MVG logo on fieldMontgomery Victory Gardens Weekly Update - August 13, 2010

In this update:

* Montgomery County Agricultural Fair - Starting Today!
* World Kitchen Garden Day - Sun., August 22
* Teaching Kids About Food at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church
Donate Now button* Manna Food Center and growingSOUL on Fox News!
* Cucumber Yogurt Soup (yum!)
* Where are the Bees Going? (video)
* Russian Wildfires Could Spark Global Food Shortage

Montgomery County Agricultural Fair - Starting Today!

If you love (or are simply interested in) anything having to do with food, agriculture or farm animals, or just want to have a great time with your family, you will definitely want to visit the 62nd Annual Montgomery County Agricultural Fair in Gaithersburg, starting today and running through Saturday, August 21.

Ag Fair 1One of the largest and oldest ag fairs in the region, the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair offers a wealth of experiences for the interested foodie, from a milking parlor and birthing center  to the Master Gardener Demonstration Garden and live beekeeping demos.  There is also a slew of commercial, craft and nonprofit exhibits, tons of food, and loads of entertainment, including all the traditional carnival rides.  (And the food runs the gamut from farm fresh fruit and produce to ice cream and corn dogs!)  You can also bring your canned goods to donate to those in need, as Manna Food Center will have collection points set up at the Fair entrances.

The Montgomery County Agricultural Fair is a unique and fascinating exploration of our agricultural heritage, a classic Montgomery County experience not to be missed.  Click here for complete information and directions to the Fairgrounds in Gaithersburg - and we'll see you at the Fair!



World Kitchen Garden Day - Sunday, August 22

Started by Kitchen Gardeners International in 2003 as a response to "Snack Food Month" (ugh - a whole month?!) organized by the snack food industry, Kitchen Garden Day is an annual, decentralized celebration of food produced on a human-scale. It's an opportunity for people around the world to gather in their gardens with friends, family, and members of their local community to celebrate the multiple pleasures and benefits of home-grown, hand-made foods

World Kitchen Garden DayThe goals of World Kitchen Garden Day include celebrating  the positive role of organic kitchen gardening in society, health, and gastronomy; raising awareness about the benefits and possibilities of eating local; and building community spirit around the universal experiences of gardening, cooking, and eating.

How you celebrate is up to you, but different possible activities include a walking tour of food gardens in your area, a kitchen garden taste-test or "teach-in", a local agricultural potluck, a harvest or planting party (still time for fall crops!), or a benefit for a local food bank.  How you celebrate is up to you, but we encourage you to use this opportunity to do just that.

Click here for more ideas and to sign up your World Kitchen Garden Day celebration!



Teaching Kids About Food at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church

In our continuing look at great programs to teach our children about growing food, we'd like to throw the spotlight this week on the garden at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in Rockville.

An original member of MVG's Congregational Community Garden Network, the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church garden was started last year with a grant from the Audrey HankinsonNational Council of Negro Women.  Organized by church member Audrey Hankinson (seen at right next to the garden) and maintained by her and the Senior Ministry (also known as "the Senior Saints!"), they grow a variety of vegetables and herbs.  Originally intending to give food to local community members, they have found it more effective to use the food to teach and feed the children at Mt. Calvary's Youth Summer Camp, ages 5 - 12.

 Audrey helps the kids identify different vegetables, as well as cooking them in her portable electric frying pan and having "tasting parties" with the campers.  (Okra was a particular favorite, as was the herb butter on French bread made with fresh rosemary, parsley, oregano and basil.) The campers also help maintain the garden, and as Audrey notes some were so excited to help that they picked the tomatoes while still green.  ("A teachable moment," she said.)

Audrey was planning the fall planting when I visited earlier this month, and is herself excited about continuing this "fresh food ministry" with the children at her church in the years to come.  Our congratulations to her and to Mt. Calvary Baptist Church on a great program - we need more like 'em!



Manna Food Center and growingSOUL on Fox News!

It's always a delight when our good friends and colleagues get on TV to spread the gospel of local food, and we're especially happy that Manna Food Centerand growingSOUL made it on to Fox News this week (and that's local TV, not the Fox News Channel).

The message? Compost!!  Although often overlooked, composting is an absolutely Manna logocrucial process for converting food waste into rich and healthy soil, in turn to grow more food.  It completes the local food cycle.  As growingSOUL Executive Director Jessica Weiss says, "anything that grows out of the ground or comes from an animal needs to either go into another animal or back into the ground."

