I know that a lot of the byproducts from Empire Brewing Co. beer making go to a local pig farm. At Joe's Pasta Garage, I take home the food that makes the bacon, every night, and, on some rare, special occasions, bring home some really sweet barley mash. I figured the pigs would really go wild over it. I won't give it away, rather, I'll let you watch for yourselves. Ignore the title of the video, it has nothing to do with jewelry or the number 196. And thank you Tamara for some wonderful videography.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Pigs Eat Barley Mash, the Movie
Friday night, after-hours at the restaurant, the chef and his brother were brewing some beer. Some lucky folks stuck around for the fun. I usually bring home a lot of kitchen scraps at the end of night, scraps that our pigs get really excited about like burned pizza, pasta, past prime vegetables, and your plate scrapings. On Friday, I got to bring home the mash that was left after they drained off the malt syrup.
I know that a lot of the byproducts from Empire Brewing Co. beer making go to a local pig farm. At Joe's Pasta Garage, I take home the food that makes the bacon, every night, and, on some rare, special occasions, bring home some really sweet barley mash. I figured the pigs would really go wild over it. I won't give it away, rather, I'll let you watch for yourselves. Ignore the title of the video, it has nothing to do with jewelry or the number 196. And thank you Tamara for some wonderful videography.
I know that a lot of the byproducts from Empire Brewing Co. beer making go to a local pig farm. At Joe's Pasta Garage, I take home the food that makes the bacon, every night, and, on some rare, special occasions, bring home some really sweet barley mash. I figured the pigs would really go wild over it. I won't give it away, rather, I'll let you watch for yourselves. Ignore the title of the video, it has nothing to do with jewelry or the number 196. And thank you Tamara for some wonderful videography.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Briefly On the Future of Farming
My blog post yesterday was admittedly a bit doom and gloom. But, today is a new day and I'm awake (not sure how after a late night after hours at the restaurant learning how to make beer) and inspired anew. Let me give you a little back story as context, because a few different things have come together to brighten my morning.
First off, I recently started a twitter account after making fun of it and all my friends who used it for about two years. I'll admit that I did it as a way to try to route more traffic to the blog, which to a small degree has worked. I will also admit that I find twitter to be a very useful online tool. I'm embracing the times, confessional over.
I mention twitter because this morning I noticed I had a new follower, a rare occurrence, so yippee! I immediately logged in to learn more about them and it turned out to be the NOFA-NY's Beginning Farmer Coordinator Rachel with whom I staffed the publications table at the conference as part of my volunteer duties (as a brief side note, the community and network building I've already experienced in the week following the conference has been pretty amazing).
I clicked around a bit until I ended up on the blog she writes, on behalf of NOFA, about and for beginning farmers, aptly located on the interweb at nynofabeginningfarmers.wordpress.com. Much to my initial delight - particularly the delight of my ego - she had some nice things to say about my blog in her post Showing everyone the new face of farming. She goes on to disclose that the USDA - who I more or less accused of being down right terrible in my post about the conference and again, and more so, yesterday in the wake of the GE alfalfa ruling - some facts that very clearly illustrate how convoluted food policy is in our country. I didn't realize this until I read her post, but the USDA's Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Project provides some funding for NOFA-NY's Beginning Farmer program, through which I received a scholarship to attend the conference. As Alanis Morssette would tell you, that's a little too ironic.
More importantly, and to the point of what I'm actually trying to blog about, she mentioned a very cool project she's getting together. Rachel is calling out to farmers - beginning, aspiring, experienced, patio, roof-top, windowsill farmers, foragers, whoever, whatever you are - to submit pictures, possibly in the style of Grant Wood's American Gothic, to compile a visual for the new face of farming. So, if you are growing something, have a plan to grow something, making jam, whatever, I encourage you to send a picture to Rachel at rachel@nofany.org.
The last thing I'll mention, that Rachel's most recent post alerted me to, and that I'm super-psyched about it, is this new farming software nearing release. AgSquared will allow farmers to manage their farms and their farm data with a number of valuable record keeping and organizational tools. From devising planting schedules and inventorying seeds and transplants, to analyzing market profits and organizing on farm labor, to using google earth to map out your fields, the software should be an invaluable asset to streamlining small farm management. Honestly, I can't do the product justice, so you should check out this demo video on their website. Whether you have a potential use for it or just read this blog for Tamara's pretty pictures, you should watch the demo and see some of the foundational technology that will be crucial to the future of sustainable agriculture.
Michael Pollan talks about the need for a new breed of tech savvy, educated farmers, and he is right on point when he does. The new face of farming is a diverse one, it needs to continue to grow and take advantage of technological innovations to streamline operations and maximize efficiency. We are young and ambitious, there is a growing number of us and we are gaining momentum, we have a hoe in one hand and an iPhone in the other.
I saw it first hand at the conference last weekend. Small farms are the most productive and sustainable, but they require a lot of hard work. This work can be simplified with the use of newer technologies. Social media sites, like facebook and twitter are great tools to connect the farming community to each other and to their consumer-base. Software like AgSquared can help the good food revolution grow exponentially by helping to make our farms run smoothly. Local oriented online distribution outlets - like CNY Bounty and Harvestation in our area - are further augmenting brick and mortar farmer's markets, cutting out the middle men, and diversifying the ways we can get our produce to the people.
So, despite the serious, downer attitude I had yesterday, there are actually many reasons to be hopeful. Don't let GE alfalfa get you down, let's just do something about it. The more we - small farmers and our supporters - embrace these new tools the more useful they will become, and the more time we can spend growing good food to feed the future sustainably. Somebody at the NOFA conference mentioned how we have to relearn all the things that our grandparents generation grew up knowing through experience. Nothing could be more true. By using that knowledge and combining it with modern technology, we can create an elixir capable of expanding the local food movement to levels where it begins to nourish significant populations. Once we achieve that crucial step, the sky is the limit.
First off, I recently started a twitter account after making fun of it and all my friends who used it for about two years. I'll admit that I did it as a way to try to route more traffic to the blog, which to a small degree has worked. I will also admit that I find twitter to be a very useful online tool. I'm embracing the times, confessional over.
I mention twitter because this morning I noticed I had a new follower, a rare occurrence, so yippee! I immediately logged in to learn more about them and it turned out to be the NOFA-NY's Beginning Farmer Coordinator Rachel with whom I staffed the publications table at the conference as part of my volunteer duties (as a brief side note, the community and network building I've already experienced in the week following the conference has been pretty amazing).
