my husband and I want to introduce our son, Will, to growing and cooking food alongside us.

Will, who is just shy of three, watches and “helps” us with our container garden where we grow tomatoes, greens, peas, beans and herbs. At this point, it mostly means he digs in the dirt but he’s learning.

He had the heady experience of drinking cold, clear, slightly sweet maple sap straight from the spile (was this a new vocab word for you, too?) during our first foray into maple sugaring last winter.

And we brought him with us to forage for ramps a few weeks ago (although we confined his enthusiastic excavation efforts to a patch of ground that was not home to this fragile delicacy.) We’ve also gone strawberry, raspberry, blueberry and apple picking as a family–all activities we plan to repeat on a yearly basis.

My husband sometimes plans baking projects in their hours together. At this point, Will’s attention span is still remarkably short so he mostly just enjoys the idea of helping and participates in the “dumping” portion of the experience where he moves pre-measured amounts of flour, sugar, nuts, raisins, etc., into the mixing bowl. Then he gets bored, climbs down from his stool and runs off to do something else.We’ve taken him to local farms and friends’ houses to gather eggs so fresh you have to chase the hens off their nests to pick them up. In addition to teaching him where his food comes from, it’s a great way to kill an hour or so. We have not yet taught him about where the meat we eat comes from, both because we don’t have a great local source and we’re also both a little wimpy about exposing him to something so bloody at a tender age (or to being exposed to it, ourselves, at our not so tender ages…)

It takes about 2-3 times as long to bake something when Will is involved and is inevitably messier and more work but not only are we laying the groundwork for future cooking projects and appreciation of real food, we have also noticed that our notoriously picky eater is MUCH more likely to eat foods he has helped prepare in some way (score!).

Will also enjoys using the salad spinner to dry greens and cutting food (cucumbers and tofu are perfect!) with the adorable toddler knife Rahm got him recently after being inspired by this Slate magazine piece by Nicholas Day on the topic of cooking with pre-schoolers. And he LOVES sitting on the counter smelling and identifying spices (cinnamon is his favorite; cloves and star anise rank second and third.)

I recently made him a child-sized apron to help him feel at home in the kitchen and, hopefully, keep him slightly cleaner, though it’s a bit of a lost cause at this point in his life. I chose the fabric (called “Dig It” by Michael Miller, in case you’re curious) since he is 100 percentobsessed with digging and construction machines and I thought I should go with something he’s already into.

We figure that laying the groundwork now will not only encourage him to appreciate good food, eat more healthfully, and enjoy growing and cooking his own food from scratch someday, but if we’re really strategic about it, in a few years, we might even get him to cook meals for us! If you are shaking your head in disbelief, check out this New York Times piece by Leslie Kaufman, who got her two sons (ages 10 and 14) to each cook dinner for the family one night a week.

One thing I love about Kaufman’s article is that she does not gloss over the challenges inherent in giving up control in the kitchen–she squirms in discomfort when a flame is left on too long for her taste and has to repeatedly battle her impulse to step in–something she unthinkingly does early on in the experiment that backfires. Her son storms off to his room and misses the meal he’d prepared altogether, despite her apology.

As a perfectionist (fine, I’ll just say it, I’m anal) who views cooking as somewhat of a devotional, semi-meditative practice–I like to clean up as I go and put everything in its place so that there’s no mess left at the end–this is HARD for me! I think it’s good to be realistic about the fact that this is not an easy process–it requires a lot of patience, faith in your child, and a willingness to spend more time and do more cleaning up than you would if you just handled it all on your own. But the end result should be worth it.

If this sounds appealing to you, I’ve compiled some resources to help you in this journey.

• Kitchen Tools For Little Hands - beware, you may want to buy everything… it’s all so cute!
• Four Great Kids’ Cookbooks - a few excellent cookbooks to help you get started. Some are great for pre-schoolers (complete with pictorial recipes/instructions they can follow easily) and some will take you into the older years.
• Twenty Top Shelf Kids’ Books About Growing, Cooking and Eating Food - a big round up of all our family’s favorites plus some great recommendations from friends.

Please add your own thoughts and any recommendations you have on approach, books, tools, etc., via comments.

Originally published on The Garden of Eating

Hats off to this mother of three who got fed up and took charge. Thirteen years ago, Sofía Gatica’s newborn died of kidney failure after being exposed to pesticides in the womb. After the despair came anger, then a fierce determination to protect the children in her community and beyond.

Today, she’s one of six grassroots leaders from around the world receiving the Goldman Environmental Prize, in recognition of her courageous—and successful—efforts.

Pesticide Action Network will host Sofía as she travels to San Francisco for tonight’s ceremony and celebration.

Pesticides drift from GE soy fields

Sofía lives in Ituzaingó Annex, a working-class neighborhood of 6,000 bordering commercial soy farms in the province of Córdoba in Argentina.

Argentina is the third largest exporter of soybeans in the world. It is also the third largest producer of genetically engineered (GE) crops worldwide, following closely behind the U.S. and neighboring Brazil. The explosion of GE soy production in Argentina has brought with it dramatic increases in pesticide use, and specifically aerial spraying of Monsanto’s weedkiller, RoundUp. Spraying of the antiquated insecticide endosulfan was also common until this year. Its use is now banned in Argentina as it moves toward a global phaseout under the Stockholm treaty.

RoundUp, long touted by Monsanto as all but harmless, has recently been linked to increased risk of birth defects when mothers are exposed during pregnancy. Endosulfan has also been linked to health harms in children, including birth defects, reproductive harm and autism.

Local mothers take charge

Here’s where Sofía’s story becomes truly inspirational.

