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.
One 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
The 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 National 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 crucial 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 - cucumber 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, undiagnosed 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 historically 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.