I clicked around a bit until I ended up on the blog she writes, on behalf of NOFA, about and for beginning farmers, aptly located on the interweb at nynofabeginningfarmers.wordpress.com. Much to my initial delight - particularly the delight of my ego - she had some nice things to say about my blog in her post Showing everyone the new face of farming. She goes on to disclose that the USDA - who I more or less accused of being down right terrible in my post about the conference and again, and more so, yesterday in the wake of the GE alfalfa ruling - some facts that very clearly illustrate how convoluted food policy is in our country. I didn't realize this until I read her post, but the USDA's Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Project provides some funding for NOFA-NY's Beginning Farmer program, through which I received a scholarship to attend the conference. As Alanis Morssette would tell you, that's a little too ironic.
More importantly, and to the point of what I'm actually trying to blog about, she mentioned a very cool project she's getting together. Rachel is calling out to farmers - beginning, aspiring, experienced, patio, roof-top, windowsill farmers, foragers, whoever, whatever you are - to submit pictures, possibly in the style of Grant Wood's American Gothic, to compile a visual for the new face of farming. So, if you are growing something, have a plan to grow something, making jam, whatever, I encourage you to send a picture to Rachel at rachel@nofany.org.
The last thing I'll mention, that Rachel's most recent post alerted me to, and that I'm super-psyched about it, is this new farming software nearing release. AgSquared will allow farmers to manage their farms and their farm data with a number of valuable record keeping and organizational tools. From devising planting schedules and inventorying seeds and transplants, to analyzing market profits and organizing on farm labor, to using google earth to map out your fields, the software should be an invaluable asset to streamlining small farm management. Honestly, I can't do the product justice, so you should check out this demo video on their website. Whether you have a potential use for it or just read this blog for Tamara's pretty pictures, you should watch the demo and see some of the foundational technology that will be crucial to the future of sustainable agriculture.
Michael Pollan talks about the need for a new breed of tech savvy, educated farmers, and he is right on point when he does. The new face of farming is a diverse one, it needs to continue to grow and take advantage of technological innovations to streamline operations and maximize efficiency. We are young and ambitious, there is a growing number of us and we are gaining momentum, we have a hoe in one hand and an iPhone in the other.
I saw it first hand at the conference last weekend. Small farms are the most productive and sustainable, but they require a lot of hard work. This work can be simplified with the use of newer technologies. Social media sites, like facebook and twitter are great tools to connect the farming community to each other and to their consumer-base. Software like AgSquared can help the good food revolution grow exponentially by helping to make our farms run smoothly. Local oriented online distribution outlets - like CNY Bounty and Harvestation in our area - are further augmenting brick and mortar farmer's markets, cutting out the middle men, and diversifying the ways we can get our produce to the people.
So, despite the serious, downer attitude I had yesterday, there are actually many reasons to be hopeful. Don't let GE alfalfa get you down, let's just do something about it. The more we - small farmers and our supporters - embrace these new tools the more useful they will become, and the more time we can spend growing good food to feed the future sustainably. Somebody at the NOFA conference mentioned how we have to relearn all the things that our grandparents generation grew up knowing through experience. Nothing could be more true. By using that knowledge and combining it with modern technology, we can create an elixir capable of expanding the local food movement to levels where it begins to nourish significant populations. Once we achieve that crucial step, the sky is the limit.
Friday, January 28, 2011
The Death of Organic?
Yesterday the USDA deregulated Monsanto's Genetically Engineered alfalfa. This should come as no surprise given the revolving door between the corporation and the government body. Over a quarter million people contacted their congressional representatives and the agency opposing deregulation and consequent commercial release of the GE seed. But, public opinion doesn't win elections and appointments like loyalty to the biotech industry does.
Meanwhile, Land O' Lakes' subsidiary Forage Genetics, has already stock-piled millions of pounds of seed, and are just waiting to pull it out of storage, make hay, feed some cows, feed you some dairy product, contaminate their neighbor's fields with Monsanto patented DNA, and probably get their neighbor sued by Monsanto for patent infringement. Thanks Secretary Vilsack and his team for making it clear whose interests the USDA are really serving.
Of course, organic has already been bought and sold, becoming little more than a buzz word, a marketing opportunity for otherwise ethic-lacking corporations. Agribusinesses continue to buy up smaller organic producers, making the consumer's climate murky at best. Consult below to see who profits from your seemingly responsible consumer choices.
The core values at the founding of the organic movement remain important, and are fortunately very much alive in the Local Food Movement. Eating local and knowing your farmers allow you to disengage from this scenario where your interests are secondary to profit margins and shareholders. It seems radical to say I'm not only stepping away from conventional but also organic, but at some point you have to see that the wolf in the sheep suit is still a carnivorous predator, not the cuddly wool ball he's pretending to be.
Big organic has brought more responsible growing practices to industrial agriculture, no question about it. This is a good thing. But, the industrial scale is not sustainable in agriculture. It is simply a fact that small, diverse farms are more productive than large industrialized farms producing in monoculture. They can produce more on less, and there simply aren't enough of them yet. If this seems contrary to what you've heard before, that we need huge, industrial farms to produce enough food for our growing population, that we can't feed the world organically, that we need GE commodity crops, people are starving, it is. We've all heard the propaganda peddled by those profiteering off of the industrial mode of food production. We have collectively bought into it, that life off the farm is preferable, that office jobs or a gig at Walmart trumps manual labor, that industrial agriculture offers us higher quality of life. Industrial agriculture means less work, by fewer people, with higher yields - but at what cost, and yields of what? GE corn and soy that are being creatively reconstructed in laboratories to provide us with cheap, nutrient-lacking, bulk food products that are making us sick.
Some industrial organic farms are starting to grow a diverse range of crops, but the processing needs become economically prohibitive. If you have the acreage and infrastructure to grow and distribute lettuce on an industrial scale, adding the systems and equipment needed to grow and distribute other vegetables doesn't make sense economically, and if that's what matters, it won't happen. That is what matters when your organic farm gets bought out by General Mills, regardless of your good intentions.
Opting instead to support your local farmers has far reaching and tangible benefits. It builds community and your local economy, it puts healthy fresh food in your stomach, requires far less petroleum, and restores accountability to our food system. If you need further evidence or information concerning the merits of eating local see my blog Why Local, Revisited ...
I'm running out of steam, it is simply hard to remain optimistic when the USDA shows so clearly that it is merely a puppet of Monsanto - not a puppet of the American people like it's designed to be.
The Center for Food Saftey has been waiting for the USDA's decision on the matter for action to resume in their case fighting the release of GE alfalfa. The legislative and executive branches have failed us, we'll just have to put our hope in the judiciary.
But for now, there is mourning in America.
Meanwhile, Land O' Lakes' subsidiary Forage Genetics, has already stock-piled millions of pounds of seed, and are just waiting to pull it out of storage, make hay, feed some cows, feed you some dairy product, contaminate their neighbor's fields with Monsanto patented DNA, and probably get their neighbor sued by Monsanto for patent infringement. Thanks Secretary Vilsack and his team for making it clear whose interests the USDA are really serving.