After she lost her newborn, she realized that such losses were all too common in her small community. Building on Argentina’s powerful history of movements led by mothers, Sofía worked with other concerned moms to go door to door collecting stories about health problems in each family—essentially conducting the community’s first-ever epidemiological study.

Despite few resources and very real threats, Sofía led the Mothers of Ituzaingó to concrete victory.

“The Mothers of Ituzaingó” discovered the community’s cancer rate to be 41 times the national average. Rates of neurological problems, respiratory diseases and infant mortality were also astonishingly high.

The group then launched a “Stop the Spraying!” campaign, leading demonstrations and publishing materials warning the community about the dangers of pesticides.

Their efforts bore fruit. In 2008, Argentina’s president ordered an investigation of the health impacts of pesticides in Ituzaingó Annex; the resulting official study corroborated their informal door-to-door research. Sofía and the Mothers of Ituzaingó then won a municipal “buffer zone” ordinance, prohibiting aerial spraying less than 2,500 meters from homes.

Honoring leadership & courage

Each year since 1989, the Goldman Prize has honored grassroots leaders across the globe, unsung heroes who are campaigning for environmental justice and sustainability in their local communities. This global recognition of Sofia’s work couldn’t be more deserved.

Despite few resources and very real threats—including being held at gunpoint in her own home—Sofía led the Mothers of Ituzaingó to concrete victory: on-the-ground protections for the children in their community. The group also raised the profile of the broader issue of the health harms of pesticides to the national level, making room for a push for safer and more sustainable approaches to agriculture.

Sofía is now working with mothers in other Argentine communities, looking for ways to expand protections to families across the country.

Originally published by PANNA

The DIY craze has shacked up with the local food movement to produce some inspiring examples of entrepreneurialism: Mason jar magic made by suburban fruit salvagers powered by pedals; workshops on wild-crafting, axe-making, rooftop bees and city-living chickens; lecture series that focus on the how-to rather than just why, when and where; and more.

But we can’t just take pictures of these ingenious innovators for the glossies and call our work finished. We have so much creativity (and cabbage) fermenting at the intersection of craft, food, and agriculture–now we need to connect the dots.

Our spirit and gumption produce marketable ideas and we must distill the unique and visionary experiences into capacity-building structures to create long-term stability for our farmers,  eaters, and land. Our pet projects and pop-ups can morph into replicable systems, operations, and communications strategies so our movement can evolve into a true revolution.

An economy is a system of production and consumption and distribution. The local and organic food movement has developed a solid set of best practices for production, as exemplified by our National Organic Program standards and older, more venerated third party certification programs. We have proven the power of consumption of our wares with sales of organic food reaching almost $25 billion in 2009. Now we need to focus on the system of distribution, which is not simply the means of transportation. For our revolution, distribution is the act of transporting our objectives, mission, and human capital.

The first building block of our new food economy is defining our roles and job descriptions, so we can divide and conquer, and share each others’ workloads. Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, has identified that consumers must be “co-producers” in order for good, clean, and fair food to permeate our markets. In practice, I’d say that means our eaters must turn into farmers, our chefs into ranchers, our butchers into distributors–and we all must teach each other. We have the demand, we have the supply, now we need to get out the pencil and craft paper and rewrite the distribution, starting with our jobs.

Here are our jobs as defined in the old food economy:

The farmer farms
The butcher processes.
The distributor moves product and creates new markets.
The chef prepares and cooks.
The consumer eats.

Here they are in the new food economy:

The farmer farms, processes, prepares, and teaches distributors.
The butcher processes, creates new markets, and teaches consumers.
The distributor moves product, processes, farms, and teaches chefs.
The chef prepares and cooks, farms, creates new markets, and teaches butchers.
The consumer eats, moves product, processes, and teaches farmers.

And everyone eats.

Let’s bring back the guilds, the grange, the purveyor, the merchant, and the artisan, so we have both craft and community intrinsic to our livelihoods again. Let’s renovate these old world terms for new world applications. Let’s redefine the jobs together, and imbue teaching in each role. Our revised positions will become the foundation of a truly functional new food economy.

Farmer

We ask the farmer to interpret herself not as someone who masters just tractors and turnips. She commandeers the art of business plans and projected budgets and Quickbooks and Excel so that she may always adequately predict revenue even when she can’t predict the weather. She learns to love social media, and understand how email, blog, use Facebook and Twitter to create buzz about her beets. She thinks of value added products as part of every good farmer’s portfolio and saves money to build a commercial kitchen even before purchasing a new BCS tractor. She combines forces with her neighbors and extends the CSA model geographically, sharing the weight of production and administration across microclimates (see Two Small Farms in California).

She believes in collaborative risk-sharing ventures through farmer-owned cooperatives (see Organic Valley in Wisconsin). She knows that wholesale markets reach different constituencies than high dollar direct retail markets do and that it is a farmer’s job to actively build those diverse audiences for the health of the movement. She advocates for federal dollars to teach her these business skills on tax-payer dime, like an insurance policy for the national food supply. She cannot rest on heirloom tomato laurels and simply farm, she needs to farm and teach and calculate and market and sell and fight simultaneously.

Butcher

We ask the butcher to reinvigorate the art of his trade. Art comes from inspiration and the butcher uses the field as his muse, drawing upon an understanding of what happens before slaughter in order to treat his commodity right. Butchers teach how to braise cartilaginous off-cuts to make them supple and care about how the chef will make her profit margin on the various exciting cuts hiding inside the shoulder or the round. She comes to family meal to teach us how to sell. The butcher creates feedback loops from the get-go, soliciting responses in a formal way and distilling them for his ranchers, so that they may adjust their rotational grazing practice to produce more inter-muscular marbling. He takes an extern from culinary school on his kill floor. He promotes exchange between trades and teaches butchering skills to farmers, not just wealthy dinner party hosts (see North Carolina Choices and the Center for Environmental Farming Systems).

