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.

Both you and the surrounding countryside will receive all manner of benefits.

Towns and landowners have a number of options to protect their agricultural heritage, including:

• Protective Rural Zoning: zoning of a very low density. This is one of the most effective ways to protect rural and agricultural land and to maintain a critical mass of land required to support agricultural economies without buying conservation easements.
• Conservation Easements: a legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government whereby a landowner sells or donates the rights to develop his or her property to a conservation organization. When development rights are sold or donated, the land can never be developed.
• Transfer of Development Rights (TDR): a legal agreement that allows a developer (who wants to build at a higher density than is permitted) to purchase or trade for additional development rights from a willing seller who owns land in an area designated for preservation. (Source)

These well-structured and tested programs run into well-organized business and real estate interests. Last year I sat in on an open space planning session in the charming town of Millerton, NY. An audience member worked hard to discredit a team presenting a conservation framework. It turns out he was a real estate agent looking to protect a sale of a large farm. His groundwork paid dividends. Not that night but months later, when the Town tabled the plan—two years in development—without explanation.

More Reading

Keeping Open Space Open

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.”

I tried dandelion wine for the first time at Moon on the Pond Farm, where farmer Dominic Palumbo had just steeped a pot of dandelion flowers and was adding orange and lemons to a huge crock.

Dominic Stirs Summer with a Spoon

Then he poured a glass from a bottle of dandelion wine that had been produced last summer.

The wine was light—Prosecco light— and captivating. I wanted more. I could imagine serving it to friends with fish. Or a summer salad with watermelon. Sipping it by a lazy stream as the sun disappears into a warm, steamy night. More.

It’s time to make my own. So I am heading out late Sunday morning to pick a bag of dandelion flowers and try my hand at bottling summer.

Further Reading and Recipes

Jack Keller: More Than 42 Dandelion Wine Recipes

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.

Your Local Economy

No one needs to be reminded about the economy. Local produce may sometimes be a little more expensive than what you can get in the grocery stores. It seems ironic that something shipped in from a long distance is cheaper, but economy of scale is at work here. Industrial farms are usually many thousands of acres; in Eastern NY, the average farm is well under 500 acres. Yet local farmers live on their land, pay local taxes and buy their supplies locally—making their living from what they produce, and adding to their neighbors’ prosperity. But you have to sell a lot of lettuce and tomatoes to buy a new truck or afford a new television.

Robin and Allen Cockerline, Whipppoorwill Farm, sell most of their farm's output through their charming farm store

Farms Are a Precious Resource

Try to look at farms as a resource, equivalent to trees, iron ore, or even oil.  Once they’re gone, they’re gone—they’re only renewable if we support them. We should do everything we can to keep agriculture where we live. Do you really want to depend on other countries to supply our food?  Less than two percent of the United States population is farmers; they’re an endangered species.

And don’t forget our concerns about energy conservation: The average distance your food travels is 1,500 miles. That’s a mighty lot of time and fuel.

Build a Relationship with a Farmer and an Environmentalist

When buying produce at a farm stand or farmers market, you are building a relationship.  It’s personal. You can ask about his kids. You learn about a specific varietal. You can give feedback to the grower on what to grow next season. It feels good.

And farmers are environmentalists. To make your living from the land, you must take care of it. Growers are constantly doing good things for the land. They rotate crops, plant crop covers, and generally take care of the soil so it will take care of them. Besides providing open space for livestock and wild animals, farms provide green space to keep our water and air clean. In the long run, it is much better to have land in farms than in development.

Good Farmers Equal Safer Food

The food safety issue has probably done more to bolster local agriculture than anything else. There have been a number of food scares in the last few years. They have all been a result of the lack of “controls” on big, industrial farms. So much can go wrong on a big operation. Just think about the number of times produce is handled between when it is picked, rinsed, packaged, stored, loaded, shipped, unloaded, stored again, repackaged, trucked and then handled again before you buy it.  Local produce receives a minimum of handling. The people selling the produce are the ones who picked and transported it, and you have a personal connection them.

To me, all food is personal. You can tell when fruit and vegetables are fresh. You know it’s local if, when eating a peach, you need two or three napkins to soak up the juice on your face. You know a local tomato because there’s a difference between cardboard and flavor. Eating locally grown fruits is a pleasure that cannot be experienced year round. That’s what makes it so precious and so wonderful.

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.

Plenty of Opportunity (Photo: Matt Kraus)

Additional Reading

Hydroponic rooftop gardening in Boston

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.

She’s focusing on the one in five Americans who are in school. Working through her foundation and a receptive Administration, Waters wants to create a curriculum and lunch program to show kids how to raise, prepare, cook, and share the food they eat during the day.

For students at Martin Luther King Middle school in Berkeley, their Edible Schoolyard is just part of their daily lives. Now thanks to students Sam Levin, Sarah Steadman and Natalie Akers, Monument High School in Great Barrington, MA also has its own organic, student-run garden, Project Sprout, which is inspiring others across the country.

Leaders of the food revolution: 17-year old Sam Levin of Project Sprout, Alice Waters and farmer Dominic Palumbo

Wondering whether or not to start your own food-garden? Then consider these two simple facts:  1) the White House garden cost all of $200 to start, and 2) during WWII more than 40% of the fruits and vegetables Americans consumed came from “victory gardens” planted in urban, suburban and rural communities.

Words Have Power

Waters kicked things off early on with a story about arugula. During the presidential campaign, Obama may or may not have said: ” ‘Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?’ he asked. ‘I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.’ ” Some political pundits even asked what’s wrong with iceberg lettuce. Waters’s take on this cable news tempest? “It’s amazing that it could be un-American to be able to distinguish between salad greens.”

To my amazement, while I was reveling in Waters’s stories and love of food, some students in the Hotchkiss audience were seething. It turns out that a lot of the junk food they loved had been ripped out over the last two years and replaced with food that was “good” for you. Alice Waters was not among friends that day. Instead, she could have had a bulls-eye painted on her chest. Finally, here was the person responsible for the degradation of “our junk-food supply.”

The Q&A period was tense. The first question from a student was typical: “Hey, I’m from New York and you want us to take up urban farming? Where are we going to do that? In Central Park.” It went on from there.

But the interesting thing is that, as distinct from the typical speaker who charms and then leaves, the Waters speech kept students talking for weeks. And it made me think that words have extraordinary power. Why should “foodie” be a pejorative term? What’s wrong with being enthusiastic about your food and the people who produce it?  Or eating arugula, for that matter? But in America “foodie” carries connotations of elitism, even to an audience of students whose annual tuition cost approaches the average American household income.

So how do we create a positive and productive conversation about food in America? Start by listening. Then talk, a little, as reasonably as you know how. And then hand a fresh, locally grown peach to your skeptical friend: It’s worth a thousand words.