Of course, organic has already been bought and sold, becoming little more than a buzz word, a marketing opportunity for otherwise ethic-lacking corporations. Agribusinesses continue to buy up smaller organic producers, making the consumer's climate murky at best. Consult below to see who profits from your seemingly responsible consumer choices.
The core values at the founding of the organic movement remain important, and are fortunately very much alive in the Local Food Movement. Eating local and knowing your farmers allow you to disengage from this scenario where your interests are secondary to profit margins and shareholders. It seems radical to say I'm not only stepping away from conventional but also organic, but at some point you have to see that the wolf in the sheep suit is still a carnivorous predator, not the cuddly wool ball he's pretending to be.
Big organic has brought more responsible growing practices to industrial agriculture, no question about it. This is a good thing. But, the industrial scale is not sustainable in agriculture. It is simply a fact that small, diverse farms are more productive than large industrialized farms producing in monoculture. They can produce more on less, and there simply aren't enough of them yet. If this seems contrary to what you've heard before, that we need huge, industrial farms to produce enough food for our growing population, that we can't feed the world organically, that we need GE commodity crops, people are starving, it is. We've all heard the propaganda peddled by those profiteering off of the industrial mode of food production. We have collectively bought into it, that life off the farm is preferable, that office jobs or a gig at Walmart trumps manual labor, that industrial agriculture offers us higher quality of life. Industrial agriculture means less work, by fewer people, with higher yields - but at what cost, and yields of what? GE corn and soy that are being creatively reconstructed in laboratories to provide us with cheap, nutrient-lacking, bulk food products that are making us sick.
Some industrial organic farms are starting to grow a diverse range of crops, but the processing needs become economically prohibitive. If you have the acreage and infrastructure to grow and distribute lettuce on an industrial scale, adding the systems and equipment needed to grow and distribute other vegetables doesn't make sense economically, and if that's what matters, it won't happen. That is what matters when your organic farm gets bought out by General Mills, regardless of your good intentions.
Opting instead to support your local farmers has far reaching and tangible benefits. It builds community and your local economy, it puts healthy fresh food in your stomach, requires far less petroleum, and restores accountability to our food system. If you need further evidence or information concerning the merits of eating local see my blog Why Local, Revisited ...
I'm running out of steam, it is simply hard to remain optimistic when the USDA shows so clearly that it is merely a puppet of Monsanto - not a puppet of the American people like it's designed to be.
The Center for Food Saftey has been waiting for the USDA's decision on the matter for action to resume in their case fighting the release of GE alfalfa. The legislative and executive branches have failed us, we'll just have to put our hope in the judiciary.
But for now, there is mourning in America.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
NOFA-NY Winter Conference: Diggin' Diversity (with important bold type rant in middle)
Why didn't we photo-document our wonderful weekend at the NOFA-NY winter conference? I certainly could have saved myself some time - could have uploaded a dozen pictures, linked to some pages and been done. But, in the absence of any erudite, or even loquacious photography, I will attempt to tell the story of our weekend in Saratoga. Because a picture is truly worth a thousand words, please bear with me, this could get lengthy.
The theme for this year's conference, the 29th annual, was Diggin' Diversity, and this was, as it should have been, reflected throughout every aspect of the weekend. From the three keynote speakers - Miguel Altieri, Malik Yakini, and Kevin Engelbert - through the workshop topics, NOFA staff, presenters, and attendees alike, diversity permeated all strata of the conference.
Unfortunately, we missed the Beginning Farmer's Mixer on Thursday night due to commitments here in Syracuse, but arrived late in the evening ahead of the snow storm. The opportunity to meet people and network with young farmers in similar positions as ourselves was fortunately not at all confined to the mixer. The entire weekend offered endless informal opportunities to meet farmers, activists, and like-minded people of all ages from across the state and and northeast.
First thing Friday morning, after woofing down some apples, pears, and yogurt, we rushed off, coffee in hand to our all day intensive workshop on the nuts and bolts of starting a farm enterprise. While those attending the workshop represented a wide range of experience and were at different positions in the starting of their respective farm projects, the information and general atmosphere were invaluable for all. Melissa and Garrett from The Good Life Farm in Interlaken, Donn and Maryrose from Northland Sheep Diary in Marathon, Wyllie Fox Farm owner Jamie Edelstein, and Erica Frenay of the Cornell Small Farms Program, facilitated activities, told their stories, and showed participants how to apply the information to our unique situations. They successfully grounded the vast amounts of information on building capital, planning, accessing land, small farmer resources, and the legal issues involved with starting a farm, by candidly, sometimes embarrassingly, sharing their start-up stories. The NOFA-NY organizers did a great job assembling this panel. The diversity of experiences made it well worth the time of the participants whether we were pursuing livestock, vegetable, or integrated farm operations.
Of course after 8 hours of workshop we were excited to be out of the Civic Center, get some food, and see some friends. We headed over to Max London's for a couple of happy hour beers and one of our favorite pizzas. The Wild Mushroom and Taleggio Pizza topped with truffle oil and a beautifully runny egg is only $9 compared to its normal $15 - coupled with buy one get one local beers, and bam you have one of the best deals in town. Tamara and I shared the pizza and some Chickpea Polenta Fries, drank a couple beers, visited with some friends, (including Jonathan Greene from Saratoga's Local Living Guide) and headed back for the first keynote speaker of the conference.
Miguel Altieri took the stage after poet/farmer Scott Chaskey of Quail Hill Farm and some fellow Long Island farmer's offered moving tributes to fallen friend/father/farmer Josh Levine who recently passed away after a tragic tractor accident on the farm. I hesitate to use this euphemism, but it truly was a hard act to follow. Altieri, a professor at Berkeley, spoke about Agroecology, the successes and methods of South American farm movements, the farmers who've made them happen, and the need to drastically expand sustainable agriculture. His talk was extremely inspiring. The work being done to fight against industrialized agriculture and the subsequent attacks on community autonomy is the most important fight of our time. We all need to do our part, as consumers, growers, teachers, and friends, in whatever ways we can.
After the keynote we made our way to the bar to meet some friends, make some new one's (Brooklyn Salsa Co. and folks from PASA), and consequently stay up too late. But, I was only 5 minutes late to my volunteer shift at the publications table Saturday morning at 7. It turned out the table wasn't scheduled to be open until 8, which made for a very easy hour.