Distributor

We ask the distributor to understand himself not just as a means of transportation but a means of transformation. He encourages exchange with the farmer, and administrates it well. He is flexible, taking on smaller accounts and balancing them against bigger ones, finding outlets for the lesser volume at a higher price point, and making his money on the larger, heftier clients. He values edging an edgy product into a market at a loss, because he believes in the long-term beneficial effects. He contract farms, promising to purchase from growers at a set cost in order to create new market demand for heritage or heirloom or just plain well-grown (see Destiny Organics in Georgia).  He demands market traceability and farm identity so he can sell it (see the Cellars at Jasper Hill in Vermont).

The new distributor thinks of himself as a translator, one who speaks the language of both producer and consumer fluently. He explores online solutions with easy-to-use back end tools for farmers, chefs, customers. He has the savvy to attract both VC and grant money to fund his ideas, and sets up his business with a 501(c)3 arm. Chameleon-like, he tweaks systems to get local growers into institutions and schools instead of just fancy restaurants (see Market Mobile in Rhode Island and Bon Appétit Management Company).

Chef

We ask the chef to think like a rancher. Restaurants and establishments must change their meat purchasing systems to bring in whole and half carcasses and not just suckling pigs and spring lambs but cows, to accommodate cash flow realities of small-scale producers. The chef expands her model and invests more capital to achieve an economy of scale that works for producer and restaurateur both (see Farm 255 and Farm Burger in Georgia). She attacks her administrative duties as aggressively she slams the post-shift pickle-back. In order to make cash flow and profitability work on regular restaurant margins, yet support local producers, she (chef, not GM) calculates the potential revenue from a well-diversified menu that utilizes that whole cow throughout it.

Housemade charcuterie, pickles and preserves are staples of her offerings, not because they are trendy but because she must make money on the five pig heads in the freezer and 20 pounds of daikon radish in the walk-in.  She connects with local schools–law schools, ag schools, business schools–to help rear a new kind of eater/entrepreneur.  She understands seed sovereignty and the caliber of holistic agrarian pride it foments in its fruit as well as its planter. And, of course, she saves her own seed (see Sean Brock in South Carolina).

Consumer

We ask ourselves, the consumers, to widen our palates and change preconceptions of taste to make eating synonymous with activism. There is collective purchasing power in neighborhood buying clubs, cow-pools, and, yes, even in box store organics. They make eating well the same thing as eating frugally. We can argue to revive home economics as mandatory curriculum in our schools, to teach preservation skills so that our children don’t pay $50 for a one-hour canning workshop as grown-ups. We can remember how to salt the cod, how to cherish the broccoli stems, how to freeze the water we cooked our beans in.

We can have a backyard bucket that rears our potatoes, even when we don’t have a backyard. We can take small steps, choose singular battles, ask questions, absorb hypocrisy, and read labels (but we can still love Cheetos too). We can push our food critics to cross lines and think about provenance and politics when talking ingredients and recipes (see Mark Bittman) We can make it fun and we can make fun of ourselves as we learn to navigate through it all (see Portlandia).

This system of distribution trades in the currency of skills, education, and, yes, food too, in order to connect production and consumption. We respond to corporate agribusiness consolidation with our own re-verticalization of the system and our plans reach across the high-tensile fenced boundaries of  “farm” or “restaurant” or “truck.” Our managerial structures have flexible hierarchies that bend to award merit in unforeseen people and places. Our supply chains have multiple vectors, our markets are diversified, and deep education is a part of each sector, the oil for every cog in the machine. And in doing such, we can best appreciate the resources, metrics, and methods capitalism gave us by using them to define our new food economy, inside and out.

The food companies have created an industrialized agriculture system that uses a multitude of chemicals in fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides as well as genetically-modified products. Some people believe these additives contribute to skyrocketing rates of diabetes and obesity not to mention asthma, food allergies and other health problems.

Accessibility to good food can also be a problem, especially for lower-income groups in large metropolitan areas who typically do not have grocery stores in their neighborhoods. Instead, these “food deserts” have an ample supply of party and liquor stores that stock snacks and processed foods but not fresh fruits, vegetables and meats.

Participants in the food movement have actively taken on these “food security” or “food sovereignty” issues by creating substitutes to the industrialized food system including community-supported agriculture (CSA), farmers markets, local food, family and neighborhood gardens, farm-to-school initiatives, food as economic development, food policy councils, food assessment programs, and youth programming and training. And, they are beginning to make a difference in the way America eats.

Food sovereignty means that people have the right to decide what they eat and to ensure that food in their community is healthy and accessible for everyone, according to the Community Food Security Coalition. It also means that producers receive a fair price for their products and that local family farmers and fishers should have the first right to local and regional markets.

With this mission in mind, food security advocates have been successfully changing food policy not only in the United States but all over the world.

Here are some good examples of groups that were honored at the Community Food Security Coalition at its annual conference held recently in New Orleans. Family Farm Defenders received the 2010 Food Sovereignty Prize, which recognizes organizations that uphold the principles of food sovereignty and fight for and make real change to end hunger and poverty.

Honorable mentions were also awarded to ROPPA (Burkina Faso), the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, and the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty (Vancouver, BC).

Family Farm Defenders

Family Farm Defenders (FFD), a grassroots non-profit organization in Madison, WI, was founded in 1994 to support the livelihoods of small dairy and vegetable farmers.

