Green Eats

Literally and figuratively. This past Saturday three intrepid South Estes Farmers’ Market customers gathered to put their culinary skills to the test in an Iron Chef-style battle for the ultimate prize, a professional Wusthof knife set donated by Kitchenworks. I put together the event in my capacity as a member of the Friends of the Market Committee and the Community Representative on the Board of Directors, with LOTS of help from SEFM Market Manager Andrea Wood. I’ve done lots of events in my life, but this was my first time doing a cooking competition and needless to say I was a little stressed! Luckily everything worked out wonderfully, and I’m happy to say that SEFM customer Jennie Heck wowed the judges and walked away with the grand prize! Click through for the photos and a link to the winning recipe.

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Civil Eats has posted a great interview with Jennifer Curtis, principal of Curtis Consulting and Project Director for CEFS NC Choices program. Jennifer has been an integral part of North Carolina’s local food movement since the 1980s, and most recently has begun working on the issue of getting sustainable meat into larger markets.

Read the interview here.

Renowned farmer and sustainable agriculture advocate Joel Salatin (of Food, Inc. and The Omnivore’s Dilemma fame) will be giving a seminar at Central Carolina Community College in Pittsboro on June 30th. The seminar, entitled “Local Food to the Rescue”, will be hosted by CCCC’s Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Chef programs along with the NC Tobacco Trust Fund and the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. This free event will begin with a tour of the CCCC student farm at 5:30pm and refreshments at 6:30pm (the farm has a brick pizza oven!); Salatin’s seminar will begin at 7pm. I plan on being there to support my program and to meet Joel Salatin, and I hope that you will be able to join me!

Central Carolina Community College is located at 764 West Street in Pittsboro, about a mile west of the traffic circle.

Hat tip to Carrie & David of Crumb for the heads up, via the Western Wake Farmers’ Market website.

Photo courtesy of the Eno River Farmers Market

In what they say is a first for the Triangle, the Eno River Farmers’ Market in Hillsborough has started an online ordering site. Customers can “shop the market” online from Saturday to Monday and then pick up their orders at the Public Market House on E. Margaret Street in Hillsborough on Wednesdays.

I tested the system myself this past week – on Sunday I ordered potatoes and ground pork from Fickle Creek Farm and carrots from Two Chicks Farm. Wednesday afternoon I headed to historic downtown Hillsborough to pick up my order at the market pavilion on E. Margaret Street. Leila, the Eno River Farmers’ Market manager, told me that they had five orders for the inaugural run, which is more than they expected. I had to pick up my orders from the Fickle Creek and Two Chicks tables, but in the future Leila hopes to be able to have vendors drop off their goods beforehand. Customers would then pick up their orders intact from Leila or a volunteer. The benefits are two-fold – customers on a tight schedule are able to get in and out relatively quickly, and vendors that otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend the Wednesday market are able to have another selling day without having to man a table.

I’m excited about this latest innovation from the Eno River Farmers’ Market, and I plan on ordering pretty regularly. I’m interested in seeing how other customers approach this new way of accessing local food, and if other area markets follow suit.

Eno River Farmers’ Market Online Ordering Site

The North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service and North Carolina State University have just made available online a new manual entitled “Keeping Garden Chickens in North Carolina”. The manual covers a variety of topics including breeds, feeding, housing, and flock health. While by no means comprehensive, the manual is a great place to start for anyone who is considering starting their own backyard chicken operation.

Keeping Garden Chickens in North Carolina (pdf)

When someone asks me for an example of a multi-platform, sustainable farm I always reference Fickle Creek Farm. Ben Bergmann and Noah Ranells have built something that most people struggle to attain, a pasture-based, rotational system that incorporates sustainable farming (both with livestock and produce) with agroforestry and permaculture practices while virtually eliminating the need for conventional inputs. I visited Fickle Creek recently and was very impressed with what I saw. Here are some photos:

Ben Bergmann explains the basics behind one of Fickle Creek's chicken tractors

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Last week Leland and I hopped in the car and drove up to Cedar Grove, NC to pick strawberries at Whitted Bowers. Ever since Rob Bowers came to talk to my class last fall about the biodynamic fruit farm he and has wife run I’ve been waiting to try to their strawberries. The drive up to Cedar Grove was very relaxing, and in no time we were out in the fields, basket in hand.

Leland picking strawberries at Whitted Bowers

I talked to Cheri Whitted, Rob’s wife, for a bit and she told me that it had been a rough year for strawberries here in North Carolina. With the crazy weather we had in April (HOT, then cold) and the lack of rain she expects that they’ll only have one more week of good picking left in their fields. Normally they’re able to get fruit through the end of May.

Regardless of the tough growing conditions this year, the strawberries themselves were GORGEOUS, not to mention delicious. It was all we could do to not eat one strawberry for every one we put in the basket! We started off slow at first, but eventually we picked up the pace and ended up with 13.5 pounds of strawberries.

Strawberries from Whitted Bowers

The picking was only half the fun, though. After we got home, hulled all the strawberries (it took 40 minutes…), and had carefully packed them away in the freezer, I spent the next couple of days collecting everything I would need to do some serious jam-making. Read the rest of this entry »

A few Mobbers get to weeding at Ever Laughter Farm

I spent the afternoon yesterday working with the Crop Mob at Ever Laughter Farm in Hillsborough. In case you missed all the attention Crop Mob has been getting lately, they are a group of farmers (both landed and landless, urban and rural, professional and amateur) who get together each month to “mob” a local farm, accomplishing in a few hours projects that otherwise would take days or even weeks. The labor isn’t free – host farms are expected to feed the Mobbers, and only those who have helped out on previous Mobs can have their own farm Mobbed. At the end of the day its about helping out small farms in the community, getting your hands dirty, and having some fun.

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This was not a great story to wake up to this morning! WRAL is reporting that state officials have halted the sales of goat cheese from Elodie Farms and are investigating a rabies incident. From WRAL:

The death of a donkey from rabies has sparked questions about other animals and products from Rougemont-based Elodie Farms.

Owner Dave Artigues said he stopped selling goat cheese at the Durham Farmers Market Saturday after learning that a goat in his herd was sick. State agriculture officials were testing additional animals and milk from Elodie Farms on Monday.

Artigues said the goat milk in his cheese is pasteurized, so it shouldn’t pose a health threat, but he took some unpasteurized milk to a state lab in Raleigh to have it tested.

Read the rest of the article at WRAL.com

(Reporter Erin Hartness of WRAL)

I’ve sent an e-mail to Elodie to get their take on the story, and I’ll update this post if I receive a response. This is certainly a PR nightmare for an otherwise successful local producer.

UPDATE 4/13/10 – According the Durham Herald-Sun, officials with the Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services and the Durham County Animal Control have not found any more cases of rabies at Elodie. One goat remains quarantined, and another goat who was ill was euthanized and subsequently tested negative for rabies. Officials say that there will be no restrictions on Elodie selling products, conducting farm tours, or other enterprise.

Elodie Farms

I just got back from the South Estes Farmers’ Market and boy did I make a killing in produce! Its been so nice to see green showing up at the market once again, and I just couldn’t help myself – I went on a locavore spree! From Ever Laughter Farm I got cilantro, spinach, a bag of their salad mix, a bag of braising mix (kales and mustards), and a package of bratwurst. From Fickle Creek Farm I bought a bag of kale. Finally, I snapped up some orange marmalade rolls and a loaf of oatmeal bread from The Farm Fairy and a lemon-poppyseed mini bundt cake from Big Bundts & More. Read the rest of this entry »