Its sort of shocking how close I came to totally missing out on this conference.

I have pasted at the bottom of this post, the schedule that they have put together! You can also visit the same schedule at this link.

Note that a whole lot of it is free and open to the public!

While I am not able to attend all of the great festivities (I live 1.5 hours outside of Boston so this is a field trip for me) I am making it a priority to attend a particular workshop, to be held this Friday (tomorrow) from 2:30 to 5:00.

I have been wanting to buy this book and never thought I would actually get a chance to SEE Sandor speak in person so I am quite excited about this workshop.

Fermentation may seem like an arcane skill to learn but if you garden, like I do (see our garden blog at Humble Garden) it is hugely important to be able to do ferments to put up some of the harvest.

While fermenting is not hard (the bacteria do all the hard work) its best if you get a good foundation up front so that you do not waste food due to ignorance of important practices and also because you do not know what a good and a bad ferment looks like!

One last word on fermentation – its not just about preserving food. Fermentation is the process of changing or morphing foods from a fresh state to some new and improved collective organism made up of a whole, complex and dynamic bacterial ecology where lactobacillus bacteria produce lactic acid that inhibits pathogenic (toxic) bacterial species and ALSO unlocks nutrients, co-factors, and vitamins from the original food.

Sandor has completely immersed himself in a fermenting world and seems to be wholly dedicated to bringing it to the rest of us!

You can learn so much more by visiting his web site at this link.

At this workshop, I will also get a copy of his book (hope to get it signed and add it to my growing collection of signed book copies – see this link)

Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods

I will be doing this tomorrow and then report back here after that!

Conference Schedule

Friday, May 8, 2009

Fermentation lecture and workshop: Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods

Join Sandor Ellix Katz (aka Sandorkraut), author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, for this workshop. Learn how easy it is to make sauerkraut, pickles and other live-culture ferments in your own kitchen. Highly nutritious and filled with life, fermented foods have a long history and a promising future. Empower yourself to create these delicious and healthful foods!

2:30 PM – 5:00 PM
808 Commonwealth Avenue (Fuller Building)
Demonstration Room

Seating limited | $30 includes signed copy of Wild Fermentation | $20 without book.

LAST DAY TO REGISTER FOR “WILD FERMENTATION” IS THURSDAY, APRIL 30!

If you have questions about the workshop, please contact Kate Seif at clseif@bu.edu or 610-420-7854.

Lecture, cooking-demo and dinner: Cooking with a Conscience

Featuring ec0-chef, author, and food-justice activist Bryant Terry

Bryant Terry is a nationally recognized eco chef, author, and food justice activist. He is currently a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national program of the WK Kellogg Foundation. He is co-author, with Anna Lappé, of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen and author of the recently released Vegan Soul Kitchen. With the help of a Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellowship, he has started the Southern Organic Kitchen Project in order to educate primarily African-Americans living in the Southern United States about the connections between diet and health.

Dinner (see menu) features recipes from Bryant’s Vegan Soul Kitchen.

5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
808 Commonwealth Avenue (Fuller Building)
Demonstration Room

Seating limited | $45.00 includes signed copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen

LAST DAY TO REGISTER FOR “COOKING WITH A CONSCIENCE” IS THURSDAY, APRIL 30!

If you have questions about the dinner with Bryant Terry, please contact Kate Seif at clseif@bu.edu or 610-420-7854.

Film Screening and discussion: King Corn

King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.

In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat – and how we farm.

Film-screening will be introduced by Ian Cheney, filmmaker, and followed by discussion with Aaron Woolf, director.

8:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Boston University Law School
Auditorium | Barristers’ Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue
[Directions]

Free and open to the public | Reception to follow

Saturday, May 9, 2009

International Conference: The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives

Free and open to the public

(includes all panels, breakfast, coffee breaks, reception)

8:00 AM – 8:45 AM: Breakfast and Registration

8:45 AM – 9:00 AM: Introductions
9:00 AM – 9:30 AM: Opening Keynote Address – Satish Kumar, Editor, Resurgence

9:30 AM – 11:00 AM: Session I: From Farm to Fork: The Global Food Chain

This session traces the increasingly obscure path of food from “farm to fork.” The focus is on food production and the industrialization of agriculture. It will consider the growing influence of “agribusiness” and the “politics of food.” Our goals are to explore the alignment (or lack thereof) of business and consumer interests and the impact of the transformation of the food system on culture.

Participants:
Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)
Henrik Selin, Professor of International Relations, Boston University
Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty
Moderator: James McCann, Professor of History and Associate Director for Development, African Studies Center, Boston University

11:00 AM – 11:30AM: Coffee Break

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM: Session II: The End of Cheap Food: Food and Geopolitics

This session will center on “food security.” It will address the rising cost of food and the “fuel vs. food” debate. Is the growing demand for biofuels responsible for food inflation? Other threats to food security will also be explored, namely, fossil fuel dependence, loss of biodiversity, and water shortages.

Participants:
Benedikt Haerlin, Foundation on Future Farming | Save Our Seeds
Jim Harkness, President, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Tim Wise, Director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University
Moderator: Cutler Cleveland, Professor of Geography and Environmental Science, Boston University

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM: Vegetarian lunch with guest speakers

Seating limited | $15.00 | Please indicate when registering whether or not you will attend the lunch.

LAST DAY TO REGISTER FOR LUNCH IS THURSDAY, APRIL 30!

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: Session III: What’s in What You Eat? Food Safety in a New Ecology

This panel focuses on “food safety” with an emphasis on regulation in the United States and Europe, the GMO debate, recent “food scares,” and the looming threat of bioterrorism.

Participants:
Benedikt Haerlin, Foundation on Future Farming | Save Our Seeds
Helen Holder, GM Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe
Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director, Center for Food Safety
Moderator: Adil Najam, Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University

3:30 PM – 4:00 PM: Coffee Break

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM: Session IV: Eating Green: Food and Climate Change

This panel looks at the relationship between food production and climate change, addressing issues of deforestation, soil degradation, and factory farms and considers whether what we eat can make a difference.

Participants:
Daniel Hillel, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University
Björn-Ola Linnér, Linköping University, the Tema Institute
Mia MacDonald, Founder and Executive Director, Brighter Green
Cynthia Rosenzweig, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University
Moderator: Henrik Selin, Professor of International Relations, Boston University

5:30 PM – 6:00 PM: Coffee Break

6:00 PM – 7:30 PM: Session V: What Is “Good” Food? The Ethics of Eating

Is “good” food healthy, sustainable, delectable or cheap? This panel explores why our food choices matter. It addresses the “ethics of eating” and the health and environmental costs of “cheap food.” It looks at some of the grassroots alternatives including the rise of organic farming, locavorism, and the “slow food” movement.

Participants:
Sandor Ellix Katz, author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved
Satish Kumar, Editor, Resurgence
Harriet Lamb, Executive Director, Fair Trade Foundation
Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)
Moderator: Molly Anderson, independent consultant on science and policy for sustainability

7:30 PM – 8:00 PM: Closing Keynote Address
Michael Ableman, farmer, author, and photographer and a recognized practitioner of sustainable agriculture and proponent of regional food systems

8:00 PM – 8:30 PM: Reception

Location:
Boston University Law School
Auditorium | Barristers’ Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue
[Directions]

All Saturday events, with exception of lunch, are free and open to the public. Registration in advance is appreciated and helps us with planning.

Note: There will be no admittance while sessions are in process or after 6:00 PM. Please plan your travel to arrive before the start of the session(s) you would like to attend.

If you have questions about the conference, please contact Elizabeth Amrien at eamrien@bu.edu or 617-358-2778.