The first workshop we attended on Saturday dealt with mulching and no-till gardening. Wendy-Sue Harper from NOFA-VT gave us a lot of good ideas about how to incorporate mulching and cover crops into our system. But, it was the second workshop that really stole the show for me. 68 year old homesteader Larry Siegel gave us a truly comprehensive look into the way he is able to feed his family of 6 adults on a 1/4 acre vegetable garden, with enough left over to sell at market, and barter for everything from legal counsel to cheese. He shared with us his planting schedule and too many anecdotes to count. He explained how he has managed - in a very laissez-faire sort of way - to grow beds of perennial parsnips and lettuces through what I decided was an almost Taoist method to farming.
Malik Yakini, principal, urban farmer, activist and Chairman of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network gave the second keynote. If it has to do with food, food security, social justice, or Detroit, Yakini is likely playing a large role in it. He spoke about growing up in 1960s Detroit, how he came to appreciate the "spirituality of eating," and the "high vibrations of food," from almost an activists' perspective, as a way to reclaim black culture and black pride. He also touched on the issue of young, liberal-minded, white urban farmers, in tacitly and unconsciously perpetuating racism and the need for and use of dismantling racism workshops. As quick as he was to warn about taking a "missionary-like" or white man's burden-esque approach to food justice, he didn't hesitate to praise all the great and honorable work being done by young farmers in urban and rural America. His keynote marked a high point of the conference for me.
After lunch, Tamara and I attended a fermentation workshop with Leda Meredith. We are fairly experienced in fermenting, but always interested in learning new methods and gaining sounder scientific knowledge about what is at play when we make sauerkraut, pickles, cider, or whatever. The workshop did not disappoint as we learned some great lacto-fermentation techniques and were able to discount some information we'd previously heard. She apprenticed with a hero of ours, Sandor Ellix Katz, author of Wild Fermentation, and has written some notable books herself including, Botany, Ballet and Dinner from Scratch, and The Locavore's Handbook: The Busy Person's Guide to Eating Local on a Budget
.
For the last workshop of the day Tamara and I split up. Tamara, our resident beekeeper, opted to learn about some value-added beeswax products from Ross Conrad of Dancing Bee Gardens, while I went to learn about raising rare pig breeds from Mike Yezzi and Jen Small of Flying Pigs Farm. We both learned a great deal and were able to bounce ideas off of each other. We also realized that we probably -as we'd previously expected - should have been attending separate workshops all weekend to get the most out of the conference.
With a great day behind us, having made numerous new friends from our area, learned invaluable information in workshops, and just in general been inspired, we headed out to dinner with some friends from Saratoga. Having dined at Max London's - our 2nd favorite restaurant in town - the previous night, it was time to hit up our number one favorite. When we lived in Saratoga we would try to get to The Beekman Street Bistro once every couple of months. I met Tim, the chef/owner, through my work with Kilpatrick Family Farm, from which he buys a lot of produce for the restaurant. Michael Kilpatrick joined us for dinner along with Paul and Laura of the Saratoga Farmer's Market's Funky Fresh Foods, and Erika, Chris and Jack from Our DIY Life. We ate too much, laughed a lot, and had an all around great time. The food, as always, was beyond incredible. Exhausted, but excited for one more day at NOFA, we crawled onto our blow-up mattress and fell into a deep slumber.
Sunday morning we got an early start and ate breakfast at the conference. Then we were off to learn about crop-mobs from Rachel Firak and Katie Church of the Ithaca Crop Mob, and Deb Taft from NYC Crop Mob. The idea, which finds its' roots in barn-raisings and deep within our agricultural heritage, reemerged (they never really went away) in North Carolina a couple years back. They organize volunteer labor for farms in need and descend on them for a day of collective hard work, rewarded with a shared dinner. Their success in Ithaca and NYC this last growing season offers optimism for the future and proved what activism and volunteerism can do for our agricultural communities, and community in general.
Our last workshop of the weekend came with a boring title, but was one of the most inspiring and useful of the conference. Mara and Spencer Welton presented Marketing Strategies at Half Pint Farm in VT, and explained to us how marketing permeates everything they do. They walked us through their approach to selling at market, to restaurants, and grocers. Their use of themes for deciding what crops to grow provided Tamara and I with a lot of good ideas. It was really a great workshop to finish off with.
With all the workshops behind us, and feeling pretty exhausted, we trudged down the hall one last time for the final keynote from fellow Hamilton graduate Kevin Engelbert - the founder of the country's first certified organic dairy, member of the National Organic Standards Board, and NOFA-NY Farmer of the Year. His story of growing up on a conventional farm, going off to college, coming home and taking the farm in a new direction was moving. But, he left us all with a realistic picture of how far we have to go and how much governmental and industrial agro-business stand in the way of realizing the changes necessary to feed our populations sustainably before it is too late. He, like many other this weekend, urged us to call our representatives and harass them about keeping GE (Genetically Engineered) alfalfa off the market. The harm this crop could do to our food supply can not be exaggerated. So, I will urge anyone reading this to do the same.
Seriously, if you are reading this, the USDA is pushing, under the influence of Monsanto and special interest groups, for the release of GE alfalfa, without evaluating the public health, environmental, and economic consequences. The results will be terrible. Once released commercially, the genetic contamination of all alfalfa is likely inevitable through cross-pollination. Contamination-free coexistence has not been proven, because it can't be. GE free markets in Europe and Asia will cease to buy from the US, because of this, and our farmers and economy will suffer dramatically. Organic standards will go out the window, because without GE free livestock feed we can't have organically raised meat. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT MONSANTO WANTS. I saw a commercial today from some lobbyist group complaining that the government is trying to tell you what you can and cannot eat. If the USDA allows GE alfalfa to be commercially released by Monsanto, you really won't have a choice. But, I haven't seen any commercials warning about the that. Instead it is the producers of high-fructose corn syrup and lobby groups for GE Corn, Soy and Industrial Agriculture in general sending red-herring messages, warning that the government is out to tax your food! So, call your representatives!
Petition the USDA and your Elected Officials here:
just enter your zip code in the GET INVOLVED section on the right, click on your representatives and then click contact - it is just a little bit of work, but it is crucial. Act now!
USDA/APHIS
Email: biotechquery@aphis.usda.gov
Call: 1-301-851-2300 and record your comments
President Obama
Comment Line: 202-456-1111
Email: www.whitehouse.gov/contact
If you decided to read past the rant ....
To briefly wrap it up, the beauty of the weekend is this:
I can take Larry Siegel's workshop about his success on a 1/4 acre, the marketing workshop offered Sunday morning by Mara and Spencer Welton of Half Pint Farm, Mike Yezzi and Jen Small of Flying Pigs Farm talk about saving rare pig breeds by eating them (really all the workshops we attended), and run them through the lens of our all day intensive on starting a farm, and I have, in a weekend, figured out the direction of our farm enterprise. From the division of labor, to what we will raise and grow, to how we'll sell and market it, Tamara and I have a significantly improved idea of how to pursue our goals- and what our goals are for that matter. Because as Jamie Edelstein of Wyllie Fox Farm said "you have to have yourself some goals".
