On a lazy Sunday morning, if you're looking for something to go with your Ducktrap smoked salmon, try the caviar at Browne Trading Company. If it's good enough for Le Bernardin, it's probably good enough for a weekend nosh.
When I'm in California to visit family, I always have a list of favorite things I like to do while I'm there, and a trip to the local farmers' market is my Number 1 To-Do. The market in Ojai, a little town about 75 miles outside of Los Angeles, never fails to knock my socks off. Not only is the produce and fruit available almost year-round, but it's where I am guaranteed to run into old friends and catch up on their news. Not surprisingly, it takes me a couple of hours to make the rounds, all the while sampling the wares of farmers showing off their strawberries, tangerines, and apricots.
My garden is in full swing. As a rule, I do not plant what I do not eat, and this year I have planted some unusual things, at least one of which may not be used to the Maine growing season.
In March, the National Women's History Project and President Obama honored women leaders of the environmental movement, observing in particular the pioneering work of Rachel Carson. In conjunction with this celebration, over 150 public screenings are being held around the country of the critically-acclaimed film "A Sense of Wonder", an intimate and poignant portrait of scientist Rachel Carson's life as she became a passionate advocate for the natural world after her publication of Silent Spring in 1962. The film was shot at Carson's cottage on the coast of Maine.
Continue reading ""A Sense of Wonder" Continues: Portrait of Rachel Carson" »
Sharon Turner, Master Gardener, will be teaching a course this spring aimed at the first time gardener. This course will take place on Sunday, March 29, from 2-4pm at the Gibbs Library in Washington (Maine).
Continue reading "Gardening Workshop: How to Get Started Growing Your Own Food" »
The public is invited to attend a free talk and movie, part of the Eat Local Challenge Film and Discussion Series sponsored by the Belfast Free Library and the Belfast Co-op. The movie "Tableland", which goes in search of the people, places, and tastes involved in North American small-scale food production, will be shown at the Belfast Free Library on Tuesday, March 24 at 6:30pm.
Giving an introduction to the film will be Russell Libby, executive director of Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Libby's involvement with MOFGA in 1977 began because he saw a strong connection between local, organic food and a healthy Maine economy. With his family, he operates Three Sisters Farm, a small diversified farm, in Mount Vernon.
From the staff at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.
I really enjoyed David Buchanan's article "Farming Comes to a Neighborhood Near You- Mapping the Boyd Street Urban Farm." It reminded me of a project my family and I undertook a couple years ago, and got me to thinking about what I could do with the new plot of land we'd recovered.
Continue reading "Unearthing the Past, Nourishing the Future" »
As the cold November rains begin to fall, the term comes to a close
here at the Ferry Beach Ecology School. It seems now that the summers
bustling activity in our organic garden is just a distant memory. With
a cover crop of winter rye sown and beginning to emerge, our soil will
be protected from the eroding wind, rain, and snow of coastal Saco,
Maine. While it might appear our garden is void of activity at this
time of the year, this is far from the truth.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that, although we are turning a corner on seasons, some Maine Farmers' Markets are still going strong. Here is a sampling of what is still out there to enjoy. Make your way to one of these markets while you still can!
Our spectacular fall weather lured me back into the garden this weekend. It's well past growing season, although a few stubborn cherry tomatoes were clinging tenaciously to vines that had snaked their way across the ground and up the wire fence. Knowing that all those pale green and yellow tomatoes were never going to reach maturity, I put them out of their misery and jerked them unceremoniously out of the ground. Basil and peppers that had blackened after a few nights of near-frost, met a similar fate. Still robust were parsley, thyme, and Swiss chard, which I picked and brought in to the kitchen. But it won't be long before everything in the garden will finally give up and lie down for the winter.
Several Maine farms are getting very creative about harvesting their corn fields this year. Mazes are all the rage! When seen from above, these 8-12 feet high corn stalk labyrinths appear in the design of lobsters, lighthouses, moose, emblems and logos, and trains, just to list a few.