Unfortunately, America is starving it’s food banks. At a time when food bank demands are shooting through the roof, donations to the food banks are disappearing. The NYT is running an article in a special section called “Giving” entitled “When the Cupboard Is Bare” by David Cay Johnson where they delve into the exploding food crisis here in the US.

Surplus production, once a major source of food for food banks, is now often sold to overseas markets. There manufacturers can get more than the value of the tax deduction of a charitable donation. This and other factors are forcing some food centers to turn away the hungry. SOURCE

You might imagine that this year is the same as past when food banks make their usual annual press releases pleading for food as we near the holidays.

This year it will be different and it is really only the beginning. With accelerating job losses and the depletions of meager savings for winter heating costs (officially called “fuel poverty“) more and more people will be forced to visit desperately understocked food pantries.

In the four months since June, demand for food aid has risen 20 percent in areas of the country with the healthiest economies and more than 40 percent in areas with the weakest, leaders of nonprofit food-distribution organizations say. And they predict that the need will keep growing in 2009 if the job market continues to contract, as expected.

…

“We are getting people whose work is always up and down, and they have lived with that their whole lives because they work construction,” Mr. Sly said. “Construction here has just stopped, and so we have carpenters and masons and electricians who have not worked on a new house in forever. So it is not that they are out of work for some weeks and then they go back to work. There is nothing for them, and they cannot imagine when there will be work again.” SOURCE

There are roughly a thousand pantries and soup kitchens in New York, said Ms. Stephens. City Harvest collects surplus food from restaurants and grocers and distributes it to nearly half of these volunteer feeding operations. It also operates a twice-monthly farmers’ market in the South Bronx, providing fresh produce at no charge, part of a small but growing trend among emergency food providers. SOURCE

Please consider becoming much more involved this year with your local food security efforts. Give money, give time, plan on growing some food especially for your local banks next year.

Each dollar of donated money, many food bank managers said, can be leveraged through barters, buying surplus products and otherwise arranging for $12 or more of food. City Harvest, for example, relies on 100 paid employees and 700 volunteers who gather surplus food and deliver it. “One of the big misconceptions is that we collect waste, which we do not,” Ms. Stephens said. SOURCE

I can not stress too much how important it is to take that first step, out your front door, to do something for your neighbors while you can and to support an effort that you yourself may one day have to avail yourself of.

Please share your unique ways of helping to feed people. I would love to hear it all.

My children have had the opportunity to grow their own food and raise their own chickens and milk their own dairy goats. By no means are we affluent and we struggle like others to keep the house and feed the kids. But, while we all must eat every day, is doesn’t really take THAT much to get full and there should always be a way to share and a time to learn how and why to share.

This fall, I think its important that we share our feasting with others.

Tell me how you do this with your kids!

Who has not stood before a pile of organic vegetables or fruits and compared their price to the price of the conventionally grown ones next to it? Who has not asked, on some level, is there some real qualitative difference? You likely appreciate the lack of chemicals used to grow it – artificial fertilizers and pesticides made from petroleum.

This question – “Are organic vegetables BETTER than conventional ones?” can catch you because there are several assumptions that are meant to trip you up.

Not all organic growers are the same, what the USDA means by Organic may not square with your idea of it, the USDA is known for letting certain things slide for Big Ag, and many other system issues that have been purposefully institutionalized.

You may also assume that “Organic Food” is more wholesome too.

Merriam Webster defines wholesome this way:

• Pronunciation: \hōl-sÉ™m\
• Function: adjective
• Date: 13th century
• 1: promoting health or well-being of mind or spirit
• 2: promoting health of body
• 3 a: sound in body, mind, or morals b: having the simple health or vigor of normal domesticity
• 4 a: based on well-grounded fear : prudent -a wholesome respect for the law- b: safe (it wouldn’t be wholesome for you to go down there — Mark Twain)

Unless you are standing in a farmer’s market where the veggies or fruits are honestly sourced from a local small holding organic farm, the organic items in question – in the big box grocery store – are likely to have MUCH more in common with the conventional ones.

