News & Events March 2012
Berkshire Grown envisions a community where healthy farms define the open landscape, where a wide diversity of fresh, seasonal food and flowers continue to be readily available to everyone, and where we celebrate our agricultural bounty by buying from our neighboring family farms and savoring their distinctive Berkshire harvest.
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 Berkshire Grown online
Make a difference -- support local farms! Join Berkshire Grown here!
Photo of turnips from Indian Line Farm at the Berkshire Grown Holiday Farmers' Market 2011 by Peter Cherneff
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Join us! reserve your ticket now! 413-528-0041
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"Labor and the Locavore: Social Justice in the Food Movement" Margaret Gray
Wednesday, March 7, 7:00 p.m. at Williams College
Griffin Hall, Room 7
 Margaret Gray is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Adelphi University. She will speak on her research in the Hudson Valley, addressing consumer perspectives of local agriculture in light of the experiences of the migrant farmworker community.
This talk is sponsored by the Williams College Sustainable Food & Agriculture Program and the Williams College Latina/o Studies Program.
For more information, contact Brent Wasser, Sustainable Food & Agriculture Program Manager, at brent.wasser@williams.edu or 413.597-4422.
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From Crop to Cloth: Evaluating Sustainability in Fashion and the Textile Industry with Rachel Miller
Friday, March 9th 2:00 p.m.
Williams College Weston Hall, Room 10
Rachel Miller teaches about fiber working, the origin of raw materials, and sustainability in textile design. She will trace the movement of fiber from plants and animals to finished products. She will address the ecological, economic, and social impacts of cloth production and use, compare the impact of natural and synthetic textiles, and suggest ways in which designers and consumers can promote sustainability in fashion. For more information, contact Brent Wasser at brent.wasser@williams.edu or x4422.
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Gastronomica and Orion Magazines Present: An Evening of Art, Literature, and Food ~ March 16, 2012
Williams College Museum of Art, 6-7:30 p.m.
Hosted by Darra Goldstein and Hannah Fries, with Patty Crane, Elizabeth Graver, Francine Prose, Ruth Reichl, and Ellen Doré Watson
Fee: $10
 Please register in advance by e-mailing hannahfries@gmail.com.
Join renowned food writer Ruth Reichl, poets Ellen Doré Watson and Patty Crane, and fiction writers Francine Prose and Elizabeth Graver for a savory evening of words, art, and light hors d'oeuvres. The writers will read their creative responses to the same work of art: a black-and-white photograph by Walker Evans titled "Kitchen Wall, Alabama Farmstead" (1936). The reading will be followed by a reception More details here
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Build a Backyard Chicken Coop, Basic Carpentry Skills
March 17, 2012 9 am - 3 pm at the Berkshire Botanical Garden
 Learn basic carpentry skills and put them to use building a small mobile backyard chicken coop. Will Conklin will lead this workshop and introduce basic hand and power tool techniques as well as wood working and project planning skills. The instructor will focus on the simplicity and satisfaction of proper hand tool use. Learn the basics of the back yard chicken coop and take away the skills and confidence to build your own coop at home.
Members: $50; Nonmembers $60
Click here to register, or call the Garden at 413-298-3926.
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Project Native Film Festival
Sunday, March 25, 2012 10 am to 10 pm
Triplex Cinema, Great Barrington, MA
Free Admission. Seating is limited.
American Meat 11:25 am
Directed by Graham Meriwether
85 minutes | USA
 "American Meat," a feature documentary about a grass-roots revolution in sustainable farming -- starring Virginia's own Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farms -- explains how America arrived at its current industrial system, and shows you the feedlots and confinement houses, not through hidden cameras but through the eyes of the farmers who live and work there. The story shifts to the burgeoning movement of farmers, chefs and everyday folks, influenced by Salatin's ideas, who might just change everything about the way meat reaches the American table.
Berkshire Grown is sponsoring the screening of "American Meat," Join us!
Project Native Film Festival schedule here
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Community Cooperative Farm
SPRINGTIME HOE-DOWN
Saturday, March 31st 6 PM - 10 PM
@ Crissey Farm in Great Barrington, MA $10
What is CCF?
"We're a worker-owned cooperative of 7 full-time worker-owners, all between the ages of 18 - 30. We started from our vision of a social justice through agriculture program, working to restore the commons and create a more just and equitable world by empowering ourselves and our communities to produce healthy food in a healthy way. Our farm produces completely organic, pesticide-free, non-fossil-fuel dependent, heirloom vegetables, eggs, meats, herbs, teas, grains, breads, and jams," says Alex Freed Man one of the CCF farmers.
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Join a local CSA FARM now!
 Buy a share in a local farm so that you can provide a farmer with the money they need now, while they are buying seeds and supplies, and then share in their harvest throughout the growing season. Click here for a list of farms, then click on the category 'CSA' to find a local Community Supported Agriculture -- CSA -- farm. Each farm is unique, so call to find out the price of a share and when their season begins.
VISIT MAP-O-LICIOUS and click on the category 'CSA' to find a farm near you!
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What We're Reading
What Would Great-Grandma Eat?
by Aaron Bobrow-Strain in The Chronicle of Higher Education here
"Thanks to an explosion of socially and environmentally aware food writing, readers in the United States now have access to a great deal of information about the shortcomings of our industrial food system as well as a growing collection of fairly simplistic ideas about how to change it. Nevertheless, very little has been written about the complex world of habits, desires, aspirations, and anxieties that define Americans' relationship to eating-the emotional investments that frustrate reformers and help keep the industrial food system as it is.
"Most foodie discourse assumes that once people have knowledge about the difference between 'good' and 'bad' food, along with improved access to the former, they will automatically change their diets-like a dammed river freed to find its natural course. But what about all the people ...who know and could change, but don't? Keep reading here
Aaron Bobrow-Strain is an associate professor of politics at Whitman College. This essay is adapted from his new book from Beacon Press, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf.
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Quick Bites
Berkshire Grown Online Farmers' Marketplace
 Berkshire Grown created a Facebook page called Berkshire Grown Online Farmers' Marketplace - a central place for Berkshire Grown members to congregate and talk supply and demand.
Self-propelled by Berkshire Grown members, the page benefits those of you who choose to participate in it. Farmers and food producers can post what they have available, and chefs and community members can comment or contact suppliers directly with requests for product or more information.
Photo of Cricket Creek Farm's Maggie's Round Cheese taken at the Holiday Farmers' Market 2011.
Berkshire Grown offers this as a networking service and bears no responsibility for transactions.
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MASSACHUSETTS GROWN...and FRESHER!
If you are traveling through Massachusetts check out this map, support our local farmers throughout the state!
CHECK OUT MAP-O-LICIOUS FOR FRESH
LOCAL EGGS, CHEESE, MEAT & MORE
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BERKSHIRE GROWN CLASSIFIEDS
 Listings for farms seeking employees and interns; farmers seeking land; landowners seeking farmers; and other farm-related networking needs. Berkshire Grown members can email SHORT postings to the Berkshire Grown office: buylocal(at)berkshiregrown.org
SEE LISTINGS HERE |
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 Stay In touch!
Berkshire Grown's e-newsletter will come out once a month. Please send information to barbara@berkshiregrown.org, thanks!
Join Berkshire Grown here .
Barbara Zheutlin, Director
Sheryl Lechner, Outreach Coordinator
413-528-0041 |
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