NOFA Conference

If you're looking for us this weekend, we'll be at the 34th Annual NOFA Conference, At UMASS, Amherst.

Keynote speakers are Dr. Arden Andersen, holistic medical practitioner, expert in human and agricultural nutrition, author, and educator and Mark McAfee, founder of the Organic Pastures Dairy Company in California.

The workshops cover the spectrum of topics of interest from farmers to eaters. It will be hard to choose!

NOFA is the Northeast Organic Farming Association. You don't need to be a farmer to become a member. Here's the site for CT NOFA.

CSA, Week 7

I'm not usually the member of the household who gets to go to the Sandy Hook Organic Farmers' Market for our CSA pick-up. The market is open from 2-6 PM and I'm not generally in the neighborhood during those hours. However, this week it needed to be me and so I went.

Boy, have I been missing out. This is a most excellent Farmer's Market. There's music, fresh popcorn, and the pop-up tents are arranged like like a little village.



August 5 was the seventh week of our CSA (Waldingfield Farm, pick-up point Sandy Hook Organic Farmer's Market). Our bounty included:


- lots of red lettuce
- green beans
- patty pan squash
- cucumbers
- green bell peppers
- heirloom tomatoes
- yellow squash
- kale
- jalapeno and chili peppers

Patrick of Waldingfield Farm, serving a customer:


My local dinner (no challenge) was:
A salad of red lettuce (from Waldingfield), a sliced hard-boiled egg (from Arno's in Kent), shaved cheese (from Sankow's Beaver Brook), basil (from Stoneledge Hollow), and a sliced pickled jalapeno (from Sister CG at Bluestone Farm). I drizzled some of Waldingfield's salad dressing over it.

CSA, Week 6

July 29 was the sixth week of our CSA (Waldingfield Farm, pick-up point Sandy Hook Organic Farmer's Market). Our bounty included:
- mixed salad greens
- sugar snap peas
- green beans
- Swiss chard
- patty pan squash
- cucumbers
- green bell peppers
- Chinese eggplant
- sun gold cherry tomatoes

Our local dinner (no challenge) was:
- patty pan squash (from Waldingfield) stuffed with sauteed pork sausage from Ox Hollow farm, peppers, garlic, onions (from various farms), and cheese from Sankow's Beaver Brook.

I finally made a decent raw milk yogurt! I had the flavor I wanted, but couldn't get the consistency. I kept getting something that would properly be called a yogurt shake. The problem was that I wasn't heating the milk enough. Heat destroys the enzymes and natural good bacteria in the milk and I wanted to keep those. Otherwise, why not just use pasteurized milk? But it turns out that the milk's bacteria was competing with the starter culture! So, do you lose the benefits of using raw milk if you heat it to 180 degrees (as many yogurt recipes suggest)?

According to Linda Joyce Forristal (care of the Weston Price site):

Whatever temperature the milk will be heated to, in my opinion it is best to begin with raw milk. It is not homogenized so you get a wonderful cream on top. It has not had milk solids added to it, so it won’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Most important, raw milk has not been pasteurized, which is a violent, rapid-heating process that has a very detrimental effect on the proteins in the milk. A slow, gentle heating on your stove top will more effectively preserve the integrity of fragile milk proteins, especially if you remove the milk from the stove as soon as the desired temperature has been reached.

Here's my recipe:
1 quart of raw milk
1/4 cup of good commercial organic yogurt as a starter (I used Seven Stars)

Measure out the starter and allow to come to room temperature while heating the milk. In a saucepan, slowly bring the milk up to 180 degrees, stirring periodically (it took me one hour). Allow the milk to cool back down to 110 degrees, again stirring periodically. Put the milk and starter into jars, twist on a lid, and place in a dehydrator for 8 to 10 hours. (I did 10.) Refrigerate the jars. Since the milk had not been homogenized, there is a lovely cream line.

Local Meal, No Challenge

Last night's local meal is not a part of any of the ongoing organized challenges, but a local delight nonetheless.

Rib eye steaks from Stuarts.



Home made pasta, using:
- all purpose wheat flour, wheat from Lightning Tree Farm, milled and sold by Wild Hive Farm, both in Millbrook, NY (local wheat!!)
- eggs from Arno's Farm in Kent, CT
- olive oil from Italy
tossed with a sauteed medley of:
- tomatoes from Mitchell's Farm in Southbury, CT
- arugula from Newtown Cedar Hill Farm
- garlic from Smith Acres Farm, Niantic, CT
- shaved Parmigiano Reggiano, from Italy



Delicious and fun to make!

Bluestone Farm

To cap off a perfect day, we spent Saturday evening with the Sisters at Bluestone Farm, where we sampled many of their delectables as they were puttin' 'em by.

