Celebrate Local Agricultural Hero Tony Cohen at Button Farm - Sunday, Nov. 7

The Montgomery Countryside Alliance is the foremost organization working to protect and promote our county's 93,000 acre Agricultural Reserve.  This Sunday, November 7  they will present their annual Royce Hanson award to Tony Cohen, in a fun and music-filled day at Button Farm.

Tony Cohen is an historian, author, and explorer of the American past, as well as a devoted steward of the land.  In particular, he has worked for many years to preserve Button Farm, a 19th century slave plantation outside of Germantown, not only maintaining it as a living history museum, but also bringing it alive by growing heirloom vegetables, providing Community Sponsored Agriculture shares and growing food for the Manna Food Center.

This Sunday's celebration, from 12 Noon to 5pm, will include walking tours of Button Farm House, Museum, Civil War-era Barn & CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Gardens, along with history displays & artifacts, crafters, storytelling, 19th century games for kids and a cider press.  There will also be music from our favorite singer-songwriter duo, emma's revolution!

Click here for more information on the event this Sunday, which will support the work of MCA.  And please join us in honoring Tony Cohen, a true hero in bringing our county's cultural and agricultural history to life!

Hearing for Silver Spring Community Garden - Monday, Nov. 4

As noted in the previous update, our  friends at the Montgomery County Parks Department have identified four locations for new community gardens in Montgomery County, and have been holding public hearings to gauge community support for the projects.  The final hearing will be for a new community garden, near downtown Silver Spring, will be held this Monday, November 8, 7:00pm at the Montgomery County College Campus.
 

You can get more information on the meeting here.

Please show up if you are interested in getting plots in this garden, and/or want to show your support for our county Parks Department's fantastic community garden program!

New Report Faults Farmers' Chesapeake Bay Clean Up Efforts

Farmers in our region will tell you they're doing everything and then some to control pollution running into the Chesapeake Bay, but the US Department of Agriculture sees it differently: in a new report, drafts of which have just been released to the media, the USDA has found major shortcomings among crop growers in the six-state region that empties into the Chesapeake.

Of course we have been trying to clean up the Chesapeake for 25 years now, and farms are far from the only source of pollution that is destroying our prized estuary.  Urban and suburban runoff, treated sewage and emissions from power plants and cars all contribute to the massive algae blooms every spring that rob the Chesapeake of the oxygen that fish, crabs and oysters need to survive.

But agriculture is also a major source of the pollution, and while the USDA says farmers have made "good progress," the report also notes that more pollution controls are needed on about 81 percent of all the croplands, with nearly half of the region's 4.3 million acres of croplands being "critically undertreated."

Regrettably, the words "organic" and "sustainable" do not appear in accounts of the draft report.  And as a new round of debate on bay cleanup begins, we believe that the answer is not to "control" the pollution, but to create less of it.  This is not a time to dump on farmers, but to support them in using methods of growing food that stop pollution before it happens.

A Sight for Sore Eyes - and Awards for the MC Master Gardeners!

Okay, this picture might not be for the faint of heart, but for many Montgomery County gardeners and farmers it is a welcome sight - a brown marmorated stink bug being devoured by a praying mantis!

The stink bugs, as reported in past updates, are a foreign import that have multiplied in this year's heat, and have done major damage to the crops of gardeners and farmers alike in our region.  This photo, posted in the Montgomery County Master Gardeners "Grow It Eat It" blog, is one of the first signs that natural predators just might be starting to catch up with these new invaders.  So we say munch on, praying mantises of the world!

In other good news, the Montgomery County Master Gardener Demonstration Garden in Derwood has won an Award of Excellence from Keep Montgomery County Beautiful, while the Grow It Eat It blog has been nominated for a Mobbie (Maryland's Outstanding Blog) award!

Please visit the Baltimore Sun Mobbie page here to vote for the Grow It Eat It blog (they're under the Foodie section).  Voting is open until November 12 , but don't delay!  And our heartiest congratulations to the MGs, and especially to the ubiquitous Erica Smith (Coordinator of the Demo Garden, lead GIEI blogger, and MVG Advisory Board member) for these well-deserved honors!

The White House Garden Weighs In

The White House vegetable garden might have earned First Lady Michelle Obama the scorn of the chemical fertilizer industry (the audacity of organic!), but it has been an inspiration to the rest of us.  And now the numbers are in!

How about a 4 pound sweet potato, 1,600 pounds of food produced from 55 different kinds of foods this year, at a cost of $200 for seeds and supplies?  Or 23 fifth graders involved in breaking ground this spring?  Sounds like a winning combination to us!

And one of the most important numbers of all was the amount of synthetic fertilizes or pesticide used: zero.

Click here to read the tale of the tape (or scales) on the White House garden!

 Guess What? - High Fructose Corn Syrup Is Worse Than You Thought

Perhaps you've seen the industry ads on TV, where obviously caring parents tell us that high fructose corn syrup - agribusiness' favorite use for corn and most foodies' Public Food Enemy #1 - is in fact no different than regular sugar.  So eat up! (Or in the case of soda, drink up!)

These ads, of course, completely ignore the fact that Americans consume way, way too much sugar to begin with, which is the primary reason we are experiencing a childhood "diabesity" (diabetes and obesity) epidemic.  (Did you know that the average American drinks 53 GALLONS of soda a year?!)

Well guess what - it seems manufacturers might have been lying to us about how much fructose is in HFCS.  The problem is that fructose is much more harmful to human beings than glucose (both are in HFCS), and as it turns out the HFCS in soda contains much more fructose than the soda industry has been willing to admit.  Imagine that!

Yet one more reason to get off of soda and other high sugar food "products," and back to whole and natural foods and beverages. 

Click here to read the Grist article "What a sweet surprise! HFCS contains more fructose than believed."

Finally - The World's First Organic Dairy Rap Video!

This is too awesome!  As we compete with the advertising of agribusiness corporations to bring the message of organic, sustainable, local food to the public, what could be better than a pro-organic rap video?

The source of the video, appropriately enough, is Yeo Valley Organic Farm, a sustainable dairy farming operation in England. 

So don't be wasting too much of your time watching BS TV ads about the wonders of high fructose corn syrup.  It's time to be boppin' and hangin' with the farmers, cows and tractors at Yeo Valley Farm!  Click here to watch the world's first organic dairy rap video! 

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That's it for this week folks!  Don't forget to check out our new Facebook page (and click the "Like" button!) - and keep sending us your feedback, information on local food events, and ideas for other postings!

For the Montgomery Victory Garden team,

Gordon Clark, Project Director