I can say with certainty that we will not miss a future conference. As I've said, the theme of this year's NOFA-NY conference in Saratoga was Diggin' Diversity. Consider it dug!
The theme for this year's conference, the 29th annual, was Diggin' Diversity, and this was, as it should have been, reflected throughout every aspect of the weekend. From the three keynote speakers - Miguel Altieri, Malik Yakini, and Kevin Engelbert - through the workshop topics, NOFA staff, presenters, and attendees alike, diversity permeated all strata of the conference.
Unfortunately, we missed the Beginning Farmer's Mixer on Thursday night due to commitments here in Syracuse, but arrived late in the evening ahead of the snow storm. The opportunity to meet people and network with young farmers in similar positions as ourselves was fortunately not at all confined to the mixer. The entire weekend offered endless informal opportunities to meet farmers, activists, and like-minded people of all ages from across the state and and northeast.
First thing Friday morning, after woofing down some apples, pears, and yogurt, we rushed off, coffee in hand to our all day intensive workshop on the nuts and bolts of starting a farm enterprise. While those attending the workshop represented a wide range of experience and were at different positions in the starting of their respective farm projects, the information and general atmosphere were invaluable for all. Melissa and Garrett from The Good Life Farm in Interlaken, Donn and Maryrose from Northland Sheep Diary in Marathon, Wyllie Fox Farm owner Jamie Edelstein, and Erica Frenay of the Cornell Small Farms Program, facilitated activities, told their stories, and showed participants how to apply the information to our unique situations. They successfully grounded the vast amounts of information on building capital, planning, accessing land, small farmer resources, and the legal issues involved with starting a farm, by candidly, sometimes embarrassingly, sharing their start-up stories. The NOFA-NY organizers did a great job assembling this panel. The diversity of experiences made it well worth the time of the participants whether we were pursuing livestock, vegetable, or integrated farm operations.
Of course after 8 hours of workshop we were excited to be out of the Civic Center, get some food, and see some friends. We headed over to Max London's for a couple of happy hour beers and one of our favorite pizzas. The Wild Mushroom and Taleggio Pizza topped with truffle oil and a beautifully runny egg is only $9 compared to its normal $15 - coupled with buy one get one local beers, and bam you have one of the best deals in town. Tamara and I shared the pizza and some Chickpea Polenta Fries, drank a couple beers, visited with some friends, (including Jonathan Greene from Saratoga's Local Living Guide) and headed back for the first keynote speaker of the conference.
Miguel Altieri took the stage after poet/farmer Scott Chaskey of Quail Hill Farm and some fellow Long Island farmer's offered moving tributes to fallen friend/father/farmer Josh Levine who recently passed away after a tragic tractor accident on the farm. I hesitate to use this euphemism, but it truly was a hard act to follow. Altieri, a professor at Berkeley, spoke about Agroecology, the successes and methods of South American farm movements, the farmers who've made them happen, and the need to drastically expand sustainable agriculture. His talk was extremely inspiring. The work being done to fight against industrialized agriculture and the subsequent attacks on community autonomy is the most important fight of our time. We all need to do our part, as consumers, growers, teachers, and friends, in whatever ways we can.
After the keynote we made our way to the bar to meet some friends, make some new one's (Brooklyn Salsa Co. and folks from PASA), and consequently stay up too late. But, I was only 5 minutes late to my volunteer shift at the publications table Saturday morning at 7. It turned out the table wasn't scheduled to be open until 8, which made for a very easy hour.
The first workshop we attended on Saturday dealt with mulching and no-till gardening. Wendy-Sue Harper from NOFA-VT gave us a lot of good ideas about how to incorporate mulching and cover crops into our system. But, it was the second workshop that really stole the show for me. 68 year old homesteader Larry Siegel gave us a truly comprehensive look into the way he is able to feed his family of 6 adults on a 1/4 acre vegetable garden, with enough left over to sell at market, and barter for everything from legal counsel to cheese. He shared with us his planting schedule and too many anecdotes to count. He explained how he has managed - in a very laissez-faire sort of way - to grow beds of perennial parsnips and lettuces through what I decided was an almost Taoist method to farming.
Malik Yakini, principal, urban farmer, activist and Chairman of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network gave the second keynote. If it has to do with food, food security, social justice, or Detroit, Yakini is likely playing a large role in it. He spoke about growing up in 1960s Detroit, how he came to appreciate the "spirituality of eating," and the "high vibrations of food," from almost an activists' perspective, as a way to reclaim black culture and black pride. He also touched on the issue of young, liberal-minded, white urban farmers, in tacitly and unconsciously perpetuating racism and the need for and use of dismantling racism workshops. As quick as he was to warn about taking a "missionary-like" or white man's burden-esque approach to food justice, he didn't hesitate to praise all the great and honorable work being done by young farmers in urban and rural America. His keynote marked a high point of the conference for me.
After lunch, Tamara and I attended a fermentation workshop with Leda Meredith. We are fairly experienced in fermenting, but always interested in learning new methods and gaining sounder scientific knowledge about what is at play when we make sauerkraut, pickles, cider, or whatever. The workshop did not disappoint as we learned some great lacto-fermentation techniques and were able to discount some information we'd previously heard. She apprenticed with a hero of ours, Sandor Ellix Katz, author of Wild Fermentation, and has written some notable books herself including, Botany, Ballet and Dinner from Scratch, and The Locavore's Handbook: The Busy Person's Guide to Eating Local on a Budget
. For the last workshop of the day Tamara and I split up. Tamara, our resident beekeeper, opted to learn about some value-added beeswax products from Ross Conrad of Dancing Bee Gardens, while I went to learn about raising rare pig breeds from Mike Yezzi and Jen Small of Flying Pigs Farm. We both learned a great deal and were able to bounce ideas off of each other. We also realized that we probably -as we'd previously expected - should have been attending separate workshops all weekend to get the most out of the conference.
With a great day behind us, having made numerous new friends from our area, learned invaluable information in workshops, and just in general been inspired, we headed out to dinner with some friends from Saratoga. Having dined at Max London's - our 2nd favorite restaurant in town - the previous night, it was time to hit up our number one favorite. When we lived in Saratoga we would try to get to The Beekman Street Bistro once every couple of months. I met Tim, the chef/owner, through my work with Kilpatrick Family Farm, from which he buys a lot of produce for the restaurant. Michael Kilpatrick joined us for dinner along with Paul and Laura of the Saratoga Farmer's Market's Funky Fresh Foods, and Erika, Chris and Jack from Our DIY Life. We ate too much, laughed a lot, and had an all around great time. The food, as always, was beyond incredible. Exhausted, but excited for one more day at NOFA, we crawled onto our blow-up mattress and fell into a deep slumber.