And more of this is being done in our county now, thanks to both Manna and growingSOUL.  Manna has been successful  in soliciting and buying more fresh local food.  While fantastic for their clients, it also means that there will be more spoiled food to deal with.  Enter growingSOUL, which now collects this food waste from Manna (as well as other locations around the county) and turns it into rich compost for use by farmers and food growers.  Click here to watch the Fox News segment.

This is a fundamentally important operation, and we give our thanks to our friends at Manna and growingSOUL for making it happen - and for getting it on the TV news!



Cucumber Yogurt Soup

Even with my cucumber plants being regularly decimated by bacterial wilt (damn you, striped cucumber beetle!!!), we are STILL getting more cucumbers than we can eat right now.

Here is an absolutely delicious solution to the problem of too many cucumbers - cucumberscucumber yogurt soup.  Taken from Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, this cold soup is both light and flavorful, with a nuanced taste that's quite unique and perfect for hot summer evenings - and it's super easy to make.  We added a little bit of honey and a dash of nutmeg to the recipe when we made it - scrumptious!  (And let me take a moment to recommend a hand or immersion blender if you don't already have one - this amazing kitchen tool will turn a pot of ingredients into a smooth puree in seconds, without the hassle and mess of transferring it all to a food processor or standing blender.)

Do you have any favorite recipes for the bumper crops of summer?  Let us know, we'd love to pass 'em on!



Where are the Bees Going?

Starting in 2006, professional beekeepers have been hit with a mysterious  - and potentially catastrophic - problem, as between 50 - 90% of their hives died over the winter.  The honeybees in those hives, famous for the ability to venture forth into the world and come back with food, would simply not return, leaving their young inside to die.

Dubbed "Colony Collapse Disorder," the problem has continued since 2006, honeybeeundiagnosed and unsolved.  Causes such as pesticide use, a new pathogen or parasite, or a "perfect storm" of existing stresses are currently being investigated by the US Department of Agriculture.  Some proffered explanations, such as the radio waves from cell phones (seen here in this recent CNN report), have been emphatically denied (and the original studies debunked) by the USDA.  It's also unclear whether the problem exists in natural hives as it does for professional beekeepers.

One thing is for sure, though, honeybees are absolutely essential for the pollination of billions of dollars of food crops every year, especially fruits, nuts and vegetables, and if CCD continues or escalates it will be a huge problem for our current food system - and possibly for nature as well.

For a good explanation of the problem and its potential impacts, click here to see a trailer for the independent film "Vanishing of the Bees."

To find out more about beekeeping yourself (an increasingly popular activity for food gardeners) check out the Montgomery County Beekeeping Association.  And don't forget, honeybees are herbivores and almost never sting people!  (Click here for a great handout from the "City Bees" blog showing the difference between honeybees and some of their stinging cousins, such as yellow jackets and hornets.  And thanks to MVGer Erica for lots of this background info!)



Russian Wildfires Could Spark Global Food Shortage

Petrochemical intensive industrial agriculture, as we know, is one of the primary creators of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.  And it will also be one of the first victims, with profoundly dangerous implications for the world.

Russia, one of the world's top exporters of wheat, has been suffering from a Russian fireshistorically unprecedented heat wave this summer.  (About as far north as Juneau, Alaska, Moscow has been registering temperatures near 100 degrees.)  The heat and drought, along with the widespread wildfires and resulting smoke, have already killed an estimated 15,000 Russians. 

But the worst may be yet to come, as the heat, drought and fires have also destroyed somewhere between 25 to 30% of Russia's wheat crop, so much so that Russia announced last week that they would suspend grain exports for the rest of the year.  The announcement immediately sent wheat prices to a two year high, and could presage the high food prices and food riots that we saw worldwide in 2008.  (And Russia's fires are only one of the extreme weather events causing food shortages around the world this year.)

To repeat, the monocropping, export-driven model of industrial agriculture is not only a prime cause of global warming, it is also highly vulnerable to its effects, and as a result of their dependence on foreign grown food, millions of people may starve this coming winter and spring.  The shortage is not likely to affect us here in the U.S., but we are just one severe Midwestern drought away from being in the same position.  As the Washington Post's brilliant editorial cartoonist Tom Toles points out in this cartoon, do we want to wait for that to happen?

Here's one thing we can do now - start growing more of our food in Montgomery County, and depending less on food from the other side of the country, or the world.


That's it for this week, folks.  Don't forget to send us your feedback and ideas for stories or local food events (or recipes!) we can promote, by emailing us at [email protected].

Looking forward to seeing you at the Ag Fair!


Gordon Clark,
Project Director
Montgomery Victory Gardens