John Kinsman, who is president of FFD, began pushing for food sovereignty when he helped protest the injection of bovine growth hormones (rGBH) in dairy cows on the University of Wisconsin campus. Researchers there were beneficiaries of corporate gifts that encouraged and affirmed its use. Even the National Dairy Board promoted rGBH. But no one ever asked the dairy farmers if rGBH hurt their production, said Kinsman, despite Monsanto’s claims that it did.

Kinsman worked with former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold who at the time was a state senator, on labeling rGBH milk, which the corporate milk producers didn’t want to do. A labeling law was eventually passed, however, and it became a model for the organic food movement, which now is trying to label genetically-engineered (GM) foods.

Through FFD, Kinsman also worked to re-localize food/farm economies and forge new economic relationships between consumers and farmers. An example of this cooperative effort is the Family Farmer Fair Trade Project that enables FFD to direct market cheese from Cedar Grove in Plain, WI. One outcome of this relationship is that farmers receive a fair price for their products as they provide consumers with rGBH-free alternatives.

“I’m a peasant farmer,” said Kinsman who uses this term to differentiate himself from food corporations that are now trying to call themselves “family farmers” just as Monsanto is trying to call itself “green.”

“We need to find new words,” he said.

It is important to note that Family Farm Defenders makes sure that urban people are on its board–40 percent of them. This is because the board believes that they must be as involved in defending the family farm as the farmers themselves.

“Farmers are so beaten down by industrial food companies and low prices,” he said. “They have had their dignity taken away from them.”


ROPPA

Our culture requires us to behave in a certain way and that is centered around food, said Djibo Bagna, of the Network of West African Peasant and Agricultural Producers’ Organizations.

Food policies are usually formulated by people in offices and agriculture is governed only by financial considerations, he said. However, peasants are leaving their farms because they cannot earn a living.

“As a food sovereignty council, we first had to decide that we would no longer allow others to speak for us or tell us what kind of agriculture we should have,” said Bagna.

Poverty is a rural phenomenon and its strongest conflicts center around resources. Unfortunately, there typically is no investment in rural areas nor is credit offered at reasonable rates. ROPPA tried to change this situation and decided that in order to do so it had to be present at the policy table.

The United Nations Agriculture Policy group was surprised to learn of ROPPA’s request. At first it allowed them only one representative but ROPPA baulked. It didn’t just want representation; it wanted to shape the policy. When the UN refused to give ROPPA representation, ROPPA promised that it would organize 10,000 farmers to take the streets during the policy group’s meetings. The UN capitulated and allowed ROPPA a seat at the table.

“You can’t have food sovereignty unless you are involved in the debate,” said Bagna. “You need funding for farmers to grow food and communication to break down the barriers between policymakers who set the rules and farmers who produce the products. You need agricultural research, value-added products and a dialogue space to talk to each other.”

Detroit Black Community Food Security Network

Detroit has one of the poorest urban populations in the country. With 50 percent unemployment in the city, which contains areas labeled as “food deserts,” a group of school parents, teachers and administrators decided it was time to act: they would learn how to grow their own food for their children.

In 2006, this group became known as the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. It focuses on urban agriculture, policy development and cooperative buying.

The group observed that “many of the key players in the city’s local urban agriculture movement were young whites, who while well-intentioned, nevertheless exerted a degree of control inordinate to their numbers in Detroit’s population,” according to its website.

DBCFSN believes that the most effective movements “grow organically from the people whom they are designed to serve.” So, the group is creating model urban agricultural projects that seek to build community self-reliance and to change people’s consciousness about food.

For example, its urban agriculture program planted and maintained a quarter-acre garden in 2006 and a three-quarter-acre mini-farm in 2007. In 2008 it built the D-Town Community Garden where it grows 35 crops, keeps bees and maintains a vermiculture compost program.

All produce is grown using sustainable, chemical-free practices, and sold at the farm sites, the Eastern Market, and markets for urban growers throughout Detroit. The group also holds harvest festivals four times a year.

Policy development, however, is DBCFSN’s “jewel in our crown.” It has crafted food policy for the city that was adopted by the Detroit City Council. This policy includes provisions for education, economic justice, finding ways to combat hunger, discerning the school’s role in food security, advocating and providing for urban agriculture, developing emergency responses to food shortages and food deserts and forming a food policy council.

With cooperative buying, the network has tried to go beyond the basic co-op model and include food distribution networks. So the network formed a regional system with Detroit, Toledo, Chicago, and Milwaukee in cooperation with the trucking industry.

“We didn’t do anything that we didn’t feel we had to do,” said Aba Ifeoma, one of the members of the network.

Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty

Dawn Morrison of the Working Group on Indigenous Food Sovereignty is a member of the Vancouver Island Network that has mobilized people to define the food system in Canada for indigenous peoples of 27 nations. They did this by working together with non-indigenous people.

Morrison pointed out that food is a sacred gift of the Creator and humans have a responsibility to maintain right relationship to plants and animals that provide us with food.

“We must be free from corporate control to determine where we get our food and how we grow it,” she said. “We do this in our day to day actions with family and the community. Our policies, meanwhile, must be driven by practice and be community-based.”

Citizen participation is the key to establishing and keeping a democracy. As we watch our representative government crumble through corporate influence, political corruption and hate speech, we can look to the food sovereignty movement to remind us how democracy really works. Then, let’s hope that spirit will spread.

For the urban office worker, buying your lunch every day can be a drag. It leaves your palate uninspired, your wallet empty, and your butt growing slowly across your desk chair. It can leave you with a permanent distaste for turkey sandwiches and a fear of deli lines.