Try your skill at navigating some of these great family-friendly fun spots.
http://www.theheartofnewengland.com/travel/new-england/corn-mazes.html
Melanie Hyatt is an editor at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.
This is the
time of year for all sorts of transitions, especially at the garden.
The biggest transition has been adjusting to work without Steven, the summer intern, and
trying to get everything done with periodic volunteer help. It's great
having everyone back on campus, there's so much going on all the time!
Many
folks are asking me if the garden is winding down, or when we'll stop
farming for the season. Even though the temperatures are dipping down
and the daylight is fading, there are still many, many crops in the
ground and I'll keep harvesting until late October.
Since my last post, lots has happened at the Bowdoin Organic Garden (as can be expected in over a month!). We suffered the early-August deluge, measuring 6.2" of rain in a 23 hour period on August 7-8. At the main garden plot, which is clay soil, we had 6-8" of standing water in the field and couldn't set foot in it for three days. The campus garden plots, being sandy soil, didn't suffer as badly but still kept us indoor-bound.
I was afraid I’d missed the whole thing. A family emergency took me to California this summer for longer than I’d planned, and I fretted that I wouldn’t get back to Maine in time to enjoy the bounty of my garden. But I lucked out; in fact, there was an unexpected edible bonus waiting for me.
The cilantro, lettuce and bush beans have gone by, but the basil, thyme and parsley are still abundant. Two rows of green peppers look healthy, and a dozen fat cucumbers are begging to be picked. And the tomatoes! Oh, the tomatoes. There are thousands of sweet, golden-yellow cherry tomatoes just waiting to be plucked, and bulbous Brandywines hang heavy on the vine.
That little rainy spell really got the weeds growing! Maybe it’s more productive to think of these weeds as biomass production for future compost…
One good thing about very moist soil is that weeds are easily pulled, so during breaks in the weather, I have been doing just that: pulling and piling weeds, preparing next season’s compost.
While many weeds are easy to pull, a few are tenacious enough that I prefer to smother them: cover the overgrown area with newspapers, several sheets thick and moistened so that they stay down. Then cover the newspapers with grass clippings — or even with pulled weeds. By next spring, this area will be weed-free, nutrient-rich (from the decomposed grass clippings and weeds) and ready to plant. It takes several months for this weed-killing effort to work, but it’s worth the wait.
Jean English is the editor of MOFGA's, The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener.
For about half an hour a day for the past month or so, usually in the evenings, I’ve enjoyed my blueberry meditation period, quietly picking fruits from our eight highbush blueberry bushes. The process is simple: get a quart container, stand at the plant, set part of your brain to “blue or not blue” mode and, while you pick, let the rest of your mind drift. Breathe in the outdoor summer air, breathe out your troubles. Antioxidants aren’t the only healing properties of blueberries!
Discovery. Laughter. Magic. Memories. Learning. Connections to the Earth. All of these things happened for two straight weeks at Ferry Beach Ecology School’s brand new Garden Nature Day Camp this July.
There were many highlights throughout the weeks, including snacking on fresh strawberries and sugar snap peas from the garden and making seed mosaics from expired seeds. However, I would like to focus on a particular program component that was very popular among the children. Believe it or not, they was the garden chores!
According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, July is supposed to be a lull in the farming season - all the big plantings are in, harvesting isn't yet at it's peak, and dry weather keeps weeds in check. I wish this supposed reality were true at the Bowdoin Organic Garden! July is the month when everything is going on at once.
Several weeks ago I agreed with Sandy Oliver’s sentiment noted in this blog: that dining on homegrown asparagus makes one feel like royalty. After a few weeks of asparagus every night, though, I was ready for the spinachy life of a pauper.
We persevered. Steamed asparagus, sautéed asparagus, asparagus casseroles, scrambled eggs and asparagus, asparagus in salads… Seeing a pound of organic asparagus selling for $6.99 imparted a new flavor to these dishes…for another week or so.
Maine winters are great, and one of the special reasons I enjoy living here. But after what we’ve just gone through, I’m glad spring is here – longer, warmer days mean that it’s time for gardening.