How is this possible?

Big Organic growers grow their plants with the same industrial model as Big Agriculture – huge carbon foot print and constant destruction of the soils.

Depleted Soils

Soil, or dirt as some may think of it, is not just powdery minerals. It is a complex mixture that includes those minerals from long eroded rocks but also organic residues from all the activity that has happened in the soil.

Those organic residues can include:

• Living and degrading plant debris
• Living and degrading insect and animal bodies
• Living and degrading bacterial populations
• Living and degrading mushrooms (mycelium –mushroom roots-, and mushroom fruiting bodies, even spores)

The activities of these living things lend structure to the soil (different zones of life, mineralization, compaction, oxygen levels, nitrogen levels, moisture levels) and also help by making certain compounds, elements, minerals, available, things like:

• Plant-usable nitrogen (nitrogen fixation via bacterial-root-rhizome symbiosis)
• Vitamin production
• Plant-usable forms of elements like calcium, phosphates, and other more rare types.

When soils are plowed, the structure is obliterated and whole communities of plants, mushrooms and bacteria and insects are disrupted, killed, inhibited. They can no longer transmute atmospheric nitrogen and soil-locked minerals and organic debris into nutrients for plants.

The good stuff in the soil is also exposed to the harsh sun, rains, winds – all depleting the soils even further.

Our present day industrial Big Agriculture requires MASSIVE amounts of oil, mechanical toil, and amendments (also dependent on oil for their very manufacture) to compensate for the damage that plowing does to the soils.

Consider these stats:

Raw Broccoli

• From 1963 to 1999:
• calcium went from 103 mg/100g sample down to 48 mg/100g sample
• potassium went from 382 down to 325 mg/100g sample
• Water content went from 89.1% up to 90.6%

Red Tomatoes

• From 1963 to 1999:
• calcium went from 13 mg/100g sample down to 5 mg/100g sample
• magnesium went from 14 mg/100g sample down to 11 mg/100g sample
• potassium went from 244 down to 33 mg/100g sample

Raw Carrots

• From 1963 to 1999:
• calcium went from 37 mg/100g sample down to 27 mg/100g sample
• magnesium went from 23 mg/100g sample down to 15 mg/100g sample
• potassium went from 341 down to 323 mg/100g sample

On top of this soil holocaust, you have genetically modified plants (via breeding and the lab) that have been optimized for the industrial method and which are able to grow in depleted soils.

What you get are vegetables which LOOK like a carrot, a cabbage, a head of broccoli, corn, cucumbers, etc but if you were to measure the mineral and vitamin contents you would find something closer to a wet soggy sponge.

Let me repeat: Big Organic growers grow their plants with this same Big Ag industrial model – huge carbon foot print and destruction of the soils.

What this means to you at the store, is that when you buy Organic, you are buying a compromised promise of pesticide purity but not wholesomeness. You are buying simulations of vegetables.

Taking vitamins will not solve this problem because they are based on a false premise. Many vitamins are not absorbable by the human body unless they are embedded within the context of food (be it plant or flesh).

The only way to resolve this issue (and just how many diseases arise from our bodies being depleted almost from the moment of conception) is to buy veggies from small farms that are practicing permaculture and organic gardening methods.

Better yet, learn how to get your own permaculture and organic garden beds going so that you can eat REAL vegetables with actual vitamins and minerals.

What a concept

If you are interested in learning how, visit my garden blog at Humble Garden and also ask me in comments.

I have been slow in posting this last week for a variety of reasons, most of them creative!

I will be posting on some new recipes I have tried from a couple of new cookbooks, ones I made up myself, and also about this fantastic tour I took of several Vermont farms on an absolutely beautiful day.

Today, as I write those posts, I will share photos of our new chicklings (as our kids call them). As you may or may not know, you can order day old chicks to arrive by regular mail.

We have been building a chicken house for them.