Christine Johnson and Joanna Helferich—a public health director and a corporate lawyer respectively—came up with a solution for their lunch blahs.  For the past five years the two college friends have been getting together on Sunday evening and cooking their lunches for the entire week.

I recently joined the two lunch ladies for an evening of chopping and stirring and was totally won over by their low-key but dedicated routine. While the cooking takes a certain amount of focus and coordinated kitchen Twister in a small New York space, it also leaves space for gabbing—and maintaining and deepening a friendship that began over ten years ago.

The meals they make are largely vegetarian, incorporate produce from the local farmers markets, and cost about a quarter of what it used to cost them to buy their lunch every day. The process starts via email during the week with a conversation about what they’re in the mood to cook and eat. After five years, they’ve created a stable of favorites, recipes they’ve co-created and tweaked, and keep in a Google doc.

They also try new things, including the Moroccan lentil stew they were making this evening for the second time. The inspiration was a soup Joanna liked from a NYC chain called Pret-a-Manger; they read the posted ingredient list and made adjustments. Their second dish was an old favorite—classic turkey meatloaf (made with ground turkey from their farmers market) with boiled potatoes and peas (a rare appearance by a frozen vegetable).

What you’ll need to rock it like Christine and Joanna:

1)   five to six covered pyrex dishes a piece (they make six portions for five lunches and one for a dinner)
2)   two to three hours of time on a Sunday night
3)   About $2–$4 per meal
4)   A big enough kitchen for two people to share space and share tasks
5)   A microwave at work in which to heat up your meal

Has it been hard to keep this routine going for so many years? Sometimes, they say, especially when one or the other is traveling a lot. But the benefits—time together, a guaranteed healthy lunch with two to three servings of vegetables, a huge savings of money—far outweigh the hassles. And the experience has shaped them, and their palates. “My lunches used to be very meat-centric,” said Helferich. “Now I actually prefer eating vegetables.”

Moroccan Lentil Stew
2 cups French lentils (scant) – picked over and rinsed
Olive oil for sauteing
3 small-medium onions, chopped
6–8 small-medium carrots, chopped
4 celery stalks, chopped
8 cloves garlic, minced
2 med. turnips, 1/2 inch cubed
1 6oz can tomato paste
1 box container (4 cups) low sodium vegetable broth
4 cups water
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp garam masala
2 tsps cumin
A handful of chopped parsley
1 1/2 tsp sherry vinegar
Salt and pepper

Saute onions, carrots, and celery in olive oil until transparent; add garlic and pepper, cook 1 minute. Add broth and water, lentils, tomato paste, turnips, and spices. Bring to boil, then turn down and cover and simmer 1 to 1.5 hours, until lentils are soft. Taste and add adjust seasonings, add salt, sherry vinegar and parsley. Optional: Use hand blender to blend some of the lentils and vegetables. Makes 6 main course servings.

A version of this post first appeared on Well and Good NYC

Community is at the center of the good food revolution, and the Lower Ninth Ward section of New Orleans is home to one of the more extreme examples. Five years after Hurricane Katrina broke the levees–flooding the neighborhood and forcing its residents to decamp elsewhere–the area, largely frozen in time, has become home to a thriving community of urban farmers aiming to improve the quality of life of its residents.

I was in the neighborhood recently on a tour arranged by the Community Food Conference, a four-day event in October offering panels on different aspects of food policy. My tour guide, Jenga Mwendo, grew up in the Lower Ninth, but was living in New York City when Katrina hit.

“I quit my job, sold everything and moved out to New Orleans with the intention of finding some way of being a contribution,” she said. Mwendo had purchased a house in the Lower Ninth as an investment property just weeks before the storm, and so began by rebuilding it. Next, she decided to figure out who owned the abandoned properties near hers. “I decided that I was going to single-handedly revitalize my block,” she said.

Statistics reveal that only 25 percent of residents have returned to rebuild. As a result, abandoned houses dot the neighborhood, services and infrastructure are sorely lacking, and there is a lot of land. This has made the Lower Ninth prime for urban agriculture–which, for Mwendo, has been key to rebuilding and bringing together the community.

Through her work, she has brought back to life an existing garden, started a new one, and created the Backyard Gardeners Network, which connects gardeners to resources and to each other. She also helped facilitate the planting of 175 fruit trees. [You can read more about her work in an interview I did with her recently for Grist.]

“The more people that I spoke too, especially the elders, the more I realized that [agriculture] was really an integral part of the history of the Lower Ninth Ward,” she said. “This whole process has been an opportunity for me to reconnect with my past and know New Orleans in a way that I never knew it before.”

In communities of color, where one in two people is now predicted to become diabetic in their lifetime and where there is often a strong history of agriculture, community gardening projects can have a huge impact–especially in places like the Lower Ninth, which doesn’t have a single grocery store. “I see the gardens as opportunities to come together, work together, and do things that are going to be beneficial for our neighborhood,” said Mwendo.

Nat Turner also made his way to New Orleans from New York City in the wake of Katrina. First he came as a history teacher bringing his students there for volunteer projects, and then later he became a resident and founded Our School at Blair Grocery, a school housed in a former grocery store.

“There were kids falling through the cracks, so I said, let’s start an independent alternative school,” said Turner. Agriculture is used as a tool to help students, who have dropped out of traditional school settings, develop work skills.

As Turner tells it, the idea of using food as a teaching tool was originally about providing access to produce. “People in the neighborhood want bell peppers, okra, and shallots,” he said. So he built vegetable beds, chicken coops, and greenhouses where the students participate in a sprout-growing operation for local restaurants.

