Christmas 2009 - Sibling Gifts

SIBS! I hope you enjoy the physical part of our gifts to you, these little jars of fruit preserves. Your "Apple Syrup" is the result of a hunch, that the sweetest cider I harvested this Autumn, from a tree whose apples had hard-frozen and thawed several times and turned brown on the tree, could be distilled like maple sap, into a sweet syrup. It is nearly as sweet as maple, but the apple syrup has its own distinctive character. Warm it up and pour it on pancakes or waffles, and see if you don't like it just as much as maple syrup. Apple syrup's "carbon footprint" is a lot smaller: Maple Syrup is boiled 40 parts sap to 1 part syrup, while Apple Syrup is boiled approximately 7 parts cider to 1 part syrup. Here is my "Rocky Mountain Local" replacement for pancake syrup. The Apricot-Peach Sorbet does not need to be frozen until you open it. Once you have frozen your sorbet, take it out of the freezer about ten minutes before eating, to let it soften just a bit.
The SECOND part of our gift to you is information, contained in the regional posts below this one. Check out your region, and all the small farms and farmers markets you can access for fresh, locally grown organic food. WHY are we giving you this information? Because the world is changing. Many serious problems have come together at once, including crises in global banking and debt, food safety and security, health care, energy and climate change. As we see failures in all these areas, large shifts are underway all around us, to create healthier ways of living, much of it by producing healthy organic local food. I am focused on this work myself, creating solar heated greenhouses, growing edible polycultures, creating wonderful foods from local sources, and trading gifts with my friends who are doing complementary work. We are building community, while watching segments of our global markets collapse, and we are making other arrangements by becoming part of the local supply chain for everyday needs of our community. I hope you enjoy this blog, and as Julia Child would say, "BON APETIT!"

Los Angeles Clan - Your Local Food Networks

As you probably all know, there is a very robust network of LA FARMERS MARKETS, many of them year-round.  Your MAP shows just a few of the closest Farmers Markets to you, and you can DOWNLOAD PLACEMARKS to see them in Google Earth, and to open each one's properties to reveal all the necessary information about the markets.
Of course, for healthy organic grass fed meat, visit your EAT WILD DIRECTORY, and click the link to their CA MAP to zoom in on the meat providers in your area.  It looks a bit scarce in the LA area, but there's a grass fed organic buffalo rancher selling meat in Valencia CA.
To see MAPS for all these places, you can visit LOCAL HARVEST and put your zip code in the upper right field, to see a map and list of the farmers, farmers markets and subscription farms in your area. Go ahead and zoom in on the map so you can see the actual locations in detail.
My favorite COOKING website is ALL-RECIPES - where you can enter a few ingredients you have, and it will give you recipes people have entered, using those ingredients. You can "scale" each recipe for the number of people you want to serve, or amount of ingredients you have. You may also search for "articles" offering advice for canning, roasting meat, making jam, chutney, bread, you name it!

Lorentz Clan - Minneapolis Local Food

Eileen, John, Olivia and David, perhaps someday you will meet the Lasleys at GROWING POWER in Milwaukee, on your way to or from a visit, for a hands-on tour of New Organic Agriculture.
Here is your MAP of a few Farmers Markets and Organic Meat sellers in your area.  You can DOWNLOAD PLACEMARKS for these, which will fly you in Google Earth to their locations, and if you open each placemark's properties, I have included all the contact info and web links for each one.
Of course you have your own HOPKINS FARMERS MARKET that runs through October, and you can also access locally raised, grass fed meat through your Minnesota EAT WILD directory.  You can zoom in on their MN MAP for organic grass fed meat growers nearest to you.  There is a concise CSA FARM DIRECTORY for the twin cities region where you might find just the right deal for fresh vegetables by the weekly share.

Lasley Clan - Your Chicago Connections

Gloria, Dave, Luke, Faith, James - you are all SO LUCKY to be only 85 miles away from one of the coolest New Agriculture learning centers in the nation, GROWING POWER in Milwaukee.  If you made a day trip up there to take one of Will Allen's tours, you would learn a lot about healthy food and see how it's grown.
Here is a MAP of your location and the Farmers Markets near you.  DOWNLOAD PLACEMARKS for these markets, and view them in Google Earth.
I found a great FARMERS MARKET DIRECTORY for the state of Illinois, by town.  Also a list of WINTER FARMERS MARKETS in the Chicago area.  You are surrounded by a network of CSA's (community-supported-agriculture), or Subscrtiption Farms.  GRASS IS GREENER delivers meat, poultry and egg shares in Evanstone and Oak Park, and THE LOCAL BEET will connect you with subscription farmers delivering fresh produce around Chicago.  Check out their websites, read their descriptions of what's in a weekly share, how much of what kinds of food, and how much money they get per share.  "Share-a-Share" with friends or family, or see if you can just order a large quantity of something you'll preserve.
One of the best ways to afford organic, grass fed beef, poultry and pork is to buy a CHEST FREEZER and to buy your meats in quantity.  I am still eating from a quarter steer I put away two years ago, and this year I added a whole lamb, several pastured chickens and a turkey to the freezer.  ILLINOIS EAT WILD has a good listing of organic grass farmers raising all kinds of meat.  You can click on their MAP LINK and zoom in on the growers in your area.