And that’s just what I’ve been doing recently, spending long days with our restaurants’ kitchen crews out at Grand View Farm in Greene. We’re busy getting ready for the growing season, preparing beds, planting potatoes, onions, herbs, greens and other vegetables, even putting up a large greenhouse that we’ll use to extend the season.
I enjoy all of the different parts of gardening – choosing what to plant, deciding when and how to plant it, tending the garden through the summer, and the reward of harvest. We’re experimenting with some Italian varietals that we aren’t usually able to get, and look forward to seeing how they turn out in the months ahead. Stay tuned!
It’s nice to share this enthusiasm with the people I work with in the kitchen – we’re out there in the beds together, swapping stories, sharing ideas, pulling weeds and developing a better understanding of the food we eat. I firmly believe that spending time out at the farm makes all of us better cooks when we get back in the kitchen: we don’t take the food for granted, appreciate the hard work, commitment and long hours put in by our many local farmers and growers.
The farm will supply us with fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs throughout the summer and into the fall. And it’s neat to pull something out of the ground in the morning and use it in the kitchen the same evening.
Call me biased, but I think Maine has some of the best people growing and producing some of the best food anywhere. We’re lucky to be able to turn to them for seafood, cheeses, poultry, meats and more.
Lee Skawinski is Executive Chef at Cinque Terre and Vignola restaurants in Portland.
With May weather getting warmer every day, I was itching to pull away the cardboard shroud that had covered my garden since January.
I was skeptical that my experiment had worked at all. Was it guaranteed that grass and weeds that had spent the winter in darkness would really die, roots and all? Or would they be lurking beneath their cardboard blanket, rested after a long winter’s nap, and ready to burst into bloom?
I approached my garden warily, and was immediately outraged to see that a small clutch of dandelion leaves had found its way through two layers—landscape cloth and heavy packing cardboard—to emerge into the light of day. “Stinker!” I hissed at this unwanted survivor.
Continue reading "The Cardboard Garden, Part 3: The Big Reveal" »
So here I am in Maine. A southern California-born boy who has lived everywhere from Iowa to Japan, who spent summers in my grandma’s kitchen in Louisiana – but who is nuts over the food coming out of the ground up here around my Maine home.
My first taste of locally grown foods was the field trip I had in first or second grade when I was living in Japan, and we went “sweet potato picking.” I remember marveling at the enormous size of the potatoes we were picking and taking home. I also like to think about the local man in Japan who would sell freshly roasted sweet potatoes to my mom from his cart that he pushed around.
As a person who loves food, growing up in southern California was a fantastic place to be since so much fresh, locally grown food was available year-round. I remember driving out to cherry, pear, and peach orchards and either picking the fruit, or buying it at unbelievable prices. My family would bring home baskets full of fresh fruit and my mom, would amaze me with all her preparation and preserving techniques. To me, that was dazzling, and when I saw her enjoy herself most in our kitchen.
Fast forward to me now in Maine, and to my thirst for gardening. Whenever I could, I’ve planted a garden. I seem to need to garden wherever I spend the most time. I’m starting a fresh vegetable garden at Solo Bistro now because it just seems like the natural thing to do. We use local sources for our food, of course, but growing my own little plot just seems to me to be a good way of supplementing our “food bin.” My garden that’s begun sprouting may be modest, but it will satisfy some part of my soul that needs to be outside and “playing in the dirt.”
Esau Crosby is the chef at Solo Bistro in Bath.
Everything’s happening at once now. The azalea outside the kitchen window bloomed just as the hummingbirds returned—or was it vice-versa? Asparagus is on the dinner plates every night. The little hoophouse (last year’s Mother’s Day gift) is a sea of greens. But it’s the leeks that have gained my renewed appreciation this year.
A couple of weeks ago, while visiting my daughter in Montreal, I decided to make potato-leek soup for us and, not having purchased leeks in years (since they grow in my garden), I went into sticker shock at the checkout. I thought the price was a whopping $1.49 per pound; it turned out to be a whoppinger $1.49 per leek! Canadian! And these were somewhat tired-looking, old, non-organic leeks.