With a nice clear roof.

See more details in the post “Avian Abode” over at our Humble Garden blog.

The types I ordered were:

• White Silkie Bantams – these are important in traditional chinese medicine (they are the black meat chickens), thought I might give them a try, eggs and meat
• Production Reds – lots of eggs, heavy breed
• Black Minorcas – interesting looking, eggs
• Buff Orphingtons – hearty large breed
• Mystery chicks – hatchery’s choice!

That last mystery set should be interesting, one little guy (seems like a guy, hope they are all girls tho) is all spotty and pretty fiesty!

Technorati Tags: cookbook, Vermont, farm, chick, chicken house, egg, meat, heavy breed

I just wanted to share a few shots that I took the last couple of days at the Dole & Bailey North East Family Farms roadshow up in Quechee, Vermont. These will be the first of a larger project that documents, in my own certain way, “family” portraits of farmers (or producers), chefs, and animals.

The chicken seen here was fantastically patient with all of us and was handled with the greatest of respect. His general demeanor of dignity really set the tone for that.

The slide show may grow in size over the span of today and the future as I add more to that flickr set.

Let me know what you think!

Make no mistake, this post is absolutely for the beef lover and especially the connoisseur of the highest quality aged beef.

Most of us know what non-aged beef tastes like, somewhat homogeneous or one dimensional in it’s flavor. Some people experience non-aged beef as slightly metallic in flavor (the iron in the hemoglobin?), not a very appetizing characteristic. I have always eaten fresh beef (unless you count the hamburger that has been in the fridge for a day too long which does have a different flavor indeed) and I have never had an experience with aged beef that I am aware of. Some people will eat only aged beef, having converted from the more mundane.

I think that we eat what we like but also what we can get a hold of. I also think that many of us really never have access to aged beef as an ingredient but perhaps have access to it in a fine steakhouse setting. The restaurant experience separates us from the reality of the ingredient so I thought today’s post would be of interest to all of us.

This post will cover:

• Why age beef?
• What is wet aged beef?
• What is dry aged beef?
• What does the dry aging room at Dole & Bailey look like?

Why age beef?

The goal of aging is several fold:

To tenderize

• muscle fiber relaxation
• connective tissue breakdown

To concentrate flavor in the meat and the fat

• microbial action on tissues
• water loss

Muscle fiber relaxation is a physical process that occurs after the animal has met it’s demise. First, the muscle fibers seize up for half a day or so and then the pH changes in the muscle fibers after which they slowly begin to relax (wiki). This occurs in all animals with muscle fibers, including fish.

Connective tissue (collagen in the tendons and other connective structures) breakdown occurs for different reasons, at different rates in different muscle groups, to different degrees, and at different times throughout the aging process.

What is wet aged beef?

Wet aged beef is usually large “primal” cuts of high quality beef that is vacuum packed in tough plastic bags and allowed to sit at cool temps for a desired period of time. This meat passes through the tenderizing process and then begins to develop flavors based on the anaerobic (oxygen-hating) bacteria (L. sakei and L. curvatus – link to paper – PDF) that reside inside the bag. These bacteria help to breakdown various components of the muscle tissues and the breakdown products impart the characteristic flavors to the meat.

Because the meat is sealed away from air, it does not lose moisture and thus there is not an appreciable loss of product over time. This makes this method very attractive to producers and steakhouses because it makes for a less expensive yet delicious product.

People say that wet aged beef has a distinct “aged” flavor without the potential “gamey” or “musty” flavor some report with dry aging.

What is dry aged beef?

Dry aged beef (which may have been wet aged previously for a mixed type of aging) is also done on the larger primal cuts or even a whole side of beef. It is done in a climate controlled room with constant air exchange, bug and bacteria lights, constant temperatures (34 – 36 F) and a constant controlled humidity to control moisture loss. The bacteria that are doing their work in this setting are both the aerobic types (on the exterior) and the anaerobic types (on the interior).