Connecticut Clan - Your Local Farmers

Here is a "Google Earth" map of CT, showing "placemarks" for your homes, as well as for some of the farms included in the lists you can link to, below.  Once in Google Earth, you can enter the address of any farm or farmers market from these lists, and the program will "Fly" you there.  If you download the placemarks I have already created, you can open them to see address, phone number, and sometimes websites for your local food providers.  DOWNLOAD CT PLACEMARKS.
I love everything about picking APPLES in the Autumn.  America's Northeast Region holds a special allure, with the brilliant colors, sounds and smells of trees draining their leaf energy back to the roots, their leaves drying and falling to the ground.  Find an Apple Orchard near you by clicking CT APPLE ORCHARDS.
How about Farmers Markets for all your fresh local vegetables? Clink on these links for Farms and Markets in MIDDLESEX COUNTY, NEW HAVEN COUNTY, FAIRFIELD COUNTY, HARTFORD COUNTY, and LITCHFIELD COUNTY.
To see MAPS for all these places, you can visit LOCAL HARVEST and put your zip code in the upper right field, to see a map and list of the farmers, farmers markets and subscription farms in your area.  Go ahead and zoom in on the map so you can see the actual locations in detail.
For locally raised, grass fed organic meats and eggs, see EAT WILD - CT for meat growers and vendors in your state.  See their CT-MAP to zoom in and find your closest ranchers.
My favorite COOKING website is ALL-RECIPES - where you can enter a few ingredients you have, and it will give you recipes people have entered, using those ingredients.  You can "scale" each recipe for the number of people you want to serve, or amount of ingredients you have.  You may also search for "articles" offering advice for canning, roasting meat, making jam, chutney, bread, you name it!

NOAH - Edible Aspen Magazine, Winter 2009-2010

Click on the photo to read the article about Jerome's high altitude greenhouses!

Food For Thought...

The Business End is a bi-weekly radio show on the underbelly of New York's food system, co-hosted by Nelson Harvey and Annie Myers. Lots of good stuff! Check them out HERE.

Welcome to Locavore Life!

Every time I hear people complain about situations beyond their control, like the global banking crisis, the health insurance crisis, the food safety crisis, and so on, I try to imagine what a LOCAL solution to the problem might look like, a solution we could put faces to, of people we know in our communities, providing goods and services we would otherwise obtain from a global industry.
It hasn't been that long since a large portion of a family's provisions came from local sources. In the Central Rocky Mountains, where I live, supermarkets came to town only after WWII, in the late forties and early fifties. We've enjoyed the conveniences and apparently declining costs of a global factory farming and food processing system for little more than half a century now, and the hidden costs of this unsustainable system are becoming more and more apparent: Severe health problems in humans and in the animals raised for human food, Poisons sprayed on our food crops, and these food crops being genetically modified to survive applications of poison, intended to kill pests and weeds. How can we believe these poisons and genetic modifications won't harm us?
Enough is enough. So what do you do? Must everyone grow a garden in their backyard? Well, not exactly. Many people are already choosing organic produce in their supermarkets, even though there is a degree of "sticker shock" at the checkout. They want healthier food for their families. Each time they make this choice, they are voting for better quality food, and gradually, growers are listening. More and more farmers are seeing other choices themselves, and are leaving the factory farm industry, to convert their soil back to organic, to work with nature instead of against it, to start CSA's (community-supported agriculture, or subscription farms), and to develop local markets for their products. Join a CSA. Buy organic produce from Farmers Markets near you. Find something YOU enjoy growing, making, or baking, something everyone will want.
I have long enjoyed baking bread and brewing beer in my kitchen, and giving these treasures as gifts to my friends. Some of these friends are farmers, raising animals for meat, eggs, growing vegetables and salad greens year-round in greenhouses, roasting organic coffee beans from Mexico and Brazil, making bar soap from local resources, and so on. They sometimes give me some of what they produce. Pleasing them with my bread and beer makes me want to constantly improve my skills, and we are all happily "gifting" each other with things we would otherwise be buying from a factory far, far away, where performing for Wall Street is more important than improving quality for its customers.
This is why I "choose" to seek out local providers for everything possible. These choices create local jobs, seek quality before financial gain, and build real bonds of trust that create solid, exuberant community.
Choose local whenever YOU can, and find a new world right outside your back door. We'll keep an ongoing list of LINKS in the right sidebar, to help you find your way. WE will be an expanding band of brainstormers with solar-powered flashlights to help find our way to a fine future. Welcome!