Come to find out at the Camden Farmers’ Market last week that that’s not an unusual price—but the farmers’ overwintered, freshly-dug, organic leeks looked a lot cleaner, crisper and whiter than those in Montreal (known, otherwise, for its abundant fine food).
So, how fortunate that we had such a good snow cover last winter: The dozen or so leeks that I didn’t get around to digging in late fall are still in the garden, ready for some spring soup, spiked with a little sorrel, perhaps. (I’m really excited about the beautiful ‘Red Veined’ sorrel that Johnny’s sells and that I’ve just started growing)
How fortunate, too, to have a little flat of leek seedlings, started on the windowsill in February, to plant out this spring. I will have to leave some in the garden this fall to overwinter—maybe under hoops covered with double layers of row cover, a technique that Eliot Coleman suggested trying with various crops at last year’s Common Ground Country Fair.
Jean English is the editor of MOFGA's, The Maine Organic Farmer & Gardener.
I'm new to the posts - my name is Katherine Creswell, and I manage Bowdoin College's organic garden (affectionately called the BOG). A brief program synopsis: we have a little over an acre to grow on; three-quarters of the land is on the property of Crystal Spring Farm in Brunswick, and the other portion is on campus. All the food we grow goes directly to the dining halls. The program consists of myself, in a full-time, 7 month/year position; a student intern who works June-August; and dozens of student and community volunteers. This is my fourth season at the job, and, like previous seasons, we're busier, bigger, and more ambitious than last year.
The season is well underway at the garden, having started outside earlier than any other season. At the campus garden, where the soil warms up faster and is loose sandy loam, we have the greens mix seeded and growing (beet greens, spinach, arugula, rainbow chard, siberian kale, mizuna, mibuna, red mustard and lettuce mix), the early root crops sprouting (yaya and sugarsnax carrots, chioggia and detroit beets, easter egg radishes and hakurei turnips), and peas a-climbing. Our 2 year old blueberry bushes survived a harsh winter and are full of new growth.
The big field is surprisingly dry and friable, considering it is a heavy clay loam. We have a brand new portion of the field dug up for planting hot crops this season, allowing us to leave a portion of the other field to rest under PVO (peas-vetch-oats). We just spread and disced in 28 yards of beautiful compost. In the unheated greenhouse, we have lettuce heads, herbs, brassicas (lacinato kale, green magic and de cicco broccoli, farao and red express cabbage) and flowers emerging. In the heated greenhouse we have endless flats of tomatoes (peacevine, matt's wild, black cherry, cosmonaut volkov, striped german, crimson sprinter, rose de berne), eggplants (swallow), peppers (jimmy nardello's, early jalapeno) and curcurbits (raven, parthenon, new england pie, marketmore, carnival and delicata) covering every available bench.
New this season, we're working on ordering two bicycle trailers to transport produce and supplies between the big field and campus, a distance of 2.5 miles that we've previously borrowed trucks for. We just got our budget proposal approved, so now we're trying to narrow down our choices from 7 qualified manufacturers to one winner! We just bought our own rototiller, which will hasten things along tremendously throughout the season. We also are in the midst of planting a brand new strawberry patch (cabot, sparkle and earliglow), and just finished planting 200' of asparagus (purple passion and jersey supreme).
We hope to have our first harvest before the seniors leave for good, in 3 weeks. Personally, I'm dreading when the students leave, because the campus adopts a hollow empty feeling and student volunteers are noticeably absent in the fields. I also can't wait until my summer intern starts to ease the work load!
Katherine Creswell manages the Bowdoin College Organic Garden.
More thoughts to ponder as you consider what matters to you, how you might have lost sight of it all, and how you may attempt to get it back. Let your mind retrace the steps of sustaining memories of your past. Build a sandcastle again. Take a walk in the rain with an umbrella, splashing in all the puddles. Smile and let the world wonder what you've been up to. Whatever you do, just don't lose sight of what matters.