As with cheese caves where the population of specific bacterial and fungal species are unique to each cave and which give the cheese the unique flavor profiles and textural characteristics, so too does the beef dry aging room have a unique bacterial ecology which has a unique impact on the beef aged therein.

I may be wrong but it seems to me that with dry aging, the process that is key and unique is the moisture loss and flavor concentration. Both the meat and the fat loses water over the 14-30 day period (or longer, time period is up to you, there is no hard and fast rule about what is the “best” length of time). Beef is something like 70% water and during the dry aging process it can lose something like 30% of the total moisture. I see it as if the meat were “distilled” to a more essential “beefiness.”

What does the dry aging room at Dole & Bailey look like?

Recently, I had the privilege of walking through the facilities of Dole & Bailey, family-owned purveyors of fine meats, pantry items, dairy, exotic spices and ingredients, seafood and fresh produce. This walk-through included a chance to walk into, experience, sniff, oogle at, and photograph their 20 year old dry aging room (vault, cave, piece of paradise, what have you).

To enter the Bos taurus inner sanctum, you walk through this heavy sliding freezer door. When opened, the positive pressure of the room billows out the distinct aromas of a well seasoned dry aging room. It is hard to articulate really what it smells like. It is certainly not like a room where fresh meat is stored, it smells like meat but nothing at all like off-meat. You can tell from the aroma alone that something special is happening to these slabs of beef.

Big Ed (Ed Brylczyk, Regional Sales Manager at Dole & Bailey), was my guide that day. He was fantastically knowledgeable about the entire company and was quite passionate about each food that he showed me. He took me into this dry aging room and explained the process and also talked about how and why he likes both wet and dry aged beef.

You can see the various types of steaks here, end on. Dole & Bailey (Big Ed, and others) have standing and special orders from area chefs for certain aging protocols (wet for so many days, dry for so many days) on certain kinds of custom cuts. At any given time, you will see a completely unique set of cuts being aged in this room. According to Big Ed, the summertime is high season for these kinds of orders so I got to see the room well stocked.

The name of the client is printed on a tag and attached to their custom ordered dry aged beef.

Here you can see that the type of cut is also labeled. Notice how this looks very different from fresh beef. I didn’t touch any of this but it certainly seems like it would be firm on the exterior and also you can see changes to the fat.

Also, notice how its not brown but quite red, a dark red.

Notice how different the meat looks on the exterior of the dry aged meat compared to an end that has been cut. The interior meat is still red and this particular shot shows a well marbled one.

Makes you hungry huh?

Make mine medium rare!

Bottom Line:

Aging beef, dry or wet, tenderizes and boosts the depth and complexity of the flavor profiles in beef. You can not go wrong with giving this a try. I know that it is something that you find in a more expensive restaurant but if you find yourself presented with the opportunity, be experimental, try it. I plan on it.

Big Ed made a very important comment about aged beef and especially theirs. When you eat this meat in the restaurant, you will notice how fantastic it tastes. One huge reason you will find this difference compared to the steak you find at the grocery store or lesser restaurants is that the beef used in dry aging is of the highest grade. Often, one can not even find this grade of beef in the grocery store. Starting with such exemplary beef, the outcome is sure to be a steak that is magnitudes better than what you are used to. People just do not dry age poor quality meat so choosing dry aged beef will ensure a high quality steak, a priori.

Related Posts:

• Behind the Scenes: The prep kitchen at the Dole & Bailey Maine Roadshow
• iTasting: Elevages Perigord – Duck Foie Gras
• iTasting: Vermont Butter & Cheese Co. – Creamy Goodness
• Local Food: Northeast Family Farms
• Convivium: Les Dames d’Escoffier at Sandrine’s (Cambridge, MA)

Learn More:

• Aging Beef – U of Minnesota

Technorati Tags: wet aged, dry aged

Here in central Massachusetts, we have an abundance of apple orchards. When tourists come to this region in the summer, they expect to do a few very specific things – buy antiques, pick apples, visit 18th century New England at Old Sturbridge Village, and enjoy a rural landscape. Those of us who live here year round can become rather inattentive to our the local charms but the coming of spring usually pulls us back out of our ruts.