Sunday morning we got an early start and ate breakfast at the conference. Then we were off to learn about crop-mobs from Rachel Firak and Katie Church of the Ithaca Crop Mob, and Deb Taft from NYC Crop Mob. The idea, which finds its' roots in barn-raisings and deep within our agricultural heritage, reemerged (they never really went away) in North Carolina a couple years back. They organize volunteer labor for farms in need and descend on them for a day of collective hard work, rewarded with a shared dinner. Their success in Ithaca and NYC this last growing season offers optimism for the future and proved what activism and volunteerism can do for our agricultural communities, and community in general.
Our last workshop of the weekend came with a boring title, but was one of the most inspiring and useful of the conference. Mara and Spencer Welton presented Marketing Strategies at Half Pint Farm in VT, and explained to us how marketing permeates everything they do. They walked us through their approach to selling at market, to restaurants, and grocers. Their use of themes for deciding what crops to grow provided Tamara and I with a lot of good ideas. It was really a great workshop to finish off with.
With all the workshops behind us, and feeling pretty exhausted, we trudged down the hall one last time for the final keynote from fellow Hamilton graduate Kevin Engelbert - the founder of the country's first certified organic dairy, member of the National Organic Standards Board, and NOFA-NY Farmer of the Year. His story of growing up on a conventional farm, going off to college, coming home and taking the farm in a new direction was moving. But, he left us all with a realistic picture of how far we have to go and how much governmental and industrial agro-business stand in the way of realizing the changes necessary to feed our populations sustainably before it is too late. He, like many other this weekend, urged us to call our representatives and harass them about keeping GE (Genetically Engineered) alfalfa off the market. The harm this crop could do to our food supply can not be exaggerated. So, I will urge anyone reading this to do the same.
Seriously, if you are reading this, the USDA is pushing, under the influence of Monsanto and special interest groups, for the release of GE alfalfa, without evaluating the public health, environmental, and economic consequences. The results will be terrible. Once released commercially, the genetic contamination of all alfalfa is likely inevitable through cross-pollination. Contamination-free coexistence has not been proven, because it can't be. GE free markets in Europe and Asia will cease to buy from the US, because of this, and our farmers and economy will suffer dramatically. Organic standards will go out the window, because without GE free livestock feed we can't have organically raised meat. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT MONSANTO WANTS. I saw a commercial today from some lobbyist group complaining that the government is trying to tell you what you can and cannot eat. If the USDA allows GE alfalfa to be commercially released by Monsanto, you really won't have a choice. But, I haven't seen any commercials warning about the that. Instead it is the producers of high-fructose corn syrup and lobby groups for GE Corn, Soy and Industrial Agriculture in general sending red-herring messages, warning that the government is out to tax your food! So, call your representatives!
Petition the USDA and your Elected Officials here:
just enter your zip code in the GET INVOLVED section on the right, click on your representatives and then click contact - it is just a little bit of work, but it is crucial. Act now!
USDA/APHIS
Email: biotechquery@aphis.usda.gov
Call: 1-301-851-2300 and record your comments
President Obama
Comment Line: 202-456-1111
Email: www.whitehouse.gov/contact
If you decided to read past the rant ....
To briefly wrap it up, the beauty of the weekend is this:
I can take Larry Siegel's workshop about his success on a 1/4 acre, the marketing workshop offered Sunday morning by Mara and Spencer Welton of Half Pint Farm, Mike Yezzi and Jen Small of Flying Pigs Farm talk about saving rare pig breeds by eating them (really all the workshops we attended), and run them through the lens of our all day intensive on starting a farm, and I have, in a weekend, figured out the direction of our farm enterprise. From the division of labor, to what we will raise and grow, to how we'll sell and market it, Tamara and I have a significantly improved idea of how to pursue our goals- and what our goals are for that matter. Because as Jamie Edelstein of Wyllie Fox Farm said "you have to have yourself some goals".
I can say with certainty that we will not miss a future conference. As I've said, the theme of this year's NOFA-NY conference in Saratoga was Diggin' Diversity. Consider it dug!
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Palmiers, Tartlets, and Meringues, Oh My! or, Have Love, Will Travel
I had today off from work to get prepared for the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York's winter conference in Saratoga. But, I had the good fortune of picking up a contract and spent the day baking up some treats for the teacher's social at the Creekside tomorrow. They requested enough for 30 people and gave me a budget, leaving the choice of product up to me.
So, I made some puff pastry - buying it in the frozen section at the supermarket is serious a cop-out, it's pretty simple, not as time consuming as rumored, and obviously rewarding - and made it into palmiers, or if you'd rather, for the sake of defying brevity, call them elephant ears, palms leaves, butterfly pastries, among countless other names.
I also made some chocolate ganache tartlets topped with pecans, sea salt, and a few plain for those lacking a sense of mild adventure. I rounded out the order with a few meringues for the gluten-free folks out there. I opted to fold in a little walnut, pecan, cinnamon, and vanilla bean infused sugar mixture to liven them up a bit.
At the last minute, with the seconds before scheduled delivery literally tick-tocking away, I decided to take some of the plain tartlets and top them with the vanilla bean infused meringue cookies. I decided to call them Deconstructed Cupcakes, with their shortbread-like base, bittersweet ganache middle, and hat of meringue, I expect them to steal the show tomorrow.
If the children are the future, and the teachers spend more time with the children then the parents, we gotta keep them in quality baked goods, right?
A brief side note: For those of you having difficulty coming to grips with the Black Keys sudden pop-super stardom, load up The Moan EP, Thickfreakness, The Big Come Up, or Rubber Factory, and listen to your disillusionment trickle through the hourglass like Ziggy Stardust slipping into a sequined jumpsuit. I mean come on, All Hands Against His Own, Stack Shot Billy, I'll Be Your Man, Have Love Will Travel, these will restore your faith in no time. I put the entire discography on shuffle this morning and it drove my baking through the roof.
And now, the pictures.
So, I made some puff pastry - buying it in the frozen section at the supermarket is serious a cop-out, it's pretty simple, not as time consuming as rumored, and obviously rewarding - and made it into palmiers, or if you'd rather, for the sake of defying brevity, call them elephant ears, palms leaves, butterfly pastries, among countless other names.