How did I allow life to become so non-inclusive of all the things I love? I guess things that are big get lost in the background of our lives sometimes, replaced by the mundane, smaller necessities of living. In an effort to bring those sustaining backdrops back to life, take a few minutes to remember what you love, and why.
Melanie Hyatt is an editor at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine .
Ah, Spring. Our thoughts should turn warm as our hearts are forecasting the rebirth of all things spring. Every year, I tend to use the equinox as a reminder of the conscious changes I can make to encourage my own mental and physical renewals. Bound your soul forward by listening to its whispers this year. Do some soul searching. Take notes. Then ask yourself a couple of very important questions: Just what am I passionate about? Now how do I make it happen?
I have generated a very partial list of what I need to rediscover, or at least revive. These are in no particular order because they are all important to me and have recently been so neglected.
Melanie Hyatt is an editor at Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine .
A warm spring rain falls outside my window, binding me to my computer instead of my garden. The sound of the waves crashing onto the shore, moving in from the foggy horizon of Saco Bay, summons me to tilt my head and reflect on the last couple of weeks. The sun has been shining brightly each day, bringing warmth to my winter-chilled bones and satisfying my need to dig in the soil. After a long Maine winter it is reassuring to see life beginning in the greenhouse. Peas, spinach, and early spring flowers have been planted in the garden. The garlic's green fingers have awakened and are reaching toward the sky. Spring has finally sprung!
And so has the residential season at the Ferry Beach Ecology School in Saco. We are in the middle of running our fifth week of spring programming, bringing school groups to the coast of Maine to learn about ecology and sustainability. Trained naturalists lead students on ecosystem-based lessons three times a day. They explore the beach, forest, salt marsh, tidal pools, and our small organic garden. The garden is a vital component of our curriculum because it allows us to explore the ecology of food systems with our students. In addition to the garden, we use our four-bin composting system and dining hall to uncover some of the mysteries of our food. All of these puzzle pieces make up our Food for Thought program.
One memory I would like to share occurred about two weeks ago. We had just finished a scrumptious lunch of wholesome homemade pizza with organic tomato sauce. Two students who were part of the after-meal clean-up crew were handed buckets full of orange and banana peels, apple cores, undressed salad, and brown paper napkins. They accompanied us to the compost pile where they dumped and covered the nitrogenous material with handfuls of dried leaves. I then pointed out the well-decomposed pile of sifted compost, explaining that their apple cores would be unrecognizable and added to the garden in about eight weeks. We then ventured into the greenhouse to sample some spinach that had been growing throughout the winter. Their enthusiastic taste buds reassured me that children do like spinach and they will eat fresh, healthy food if they are simply exposed to it. So, introduce your children or your students to nutritious, fresh vegetables. You may be surprised by their reaction!
Stay tuned for more lessons from the Ferry Beach Organic Garden...
Jaime Duval is Assistant Director at Ferry Beach Ecology School.
Greetings to all those gardeners of Maine. I'm writing this post while the outside temperature nears 75 degrees in Augusta on April 23. I'm wondering if our strange weather is an affirmation of "Global Warming" or just the cycles of nature's weather patterns. I think we've by-passed spring and sprinted into summer. The crocus have blossomed, the daffodils and jonquils are showing their best yellows, and the tulips are waiting to show off their buds. The magnolia trees are blooming with their fragrant white flowers. The mourning doves are cooing, the robins are searching for earth worms, and the chickadees are raiding the bird feeder. I just love the sounds, smells, and feeling of spring in Maine.
So here's the deal: I'm not a gardener.
I have other good qualities. I can bake, tell a story, sew, make a wedding cake. I love to hike and swim and run--on trails, in ponds, on dirt roads. I love flowers and food, the fresh kind that come right out of the dirt. I know what to do with these things. I've made a living at it for a long time.
It's not like I don't like plants. I have house plants. They have names. I haven't killed one yet. I have been accused, on occasion, of being a treehugger. And, I admit to having actually done it. Hello, I'm from California.
Which I think is part of the problem. Everything grows in California. I never thought about it. You just clear a patch of dirt, plant some seeds, and poof! Salad. There are no gardeners in California, just gardens.
