Farms & Gardens

What in the wide world of "adult" beverages is your drink of choice? Mine, without a doubt, is craft beer. But it wasn't always that way. The "me" of 15 years ago wouldn’t have been familiar with the term "craft" beer, and my palate probably wasn’t quite ready for it. However, shortly after I moved to Minnesota, I was invited to take the path less traveled, to experience something beyond the mass produced product I had been accustomed to. This is no flat expressway; instead it is a meandering trail that offers discoveries around every turn, invites you to find something you didn’t even know you were looking for, and begs you to appreciate the craftsmanship that's gone into the glass that you're holding.

After years of living in a city, I find myself a bit confused about what to do with the backyard in my new rural home. How do I maximize the space to provide myself with local food in the truest sense of the word? First, I sketched a plan for a garden, which was easy after a seven-month gig working on an organic vegetable farm. But I’m not a vegan, so I find myself wanting more.

For years, I’ve tracked blog posts and articles battling out the pros and cons of backyard chickens. Plus, I learned how to take care of chickens myself during my time on the farm last year. So I decided that the missing piece in my plan for a backyard farm is chickens.

There’s nothing typical about Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables, located in Rushford Vilage, Minnesota.

The unofficial rule dictates that you don’t start browsing through seed catalogs until well after the New Year. They’ve been on my bedside table since before Christmas, but that’s only because the first ones started arriving in November. They’re playing dirty with my resolve; in Minnesota, that’s a full six months before planting.

Photo courtesy of RawFoodLife.comLast December, we wrote about ana Sofia Joanes, food policy activist and director of the movie Fresh, and her campaign against BigAg monopolies.

The following post was written by Carrie Oliver, founder and CEO of The Oliver Ranch Company and The Artisan Beef Institute. It originally appeared on her blog last October. We thank her for letting us re-post it here. You can read more about Carrie and her work, below.

A recent New York Times article on ground beef has led a lot of friends, colleagues, and clients to ask my thoughts on the issue.

Theresa Marquez, Chief Marketing Executive for Organic Valley Cooperative, is captivating. She speaks quickly, compellingly, and passionately. Her eyes shine when she mentions a favorite book or describes the Earth Dinners Organic Valley has hosted for several years around the country, connecting people to both food and the environment. An hour with Theresa can include a poem, a discussion of politics, a newspaper article throw-down (Paul Krugman’s “Missing Richard Nixon”), a look at Organic Valley’s new packaging, and - of course - a discussion about food.

I’m thinking a lot about food systems these days. Fundamentally, there seems to be collective agreement that ours is broken (unless you happen to work for Monsanto or Smithfield), so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how we might fix it. (Jill Richardson’s excellent “Recipe for America” has a few ideas too - that and her La Vida Locavore blog are well worth reading.)

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about food systems that are:

Conscientious omnivores of the Michael Pollan variety champion grass-fed beef. It is claimed to be better for the cattle themselves than grain-finishing, since they eat what their rumens are evolved to digest (grass and legumes) instead of what fattens them quickest. Plus, they get to graze open pasture instead of being confined to a feedlot for the final four to six months of their lives. Grass-fed enthusiasts also claim it’s better for people because grass-fed meat is leaner and has a higher proportion of omega-3 fats than grain-finished meat. Some even argue that it’s better for the environment, since you don’t have huge piles of feedlot manure to manage; the cattle deposit their manure on grass, as they naturally would, and it ultimately nourishes the soil.

There’s potentially good food news for two Twin Cities communities in 2010: a new farmer’s market and a new food co-op.

According to the Star Tribune, Edina may finally get its own farmer’s market, “if a proposal that's going to the Edina Park Board in January makes its way through city review processes in time.”

Strib reporter Mary Jane Smetanka writes, “The idea of adding an Edina farmers market came out of a two-year, $1.6 million grant that was received by Bloomington, Richfield and Edina. The Statewide Health Improvement Program grant came from the state health access fund, funded by a fee paid by health care providers. The money goes to activities that are aimed at promoting health.”