Today has been just a stellar day weather-wise so my oldest daughter and I took a trip to one of those local orchards, Brookfield Orchards, in North Brookfield, MA. This place is a fair hike from our house and is situated in the middle central part of the state.

For those of you who may not know where Massachusetts is -

This map shows you where North Brookfield is in Massachusetts

Their address is 12 Lincoln rd, North Brookfield, MA 01535

(508) 867-6858

Their website is www.brookfieldorchardsonline.com, where you can see all about their mail-order options. They ship apples, preserves, relishes, mustards, jams, gift baskets, and more.

To learn more about the other offerings in the area, check out the “Browse the Brookfields” site for other attractions, like:

• The Salem Cross Inn (I can not recommend this place highly enough, follow the link!)
• The Riverbend Gallery
• The Warren Farm
• The Purple Onion (antiques)
• Tip Top Country Store (whole foods and organic produce)

The following photos gives you a bit of a photo tour through the outside orchard and the store. Enjoy!

The specialty at Brookfield Orchards is hot apple dumplings, served with vanilla ice cream and/or a chunk of cheddar cheese. (seen at top)

Dormant apple trees that will have stunning blossoms in a few weeks time.

Some of the store.

Loads of antiques and charm.

The ceiling

More antiques.

Some fun kitchen stuff too.

Sites of Interest:

• Brookfield Orchards
• Browse the Brookfields
• The Salem Cross Inn
• The Riverbend Gallery
• The Warren Farm
• The Purple Onion
• Tip Top Country Store

Related Posts:

• Local Foods: Auntie Cathies Bakery – Gluten-free to order
• Local Foods: Another visit to Auntie Cathie’s Bakery

Technorati Tags: The Salem Cross Inn

Will be attending this event today! Am looking forward to this and will be taking lots of photos to share here.

Its April 4th and we woke up to a frozen rime coating our land, car, and anything that slowed down long enough to freeze.

The robins were super fluffy as they tried to warm up (poikilothermy is an awesome thing) and find a frozen seed or two amongst our weed patches.

I am starving for warmth, though not the biting black flies or the humidity that hits New England out of nowhere.

I am starved for fresh green lettuces and so my mind turns to what we will grow this summer.

Last summer, you may remember, I grew a lettuce patch and did some container gardening.

This year, I think I want to grow 5 metric tons of basil. I want to go out onto my deck and sit amongst a forest of basils of all sorts.

I want to eat basil salads, basil pasta, basil pancakes, basil soup, basil beignets, basil smoothies, basil panko encrusted shrimp and scallops, sip straight basil juice. I want to sit on my deck and munch on basil straight from the bushes.

I will be planting a bit of basil this year, likely this Basil Discovery selection from Seeds of Change.

I might also order all of these different types of basil from the Territorial Seed Company:

• Cinnamon
• Red Rubin
• Siam Queen
• Purple Ruffles
• Nufar
• Holy Green
• Holy Red
• Lemon
• Spicy Globe
• Finnissimo Verde A Palla

I will summon what optimism I can and plant a few tomatos too, though my track record is mighty poor so far.

Resources of Interest:

• Seeds of Change
• Territorial Seed Company

Related Posts:

• See my Gardening Category

Technorati Tags: rime, robin, poikilothermy, seed, biting black flies, New England, lettuce, container garden, basil

As I promised, this post covers my experience with the New England Farmer’s Conference in Sturbridge, MA this last week. This was the first year for this event and it was well attended. Many small farm farmers packed into several auditoriums and theaters to listen to topics such as how to grow for and market to the public schools in Massachusetts, how to build an effective marketing plan, how to build and project the “story” about your family farm so that people will feel attracted to it and your produce/products, etc.