In addition, he saw that there was a need to create jobs. “There is nowhere for black teenagers in New Orleans to find a job,” said Turner. “There is probably a 70 percent unemployment rate in our neighborhood.”

Each day at Our School, in addition to studies geared toward passing the GED exam, students plant, harvest or deliver sprouts grown in their greenhouses to restaurants all around the city. The farm’s model is inspired by Will Allen–a Milwaukee, Wisconsin urban farmer who builds intricately diverse growing systems that provide fish, vegetables and rich compost year round to residents. Through their work, students learn business skills–and get to rub elbows with famous local chefs like John Besh of restaurants La Provence, Lüke and August. After he took a tour of the school recently, Turner said, Chef Besh said that he “wants to buy everything that we can possibly grow for his restaurant.”

The school benefits from around $2000 per week from these restaurant sales, which helps subsidize local sales, and the students take home a stipend of $50 per week along with other benefits like paid cellphone bills. As a result of this work, three blighted lots in the neighborhood have been turned into productive farmland. And they are expanding–having just received notice of a three-year, $300,000 community food project grant from the USDA which will allow them to increase their growing capacity, take on more students, and pay for building repairs.

Both Mwendo and Turner agree that the government has a role to play in improving the quality of life in the Lower Ninth. “It would be really nice if they could release some of those federal dollars around fresh food retail outlets in under-served neighborhoods,” said Turner, who is also looking for the government to make it easier for groups like his to access blighted land.

Volunteering for an afternoon at Our School, I found myself standing up to my ankles in rotting fruits and vegetables, cardboard, and coffee grinds at the giant compost pile that would become a new farm field in the spring. Four of Our School’s students–all boys–and one teacher explained the difference between “green” matter and “brown” matter (the green matter being the food waste, containing nitrogen, and brown matter the cardboard and wood chips, containing carbon). All four of the students were different sizes and ages, and all worked diligently together to complete the project.

Indeed, composting seemed like an apt metaphor for the changes happening in the Lower Ninth. Instead of standing by to watch a neighborhood slowly disintegrate, urban farmers are breaking down food waste into a productive medium in which to grow. While the stand-off continues between business owners who wait for the population of the neighborhood to increase, and people who wait for amenities like grocery stores and schools to open before they move in, activists like Mwendo and Turner will continue to grow community at the grassroots: starting with the soil.

Four Worlds Bakery is a small business stemming the tide of a bad economy with sustainable practices–and good bread. This winter when I moved from New York City to Philadelphia, I found out quickly about this hot spot for baked goodness. A new Philly friend raved about Michael Dolich, the owner and head baker, as I bit into one of his delicious almond croissants at a local coffee joint. Her enthusiasm matched with the buttery magic in my mouth inspired me to investigate this West Philadelphia community staple.

In getting to know Michael and the bakery, I’ve been lucky enough to watch some of the more intricate processes involved in such a high quality, environmentally conscious and nutritionally rich product. “I want you to master the croissant before you move on,” Michael said to a new baker one morning, and my heart swelled to see that such attention was going into his employees as well as his bread. While discussing a few local businesses that were having a rough time staying afloat, Michael spouted an unexpected nugget of wisdom that morning amidst the whirring mixers and rolling pins clopping against wooden tabletops. “Business is all about relationships,” he said. After many more weeks of watching the business grow from wholesale to retail, it’s clear that this philosophy drives its success. From the bread itself to the customers—who were neighbors and friends to start out—to the community and the employees, and ultimately, to the planet, the growth of the business is just a series of blooming relationships. Everything is done with an intention to contribute positively to the health and well-being of the world around us.

Making his transition from a career as a trial lawyer to a lifetime artisan, Michael began as a volunteer baking for attendees at a Jewish retreat center in the Catskills. These first humble attempts evolved into a passion, fed by hours in his basement at home, with friends in the neighborhood as guinea pigs. The business was born from demand: he was making a quality product unmatched locally. The bread is centered on a slow fermentation, using the highest quality products. Whole wheat, spelt, and rye flour are milled in-house. The heart of the products, the starter, is more than five years old—created at the retreat center—and is regularly fed, which allows the bakery to use very little store-bought yeast. Dough is mixed and bread baked daily, so everything is made-to-order. When there are extras, they go to a local café to be sold, home with the bakers, or are given to neighbors.

Those neighbors are often customers and friends. If communication is key to relationship success, Four Worlds has got it down. Between the Web site, Michael’s bread blog, and the weekly e-newsletter, customers have easy access to details about how the bread is made, what it’s made of, the latest news at the bakery, and even occasional musings or personal anecdotes from Michael about the development of the bakery or inspiration for a new product. For example, there is an entry on the blog providing an in-depth discussion on bread’s nutritional benefits. Questions, concerns, and complaints are received by Michael directly, and he encourages customers to send feedback anytime.

The bakery recently moved to a new space, which is shared with other local businesses. In the hours Four Worlds is not operating—mostly from the late afternoons until about 4am—cupcakes and other desserts that don’t require a morning bake are made. A coffee roaster, whose coffee is sold at the bakery, shares the space. Their presence provides obvious benefits: a small community of people doing what they love and exchanging ideas, split costs, and more tasty treats. This also allows the oven, freezers, and refrigerators to remain at steady temperatures and in use around the clock in order to avoid wasted energy. To encourage peaceful cohabitation, all renters sign a contract, which states that all decisions concerning the space must be made by consensus.