So, imagine my shock when my first garden in Maine didn't take. Nor did the second one. The third was a riotous patch of weeds. The fourth existed only on paper. Last season's, grown in a patch of dirt I felt confident could raise the dead, was eaten in a single bingeful night by the island deer.
Along with my humility, my respect for those who can coax a garden here on the island has grown a hundredfold. It is not effortless. In a place that is mostly rock and water, they have made soil from seaweed, crab shells and kitchen waste. Knowing this, in July I look around and think, these gardens are the most beautiful in the world. These gardeners, magicians.
Not that I'm giving up. I'm learning. And my desire to have a garden far outweighs this slight dread of the amount of work that goes into it. And yet, yesterday: a single, smiling daffodil yawning up from the winter duff. Simple, effortless.
Kate Shaffer is a contributing writer to MF&L, Chocolatier, and resident of Isle au Haut.
It came in the mail today, my carefully selected order of Johnny's seeds. The calendar says we are a couple- three weeks into Spring, with the box in my hands I walk to the window and look out. The color palette is shades of gray and the naked branches of the swamp maples look stark against the milky sky. I take in my garden paved with yards of black cloth. The bean poles appear as sentries guarding the skeletons of last season's tomatoes still trapped in their cages. The old iron bedstead that lives life now as my cucumber trellis lies flat, thrown up out of the ground by the winter's heave. What was last summer's chard has collapsed into a row of rotting brown leaves and there are dimples of water with ice crusted edges. I watch a fat robin perching on the fence while another works an exposed patch of garden and then, I notice them. I walk outside, crouch down and cock my head to the side and they're there. Like us tugging at the neck of a wool sweater, the garlic spears through it's blanket of straw and sheds the winter. In a few months there will be gracefully curled scapes offering themselves for everything from flower arranging to pesto. So it truly is Spring and yes, garlic is sweet.
Diana Santospago is the chef and innkeeper of The Inn at Isle au Haut.
This morning I dragged more cardboard out to my garden. Temperatures in the 40s had melted all the snow so it was easy to pick my way across the frozen ground that crunched under foot. I stepped into the fenced 15 x 20 foot space that in a few short months will be alive with tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and scallions.
But today it felt like walking through a cemetery. It was still and lifeless. Slabs of flat, brown cardboard covered the bare ground and were frozen into place. I slowly surveyed the blocks of scrap wood I’d placed at regular intervals to anchor the cardboard down. They looked like makeshift headstones marking the modest and untended graves of poor souls whose names had been long forgotten.
Some of the cardboard pieces were wet and limp, and hugged the furrows of last summer’s garden rows. The sturdier pieces – thick, packing boxes made of double wall construction -- were still holding their shape, even after all the snow and freezing rain. I wonder how much the cardboard will have disintegrated by the time the weather is warm enough to start planting. I hope I will be able to simply lift the cardboard off the ground and drive it off to Roland and Bill at the local recycling center. My worst fear is that it will have turned into papier maché and will have plastered itself to the ground. I may have created a death mask for my garden.
Merrill Williams is the publisher of Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.
I am experimenting with cardboard. I am laying down large, flat slabs of heavy cardboard over my garden this winter to test a theory. I’ve read that by preventing any light from reaching the soil during the winter, weeds will be prevented from germinating in the spring.
My friend Sean is contributing to my experiment by giving me the boxes from a large flat screen TV, two bookcases, and a queen-sized bed she bought for her new house. I dragged these huge pieces across my backyard and anchored them into place with rocks, chunks of scrap lumber, and some heavy branches that had fallen during a recent windstorm. A blanket of fresh snow the next day ensured the cardboard slabs wouldn’t sail away with the wind and careen into a neighbor’s window.
The best that could come of this experiment, I suppose, is that it actually works and my vegetable garden will be weed-free by May. The worst outcome is that the cardboard has kept all those weeds warm this winter and they will return with a vengeance. I can hear those little buggers laughing now.
Merrill Williams is the publisher of Maine Food & Lifestyle magazine.