The Sisters had harvested some Nero Italian kale and some rutabagas. I learned that rutabagas can be cut into strips and deep fried, like French fries. I also learned that Sister CG makes an excellent Habanero hot sauce (not to mentioned those pickled jalapenos).

I got to witness the great wall of garlic and regret not having the foresight to snap a photo of it. Numerous varieties of garlic (all neatly labeled) cover about 10 linear feet of wall space, from top to bottom. They need to dry out before they can be braided.

I also got to have a visit with the duckings, who are currently at the adorable stage. And I had the opportunity to admire their prolific fields.

The Sisters sent us home with Italian Kale (nero), Bok Choy, Habanero hot sauce, and pickled jalapenos.

New York Breadbasket

Regular readers of this blog (if there are any) know that I have been complaining periodically (or maybe incessantly) about my inability to find local wheat. Well, have I got news for you--I found some! Lightning Tree Farm in Millbrook, NY grows several varieties and I saw it with my own eyes and tasted it in my own mouth. It's real.

Yesterday, over 80 people showed up for the Growing Bread Locally workshop, which was well over the expectations of the organizers. They'd initially expected a smaller audience of farmers and bakers but were pleasantly surprised to see so many consumers take an interest in local wheat and local wheat products.

Once everyone signed in and checked out the literature and grain samples, the organizers made their introductions. Al Earnhart is the farm manager at Lightning Tree Farm. Jeanine Connolly is also from Lightning Tree. Eli Kaufman is with the Wheat Heritage Conservancy. Elizabeth Dyck from NOFA-NY is the coordinator of the Northeast Organic Wheat Project. Don Lewis is the owner of Wild Hive Farm, a micro-mill and bakery exclusively using local grains.


Left to Right: Don Lewis, Jeanine Connolly, Eli Kaufman, Al Earnhart

Al Earnhart gave us a demo of the combine, an indispensable machine in wheat farming. A combine, according to Wikipedia is "a machine that combines the tasks of harvesting, threshing, and cleaning grain crops." First you drive the combine around the field to harvest the wheat. Then the combine threshes the wheat, separating the grain from the straw. The straw is left on the field as compost. Then there are multiple phases of cleaning and filtering. We saw a demo of the seed cleaner, where screen sizes are based on the grain as well as the year. Then there is the drying. The wheat must be dried properly to prevent molding yet retain viability. Once dry, grains destined for human consumption are stored in a metal-lined storage facility.





Lightning Tree Farm uses the COWS method of farming. They rotate corn, oats, wheat, and sod (clover) on each field in the 425 acres. In the late 1700s, wheat was over-farmed on this land until the soil could no longer produce anything. Those farmers moved west. Today, because of these sustainable farming practices, the land is fertile and able to produce wheat once again.

Elizabeth Dyck spoke about the Northeast Organic Wheat Project, which among other things is looking for folks to keep the heritage seeds going simply by growing the wheat and saving the seeds. Eli Kaufman travels the world researching and growing wheat. She spoke of the resurgence of some of the ancient wheat, such as emmer and spelt.

Then we got to the audience participation portion of the program. Don Lewis (of Wild Hive Farm) brought his mobile oven and baked bread samples with AC Barrie, Triticale, Frederick (soft white winter), and Red Fife wheat. His oven is his own design, crafted by Fletcher Coddington of Arrowsmith Forge. It is a mobile, wood-fired hearth oven. It has seven dampers to control the hot spots. It is a thing of engineering beauty indeed.





The bread was delicious. It was interesting to taste the differences between the different grains. It was intensely satisfying to finally eat bread made from local wheat. The butter was out of this world, locally made and as far as I know, not commercially available. Oh yeah, we had corn on the cob too, roasted in Don's oven.



I left the event with a ton of information, several bags of flour and grains, a loaf of bread, and great hope for the future.

For those looking to do something, here are some actions you can take:
Farmers and Gardeners: "adopt-a-crop" of rare heritage wheat, trial commercial wheat varieties and partner with local bakers
Artisan Bakers: work with local farmers to test wheat varieties for flavor and baking quality
Regular People: Buy and eat the products created by the artisan bakers. Buy the grains and flours and experiment with some recipes of your own.

Contacts:
Elizabeth Dyck
Eli Kaufman

Resources:
Heritage Wheat Conservancy
SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education)

Footnote:
In case you want to grow your own wheat, here's the math to produce one loaf of bread per day. Consider that it takes about 1-1/2 lbs of sifted milled flour to make the loaf. Since you lose about 20% of your weight in the sifting, you need to mill about 1-7/8 lbs of grain. In a year, you'd need 685 lbs of grain. If you save and sow your own seeds, the ratio of seeds to yield is 1:10, so you need to produce 760 lbs of wheat to take some seed off the top for planting. You can get about 900 lbs of grain from 1/2 an acre. So, you'd need to plant just under 1/2 and acre to make a loaf of bread a day.