It is the regular, everyday practices that most clearly define its relationship to the planet and make the bakery unique. Unavoidable disposable items like packaging for the ingredients or products are used sparingly, recycled, or cleaned and reincarnated as compost bins or containers. As a result, very little waste is produced. All machines in the bakery, with the exception of the oven and bagel former (a time-saver and quite a luxury for the bakers who are used to forming them by hand), are in their second life, if not their third or fourth. Brooms, trays, gloves, and knives are kept in small supply and treated with care. They’re mindful of water use, and extra croissant, raisins, and sliced almonds are being used for a bread pudding recipe in the works. When you walk in, there is a positive energy that feeds itself as it feeds you, and you understand why the satisfaction of the business well exceeds the cut in income Michael decided to take. Indeed, every time I walk in hungry I walk out happy.

When Brooklyn homeowner and Hunter College urban studies professor Tom Angotti thought about how he could make a difference in his community, he decided to start with his overgrown corner plot. Little did he know he’d be at the helm of a volunteer movement that’s working to make a difference in the way we think about food, community, and what it takes to democratically run a major project comprised of individuals holding various opinions on urban agriculture.

How does one go about growing a farm? How can a seed of an idea that a rocky overgrown junk pile corner patch in Brooklyn transform into a viable Community Supported Agriculture farm? Perhaps it helps to be an experienced community planner like Tom.

It all started on the local Windsor Terrace/Kensington list-serve, announcing on March 28, 2010 that Tom and his wife Emma would like to invite the community to convert his plot of land into a community farm. Word reached as far as Manhattan, and a regular crop mob of more than a hundred people showed up from neighborhoods near and far.

Urban foodies, farmers, and ecological communities are cropping up more and more, with rising passion and idealism about food—and all the issues that surround it. Concerns about food safety and costs are not new, and the farm project has attracted numerous people who care about addressing these issues, including members of organizations such as the Park Slope Food Coop, Just Food, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and New York University.

Since the inaugural groundbreaking, Prospect Farm has rooted into a community project, with a mission of producing local food as an alternative to industrial food—with diversity in both food production and membership. But even before future crop growers (and eaters) could think about what kinds of things to grow and where and how there was the issue of taking a hard look at what was underneath all that land and cleaning up what had long been buried there.

The soil was tested and found to have high levels of lead and other heavy metals—typical of most Brooklyn soil near streets and highways. So improving the soil began. First, we dug out concrete rubble, rocks, floor tiles, furniture frames, and 1970s-era cans with peel-off pull tabs. Then we started to make new soil. From there, the community composting project got underway, collecting neighbors’ food scraps to create enough compost to turn over into the soil, plot by plot. Not unlike an archeological dig, volunteers carved out huge holes in the land, sifted the soil, and filled the cavities with layers of food compost, horse manure from the local stables, newspaper, brown compost (leaves), and sifted dirt.

Meanwhile planting plans continued. As some volunteers worked plots for planting in 2011, others prepared several smaller plots for immediate planting for harvest this summer and fall. Peter Kelman, experienced urban gardener, guided the farm’s first plot managers in the square foot gardening method for maximizing production in limited urban spaces as well as best practices for plot management and planning. The results (that didn’t get eaten) have been sent to a science lab at Brooklyn College to teach us more about the soil and what is making its way into what we grow in it. Some products known to take up minimal amounts of heavy metals were eaten by some of the growers, but with precautions not to feed them to children. Many, including those known to absorb heavy metals, were disposed of.

Thus Prospect Farm is working to both remediate the soil and grow food; because this will take some time it will be “slow food” in more ways than one. The intent is to make Prospect Farm a living public model and teaching tool; to make public the Soup to Nuts of it all. This includes periodic testing of the soil—as well as what grows in it—and posting results; working with expert composters and involving the community in soil reclamation; reaching out to master gardeners and local scientists who’ve had great success with square foot gardening methods for urban settings; connecting with local residents, businesses, schools, and organizations such as the Brooklyn Food Coalition and other groups involved with food sustainability and food justice initiatives.

Ultimately, as much as Prospect Farm can and does grow in Brooklyn, a farm needs hands—and regular care. As it grows, the farm faces the reality of labor needs, organization, outreach, plot maintenance, expenses, materials, and seeds. The hope is that by digging into the issues that we care about and getting our hands dirty, even if we don’t solve all the food problems as we see them, at the very least we can change what we know and how we think about food.

Participation is open to all and welcome. Got food scraps? Bring them for composting Wednesday and Sundays 6 to 7 p.m. Come see what’s shaping up at the farm, located at 1194 Prospect Avenue, between Seeley and Vanderbilt Streets. You can find out more about the farm and how to get involved at www.prospectfarm.org. And save the date: October 30 beginning at 11 a.m. the farm is kicking off its first annual Harvest Fest and Soup Cook-Off, with games, music, and food-a-plenty.

Manny Howard’s new book, My Empire of Dirt, is haunted by the living ghost of Wendell Berry.  First there’s the epigraph by Berry in which he instructs us on how to “use land well,” and it includes knowing and loving the land, and using the right tools. (To paraphrase a master, poorly.)

Then, early on in Howard’s recounting of a season spent trying to turn his south Brooklyn backyard into a homestead, the voice of Wendell Berry comes to him, offering further wisdom. Only problem is, Howard confesses in the epilogue that “On the Farm, Wendell Berry girded me.  Not that I had ever read a word he’d written until I was back at my desk, trying to make sense of the year.” Huh?

As a gimmick for a magazine article—which this book started out as–I suppose this premise makes sense. “You like locavorism New Yorkers, well locavore this!” Smart, quirky journalist, looking for a new drug, seeks quixotic project sure to provide (mis)adventure and a cover article, all while basking in the local-food-cum-DIY zeitgeist.  If the piece that resulted a few summers back in New York magazine made you squirm, then I hate to think what you’d make of the long version. Howard enters into his project recklessly, voraciously, cluelessly. Many animals were harmed in the writing of this story. He sawed off his own finger, too.