In addition to these presentations there was a large convention floor filled with the trade show attendees. Makers of boxes and crates and bags for PYO fruit were next to specialty food producers offering samples of their delicious products.

The attendees were very well fed with sumptuous lunch buffets on both days. On the second day, selected foods from trade show exhibitors were showcased in the buffet.

Northeast Family Farms

One exhibitor that was quite popular was Northeast Family Farms, a brand of Dole and Bailey. (Top image shows some of their meat) They, by far, had the most compelling story for the average foodie of today. I spoke with Laura Sapienza-Grabski of Dole and Baily, a 137 year old New England purveyor that had butcher stalls in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in the mid 1800s selling artisanal farm raised Vermont lamb. In fact, if you look up on the columns of Faneuil Hall, you will find the name Dole and Bailey inscribed in the facade.

Laura was quite enthusiastic about their support for local ranchers and farmers as well as the attention to detail around how farmers and slaughterhouses treat their artisanal meats and seafoods. The effort it takes to find the farmers who are dedicated to sustainable practices, the ethical and organically correct methods for harvest/slaughter, and the presentation/positioning of this product in a marketplace saturated by faux USDA organic labeled foods is daunting. Its something I absolutely applaud, appreciate, and want to support.

Once you step beyond the very few choices of “natural” or “organic” meats in the big-box grocery stores, you quickly realize that what is billed as organic or natural (add your favorite euphemism) may not be in fact what you THINK it is. If you are an “ethical” buyer, you may be buying food that you think is grown humanely when in fact, it is not. If you are a “quality grown and processed” buyer, you are very likely misled. Government regulated organic labeling is pretty much worthless and regulation of self-labeling regarding ethical practices is likely less than exact (thank the current administration).

Dole and Bailey strives to inspect and authenticate each part of the production process, including using organic certified slaughterhouses, something that can be difficult to find. I understand that the only organic slaughterhouse in Massachusetts is no longer in operation so animals have to go out of state and then back in. If this is the case, I hope that a new one is back in operation soon, there is definitely a need for this as more and more local farmers opt-in on the sustainable and organic raising of animals.

Whew, OK, I likely do not need to preach to you. If you are reading this far, excellent, thanks! Take an eye candy break and see some of Northeast Family Farm’s family of products.

Dole and Bailey features meats from several local New England farms:

Kobe Beef from the BrigadoonFarm in Vermont

Veal from Azaluna, calves nursed on their moms who get no antibiotics

Chicken from MistyKnolls Farms in Vermont

Artisanal cheeses from a huge list of NE cheese makers, the Massachusetts makers being:

• Berkshire Cheese Makers, LLC
• Chase Hill Farm
• Great Hill Dairy, Inc.
• Manny’s Dairy
• Smith’s Country Cheese
• Westfield Farm, Inc.

Organic eggs from The Country Hen from Hubbardston, MA

A fantastic number of local farmers providing fresh produce to our region, such as:

• Alyson’s Apple Orchard
• Pleasant Valley Gardens, Richard Bonano
• Ciesluk’s Farm Stand, Frank Ciesluk
• Scott Farm, Zeke Goodband
• Enterprise Farm, David Jackson
• The Bars Farm, Allison Landale
• Ward’s Berry Farm

And other hard to classify specialty foods such as:

• Byrne Dairy
• Chef Myron’s Fine Cooking Sauces
• Ciao Bella
• Jurgielewicz Duck Farm
• Maine Sea Salt Company
• McClures
• New England Cranberry
• Nuovo Pasta
• Tri-Beca Oven
• Victoria Gourmet

What a fantastic bounty here in New England!

If you can patronize Northeast Family Farms and these farmers and producers (even from afar, I am sure some of them ship), then do!

I am going to see how many of these hard working farmers I can visit personally. I am getting hungry just thinking about it.

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