I also made some chocolate ganache tartlets topped with pecans, sea salt, and a few plain for those lacking a sense of mild adventure. I rounded out the order with a few meringues for the gluten-free folks out there. I opted to fold in a little walnut, pecan, cinnamon, and vanilla bean infused sugar mixture to liven them up a bit.
At the last minute, with the seconds before scheduled delivery literally tick-tocking away, I decided to take some of the plain tartlets and top them with the vanilla bean infused meringue cookies. I decided to call them Deconstructed Cupcakes, with their shortbread-like base, bittersweet ganache middle, and hat of meringue, I expect them to steal the show tomorrow.
If the children are the future, and the teachers spend more time with the children then the parents, we gotta keep them in quality baked goods, right?
A brief side note: For those of you having difficulty coming to grips with the Black Keys sudden pop-super stardom, load up The Moan EP, Thickfreakness, The Big Come Up, or Rubber Factory, and listen to your disillusionment trickle through the hourglass like Ziggy Stardust slipping into a sequined jumpsuit. I mean come on, All Hands Against His Own, Stack Shot Billy, I'll Be Your Man, Have Love Will Travel, these will restore your faith in no time. I put the entire discography on shuffle this morning and it drove my baking through the roof.
And now, the pictures.
 |
| drizzling the ganache into the tartlet shells |
 |
| scraping the seeds from the vanilla bean |
 |
| mixing then shaking the vanilla seeds into my sugar jar |
 |
| some tartlets |
 |
| deconstructed cupcakes |
 |
| cinnamon and pecan meringue cookies |
 |
| palmiers close-up |
 |
| palmiers not that close-up |
 |
| the frantic foursome (nickname admittedly needs work) |
 |
| the francophile four-tet? |
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Gluten-Free Bread and Pizza Dough
Let me be quick. I was recently offered the opportunity to become the gluten-free bread supplier for a restaurant in our area. The parameters of this informal contract were very loose. Basically, come up with any gluten-free bread product - loaf, roll, bun, pizza shell, form doesn't matter - and as long as it doesn't taste of dirt, they would buy it. This seemed like a great opportunity for me so I jumped into experimenting.
I consulted all the books available through the Onondaga County Library system including, Gluten-Free Quick & Easy, Great Gluten-Free Baking, and Flying Apron's Gluten-Free and Vegan Baking Book
. All the books provided great insight into the world of gluten-free baking. Yet when it came to bread and pizza dough -which I started working on as well - they all differed radically in both technique and ingredients. With no true consensus, it was clear that trying to come up with a utilitarian gluten-free dough might be an expensive endeavor. I held out hope that my first try would be a success and I wouldn't have to keep buying small quantities of experimental supplies. Of course this was not to be.
Tapioca flour, garbanzo bean flour, brown rice flour, xanthan gum, guar gum, corn starch, potato starch, white rice four, sweet white sorghum flour, flax meal, and dried milk powder have all found their places in our cupboards these past few weeks. And of course large quantities of pantry items like maple syrup, yeast, salt, sugar and even some of our supply of pureed pumpkin, have gotten tossed into doughs that more closely resemble batters. I've made doughs that need to rise, doughs that rise in the oven as it heats from cold, and doughs that rise to a certain point and are quickly thrown into a hot oven before collapsing from the absence of glutenous structure. I won't get into the mixing of ingredients.
While all of my efforts have been edible, the texture of my gluten-free breads far from resemble what us gluten-eaters regularly enjoy. I am faced with a truly existential conundrum. Does gluten-free "bread" offer any meaning, purpose, or value? Obviously people who are intolerant to gluten want to enjoy bread, so value and purpose are pretty simply covered. But, it seems to me that bread ceases to be bread in any meaningful way when gluten is subtracted. It is not merely a matter of semantics. While attempts to simulate certain qualities of bread bring it closer to its plutonic form, the idea of a bread free of gluten is an existential absurdity. The only meaningful criteria are taste and texture. "Bread" made with rice and bean flours, tuber starches and gum extracts from tropical plants and microbes simply lacks the taste and mouth-feel of bread made from grasses in the Triticeae tribe. Therefore, I have more or less concluded that gluten-free "bread" lacks meaning.
Yet, meaning is subjective, as Ortega y Gasset wrote, "yo soy yo y mis circunstancias." Perhaps gluten-free bread is, in this odd existential way, the essence of bread as determined by this particular restriction. While my efforts may in fact be useless, I can find something amounting to purpose in the task and pursuit of baking a "bread" that in fact lacks gluten. But will the pursuit of this newfangled purpose drive me insane?
It might crumble, it might take two hours to bake, taste like moistened soil, and cost $10 per loaf, but for a person unable to comfortably digest gluten, this is as close to bread as they can get. Which brings me back to the issue of semantics - am I willing to call it bread ?
An additional, slight non sequitur - People who have celiac disease, the autoimmune disorder of the small intestine that results in the necessity of a gluten-free diet, should petition the pharmaceutical industry to work on creating a drug or supplement that can neutralize the three inflammatory peptides found in gliadin. I'm sure with the rise of diagnoses, and the subsequent profitability of potential remedies, drug companies are already researching and devising some enzyme to make gluten-containing foods digestible without irritation for sufferers of celiac.
It would be a tremendous favor to me, if gluten-free folks could pop a pill, or I could sprinkle a teaspoon of magic into my regular bread, and not worry about stocking all these random flours, starches, and gums.
Come on PFIZER! No one really wants to eat this!
I consulted all the books available through the Onondaga County Library system including, Gluten-Free Quick & Easy, Great Gluten-Free Baking, and Flying Apron's Gluten-Free and Vegan Baking Book
. All the books provided great insight into the world of gluten-free baking. Yet when it came to bread and pizza dough -which I started working on as well - they all differed radically in both technique and ingredients. With no true consensus, it was clear that trying to come up with a utilitarian gluten-free dough might be an expensive endeavor. I held out hope that my first try would be a success and I wouldn't have to keep buying small quantities of experimental supplies. Of course this was not to be.Tapioca flour, garbanzo bean flour, brown rice flour, xanthan gum, guar gum, corn starch, potato starch, white rice four, sweet white sorghum flour, flax meal, and dried milk powder have all found their places in our cupboards these past few weeks. And of course large quantities of pantry items like maple syrup, yeast, salt, sugar and even some of our supply of pureed pumpkin, have gotten tossed into doughs that more closely resemble batters. I've made doughs that need to rise, doughs that rise in the oven as it heats from cold, and doughs that rise to a certain point and are quickly thrown into a hot oven before collapsing from the absence of glutenous structure. I won't get into the mixing of ingredients.