For me (a first-time grower trying her hand slowly at windowsill tomatoes and basil as well as some Kentucky Colonel Mint) the core lesson here is about new farmer development.  What does it take to learn how to farm and do we have a system in place right now for people to do so? One can try to learn to farm Howard’s way, flailing about with expensive hydroponic systems but no instructor, or one of his other trials and subsequent errors.  It’s no surprise, though, that at the end of the book he is no farmer.  He has relinquished most of the endeavor and is a man with a couple of backyard chickens and a vegetable patch. I am somehow reminded of something I heard Will Allen say: that he wanted apprentices at Growing Power who plan to be farmers. That he doesn’t want people there dicking around for a summer (once again, to paraphrase a master, poorly).

A person who truly wants to learn how to farm in this country has some pathways to begin, but I think we can all agree that there are not enough of them.  Apprenticeships are a good start for many new farmers–but they are just a beginning, and in some places, like California, they are under threat. How can we help new farmers find mentors? And find the time to continue their pursuits until they have not only found knowledge but also the meaning of their work?

Berry’s final words to Howard are about the place of knowledge, the importance of work, and the necessity of taking one’s time while working and then again afterwards to understand the work’s meaning and worth.  Howard’s experience bears out the need for mentorship (knowledge, work) and the need for duration (time).  He was a stranger in a strange land and because he did not have knowledge, instructors, or an experienced growing community to support and guide him in his work, he was not able to sustain it (nor sustain himself; for a variety of reasons, including a freak Brooklyn tornado, his farm produced little food).

I wish he had found Berry before he set out in his backyard.  But there is only so much you can learn from a book.  Even beginning with a conversation with a knowledgeable friend can help—that’s how I got this windowsill experiment started. Perhaps I wish Howard had found one or more of the many Brooklyn urban farmers and gardeners who have spent years now learning their way and teaching it to others. It would not have made for an article or book full of escapades and hijinks but he may have begun to root himself to the land and to the rich traditions of growing in that once-rural Borough, in that county of Kings.

As cities across the country struggle with suburban sprawl, disappearing farmland, and a dwindling population of regional farmers, one community in Chicago’s northern suburbs is doing things a little differently.

Prairie Crossing is one of those rare examples of energy efficient construction, neighborhood-oriented development, good land stewardship, and farming advocacy that is leading the way for a new kind of development. Under the visionary guidance of George and Vicky Ranney, the 677 acre property in Grayslake, Illinois was transformed from depleted corn and soybean fields back to a diverse and thriving ecosystem of native wetland and prairie habitat, 100 acres of certified organic farmland, and low density single-family housing. Add to that a coordinated regional effort to stem the tide of suburban overdevelopment and loss of farmland, and you have a nationally recognized development model that not only demonstrates environmental conservation but actually increases farmland and farmers.

After 20 years, Prairie Crossing is still working toward many of its guiding principles; continually improving its diversity and affordability, and refining a model of sustainable and profitable development while balancing the community and education programs that represent its core values. Prairie Crossing has gotten a lot of things right, gaining national recognition for its innovations in planning, community design, and sustainable agriculture. At the core of the community, the farmland is literally growing a bumper crop of new farmers and land stewards. Through several cooperating programs, people of all ages are inspired to value local farming, enjoy good food, and protect the county’s farmland.

The Prairie Crossing Learning Farm grew from a vision of providing hands-on farm experiences that integrated curriculum with the daily workings and wonders of an organic farm. Since its creation in 2004, the Learning Farm has grown to offer innovative farm-based education for hundreds of area children and youth who visit regularly throughout the year for on-going farm lessons, farm work and entrepreneurship, and service learning projects. A summer employment program, the Prairie Farm Corps, offers area youth a chance to gain farming, cooking, and job skills while earning a paycheck. This year, the Learning Farm will add a Community Supported Agriculture program, as well as a gleaning program run by the staff and youth of the Prairie Farm Corps. They will also expand their role at the Prairie Crossing Farmer’s Market. The Learning Farm’s staff itself demonstrates a growing list of career possibilities in organic farming education.

Young and beginning farmers who want to get even more involved in production have several options. The Farm Business Development Center (FBDC) at Prairie Crossing offers affordable leases on prime certified organic farmland, which include shared equipment, use of packing and greenhouse facilities, and mentoring among the growing network of Prairie Crossing farmers. From this “business incubator” model, at least seven thriving organic farms have been created since 2004 and have continued to thrive at Prairie Crossing and beyond.

The growing network of family farms, which is led by the exemplary Sandhill Organics, contributes a significant amount of organic produce to the Chicago area food system and offers employment and training to a new generation of beginning farmers. The FBDC, along with regional colleagues, the Angelic Organics Learning Center and Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, will expand even further in the next few years, with the help of a USDA Beginning Farmer & Rancher Development Program Grant.

Finally, to keep up with the growing list of newly minted Lake County farmers looking for land of their own, a land conservation agency created through Prairie Crossing is looking ahead to secure land for a future of local organic production. The Liberty Prairie Conservancy, is working with the community’s farm programs and area landowners to identify and preserve farmland for the next generation of young and beginning farmers who come from Prairie Crossing and other area farmer training programs in need of affordable and productive land. Through the vehicle of conservation development, Prairie Crossing has created a host of programs in farm education, organic production, and land conservation that work together toward a promising future for the historically agricultural Lake County.

Originally published on Urban Farm Hub