When European settlers arrived more than 350 years ago, it was said that the Eastern forests were so expansive that a squirrel could travel from the Chesapeake Bay to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground.
Most of the broad, open views that we associate today with a drive in the country are essentially manmade. The fields we pass were likely farms that went fallow as farmers sold out or left to farm in the Midwest and California after WWII.
East Coast farms face multiple threats: cheap imports, competition from huge farms, an aging farm population that often earns the minimum wage, the relentless pressure of development and a lack of infrastructure to bring products to market.
Protect Land by Farming It
If you want to preserve “viewscapes” you can do what Chef Dan Barber’s grandmother did in Great Barrington, MA: Farm your open land, or lease it to someone else to farm. Keep it in sustainable and responsible production.
Dude, got some weed? The kind you find in your lawn, that you cut with a sharp blade or douse with herbicides?
I am looking for one in particular — the dandelion. The French named this flower dens leonis, or “lion’s tooth” referring to the jagged points on the leaves. You know the yellow flower or the puff ball after the flower goes to seed. But dandelions offer more than momentary entertainment or irritation.
Weed ‘Em and Eat
In France people grow dandelions to eat, just as we might grow lettuce. It’s best to collect dandelion leaves in early spring and then harvest again in late fall. As Wildman Steve Brill tells us:
“Dandelion greens are wonderful in salads, sauteed or steamed. They taste like chicory and endive, with an intense heartiness overlying a bitter tinge. People today shun bitter flavors; they’re so conditioned by overly sweet or salty processed food. But in earlier times, we distinguished between good and bad bitterness. Mixed with other flavors, as in a salad, dandelions improve the flavor.”
Some good news, too, for locavores and for nervous parents. There are no poisonous look-alikes for dandelions.
And it’s a rare weed indeed that has a book named after it: Dandelion Wine is Ray Bradbury’s recreation of a boy’s childhood, combining moments from his life and his imagination.
“Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.”
Throughout the region farm stands and farmers markets are re-opening. You want to patronize them, but it can be so much easier to shop at the grocery store. Here are some reasons for making the switch.
Such Good Taste
Summer is almost on us. If you’re old enough to remember a time when summer meant something in relation to the food we eat, then this is happy time.
Summer was the season when we could get almost any fruit or vegetable we desired. Food was fresh and it was something special. Now, we can get everything all the time, regardless of season. Our kids take it for granted. But something besides taste is lost with this total 24/7/365 access food. Produce comes in from all over the world. If nothing else, it feels different that we can no longer associate certain foods with their harvest season.
We can only skip traditional seasons because varieties have been developed for their shipping characteristics rather than their eating quality. Older varieties, which may have had shorter spans of maturity, were too soft for long-distance shipping; those different shapes and sizes have been replaced by varieties specifically bred to be firm and uniform for efficient packing.
These new fruits and vegetables are usually picked before they are fully ripened (for longer shelf life), so they never develop the natural sugars that fully mature produce possesses. Local farmers, with shorter time to market, plant varieties that taste great and possess natural sweetness. They pick the produce when it is ripe and not green. Fresh, local foods do taste better.
When I first heard about the move to rooftop gardening, I thought it was a sweet idea, but hardly a world-beater.
But I am wrong for a hundred reasons.
Inspired by local farmers, the staff of Herons Restaurant at Vancouver’s Fairmont Waterfront started a 2,100-square-foot garden and apiary more than 18 years ago. The impact is measured one bite—and one buck—at a time.
Chefs are responsible for planning, planting, weed control, pest control through the use of a spray using orange pekoe tea and biodegradable soap, and of course harvesting. Food doesn’t come by truck but by the sweat of your brow. When Fairmont chefs talk to local farmers, there is a more direct connection between grower and chef. Chefs have a greater appreciation for the effort that goes into bringing food to their prep tables.
Hotel guests sample produce picked moments ago, including 60 varieties of herbs, edible flowers, fruits, and vegetables. And they can stroll in the garden, running their fingers over the lavender or sampling a strawberry.
“Due to the focus of The Fairmont Waterfront’s herb garden—sustaining the restaurant with its needs throughout the seasons—it truly provides a connection for our team’s inspiration when creating seasonal dishes,” says Executive Chef Patrick Dore. “Our commitment to work with local producers who share the same philosophies in regional and sustainable practices allows our restaurant to offer a true taste of Vancouver.”
A half-acre garden will never replace even for a day the network of suppliers the hotel needs to feed its guests. But easy access and freshness provide another value: lower food costs. The apiary pollinates the garden but also produces honey worth over $5,000 a year. Even a small 1/2 acre garden, like the one at the Fairmont Waterfront, can generate considerable savings on food inputs.
When you look down from a midtown Manhattan skyscraper you see acres of tar roofs. Do they all have to go green? Of course not—but just imagine if they did. What a wonderful, nutritious, world it would be.
“The mother of slow food.” “The founder of ground-breaking Chez Panisse in Berkeley.” “The biggest influence on food and how it’s sourced and prepared in America since Julia Child.” That’s a significant legacy that Alice Waters, a spirited revolutionary, carries with grace and a deft sense of humor.
Almost a year ago, I heard Alice Waters speak to—and apparently hold in thrall—a packed hall at the tony Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT. I was certain that everyone, from students and faculty to farmers from Sheffield to Millerton residents, heard her call to action. Charge the barricades! Go local! Boy, was I wrong.
The Alice Waters Story
Waters first learned about the importance of food in people’s lives while studying in Paris. Eating food together, she saw, “encouraged conversation and closeness.”
For Waters, food should be a “form of sustenance, not just fuel.” She brought that winning recipe to the opening of Chez Panisse in 1971. Her unstoppable search for great tasting, quality ingredients led her to forage for the best sources of cheese, fruits and vegetables, meat and fish in the Bay area. In the process she created a community of 85 sustainable producers that support and nourish her restaurant to this day.
The Siren Call of Cheap and Easy Food
Fast, cheap and easy may be how America eats but it’s an “illusion that degrades our health and our environment.” While changing the food system may seem “like rerouting the Titanic,” Waters has her eye on a stimulus plan and a workforce that could transform agriculture and our health in a relative jiffy.
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