While all of my efforts have been edible, the texture of my gluten-free breads far from resemble what us gluten-eaters regularly enjoy. I am faced with a truly existential conundrum. Does gluten-free "bread" offer any meaning, purpose, or value? Obviously people who are intolerant to gluten want to enjoy bread, so value and purpose are pretty simply covered. But, it seems to me that bread ceases to be bread in any meaningful way when gluten is subtracted. It is not merely a matter of semantics. While attempts to simulate certain qualities of bread bring it closer to its plutonic form, the idea of a bread free of gluten is an existential absurdity. The only meaningful criteria are taste and texture. "Bread" made with rice and bean flours, tuber starches and gum extracts from tropical plants and microbes simply lacks the taste and mouth-feel of bread made from grasses in the Triticeae tribe. Therefore, I have more or less concluded that gluten-free "bread" lacks meaning.
Yet, meaning is subjective, as Ortega y Gasset wrote, "yo soy yo y mis circunstancias." Perhaps gluten-free bread is, in this odd existential way, the essence of bread as determined by this particular restriction. While my efforts may in fact be useless, I can find something amounting to purpose in the task and pursuit of baking a "bread" that in fact lacks gluten. But will the pursuit of this newfangled purpose drive me insane?
It might crumble, it might take two hours to bake, taste like moistened soil, and cost $10 per loaf, but for a person unable to comfortably digest gluten, this is as close to bread as they can get. Which brings me back to the issue of semantics - am I willing to call it bread ?
An additional, slight non sequitur - People who have celiac disease, the autoimmune disorder of the small intestine that results in the necessity of a gluten-free diet, should petition the pharmaceutical industry to work on creating a drug or supplement that can neutralize the three inflammatory peptides found in gliadin. I'm sure with the rise of diagnoses, and the subsequent profitability of potential remedies, drug companies are already researching and devising some enzyme to make gluten-containing foods digestible without irritation for sufferers of celiac.
It would be a tremendous favor to me, if gluten-free folks could pop a pill, or I could sprinkle a teaspoon of magic into my regular bread, and not worry about stocking all these random flours, starches, and gums.
Come on PFIZER! No one really wants to eat this!
 |
| doesn't taste better than it looks |
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Goats in the Machine
Goat's milk doesn't taste all that different from cow's milk, but has just a touch of the tang you find in goat cheeses. While I did drink a few glasses - and thoroughly enjoyed them - it was the butter and the cheese we made with it that were most enjoyable. We made both with help from The Home Creamery
by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley - which is just about the greatest resource in the world if you have even a passing interest in making cheese, yogurt, buttermilk, creme fraiche, or anything dairy for that matter. Another great book for dairy and all things fermented is Wild Fermentation
, by Sandor Ellix Katz (we've used it more for making booze and sauerkraut, but the yogurt and kefir recipes are awesome too).The butter - pictured above - could not have been easier. Tamara had made butter at summer camp, but I somehow had managed to go twenty-six years without shaking cream until it solidified - can you imagine the injustice! Needless to say, I'm sure this will be my most unpopular post - all my readers probably spent their childhoods at socialist-nudist-utopian summer camps like Tamara's - since everyone knows how to make butter. Alas, it was an extremely simple and rewarding culinary experience for me.
We shook goat milk in a mason jar for about 15 minutes, until the butterfat solids and the whey-like buttermilk separated. If that description seems as vague as hieroglyphics, just believe me when I say you'll know when you've reached the optimal point. Next, we drained off and reserved the buttermilk - right into a carton of cultured buttermilk we already had - for use in biscuits, creme fraiche, or cake. Then, we rinsed the butter by adding a little water to the jar and shaking it and repeating, two or three times. The last step involved kneading a little salt into the butter with a wooden spoon, but after that, we were rich in goat butter. Unlike the straight goat's milk or cheeses, the tangy flavor was not noticeable in the butter.
As for the cheese, it is more or less the same preparation as I've previously described for farmer's cheese or really simple ricotta. We brought the milk to a slow boil and held it at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes. I turned the heat off and added some cider vinegar. The proper ratio is 1 cup vinegar to 1 gallon of milk. I stirred until curds developed throughout the pot and then simply ladled the curds and whey into muslin bags. I tied the bags to the cupboard door and allowed them to drain for about 4 hours. The result, fairly nice goat cheese.
For some reason I'm reminded of Descartes and the sorting of sheep from goats. Something about understanding the methods of inquiry involved in sorting the sheep from the goats and needing to understand what those methods are ...
I don't know. Anyways, I was already eager to raise goats - I love goat cheeses and enjoy eating goat meat. Discovering that goat butter is every bit as tasty as cow butter is just a little more incentive. So, assuming things go as planned, which they rarely do, and assuming there is even a plan, which, again, there rarely is, maybe in the spring we'll have a few goats mowing the lawn for us.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Resolve to ... Drop Beets, Not Bombs!
People with whom we crossed paths this weekend may recognize the picture below. Tamara and I made and packaged fortune cookies stuffed with resolutions and called them New Year's Revolution Cookies. The idea being that the sum of those resolutions, if adopted wholesale, would amount to something of a small revolution - nothing of Bolshevik proportions, but meaningful change nonetheless.
Now don't get me wrong, it isn't anything all that serious. We aren't calling for a proletarian dictatorship or forced collectivization (at least not yet). A revolution built on resolving to do more things badly, explore the adjacent possible, eat peanut butter and sauerkraut sandwiches, grow something, read more, or run your car on kisses - is nothing all that menacing.
But, that isn't to say pulling through on your resolution is meaningless. There is some sage advice in these cookies, resolutions that could in fact help to enable positive social change. 'Resolving to avoid harsh chemicals,' could lengthen your life, put a minuscule dent in the on going man-made environmental catastrophe, and simply make you feel better day to day. Some may seem funny, like 'resolve to walk silly' - but isn't there something to shedding your inhibitions and doing a funny walk just because you got a piece of paper from inside of a cookie?
It's a brave new world and everyday gets a little stranger. I mean come on, have you seen these iPad things - the harbinger of the apocalypse? Why not take some time out and meditate or explore your bookshelf? You know books, those things that you download onto your kindle, well, they used to be made of paper and get put on shelves ... it's a long story. I know, I know, your kindle doesn't require the slaughter of trees! We'll maybe it doesn't, but I'm sure some precious metal in there is destroying the lives of people in Congo or some such place where despite having sought after resources and mineral wealth, they can't have a functioning government because of globalization - the newest form of imperialism. And all the corn-fed meat you eat is being fed genetically modified corn, grown with billions of gallons of petrol on clear cut land previously covered by old growth forest in the Amazon. Anyways ... I digress ...
If you didn't get a cookie it isn't too late to email me at wmckerch@gmail.com or buy them on Tamara's Etsy site - the year is young (and the calendar is merely a construct, your year can start and stop whenever you like).
viva la revolucion!
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