At the Market this Week
Blueberries
Apples
Flower Bouquets
Rosemary Grill Wood
Header Photo: Raquel, Future Farmer
FARM WISH LIST
Cinder Blocks
Pallets
BLUEBERRY COBBLER
Approx. 6 servings
Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 cup white sugar, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
6 tablespoons white sugar
5 tablespoons butter
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons sugar
1 pinch ground cinnamon
Directions: 1. Lightly grease an 8 in. square baking dish. Place the blueberries into the baking dish, and mix with vanilla and lemon juice. Sprinkle with 1 cup of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of flour, then stir in the tablespoon of melted butter. Set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together 1 3/4 cups of flour, baking powder, and 6 tablespoons sugar. Rub in the 5 tablespoons butter using your fingers, or cut in with a pastry blender until it is in small pieces. Make a well in the center, and quickly stir in the milk. Mix just until moistened. You should have a very thick batter, or very wet dough. You may need to add a splash more milk. Cover, and let batter rest for 10 minutes.
3. Spoon the batter over the blueberries, leaving only a few small holes for the berries to peek through. Mix together the cinnamon and 2 teaspoons sugar; sprinkle over the top.
4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the top is golden brown. A knife inserted into the topping should come out without batter topping on it. Let cool until just warm before serving. | |
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Greetings!
Ray and I spent Sunday afternoon refreshing our perspective on why we spend almost seven days a week dedicating our all our time and energy to the farm and greenhouse. We went to the Park Terrace Theater in Charlotte to see the movie Food, Inc., visited the local Earth Fare and had a very good conversation about where we are personally, where our family business stands after five years, and where we hope all this effort takes us in the next five years.
Food, Inc. is a movie that reveals the corporate machine behind the "food" on grocery store shelves and served in most restaurants. (See the movie and you will understand why I put the word food in quotation marks). Although I was aware of many of the facts presented in this film, seeing these facts through the stories of real families and seeing footage of industrial food production made watching this film very emotional for us. Watching a family with a history of diabetes make the choice between a dollar menu hamburger meal and the more expensive choice of broccoli and fruit will make you question the real cost of food.
Food, Inc. pulls Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma" and investigative journalist Eric Schlosser "Fast Food Nation" into a short course on why our food system is unhealthy for us on a personal, community and environmental level and why the current food system is totally unsustainable. This film will motivate you to seek food source alternatives because it exposes what is contained in most prepared and packaged foods and shows examples of how farmers, food industry workers and animals are treated. I felt the film did not go far enough in showing alternatives to this system, except for a short segment on the country's high profile sustainable farming advocate, Joe Salatin of Polyface Farm, plus a few suggestions that rolled before the credits at the end of the film. I had to close my eyes during most of the segments dealing with animals (both in the industrial and in the Polyface Farm segment) and a few more images of happy people at farmer's markets would have balanced things out a bit for me. But the point of the film is to remove the veil between us and how what we are presented with as food, is produced. Real food is grown in dirt by real people who work really hard, not by the characters on the packaging or in the commercial. Real food is nourishment for not only man but for animals and insects. Real food looks quite different from what the advertising and marketing folks would like you to see. The cost of real food is not reflected in the price tag.
On our way to see Food, Inc. we stopped by Earth Fare. I visit Earth Fare on the rare occasion I am in Charlotte, mainly to check pricing and availability of local products, to get non-GMO popcorn, and on this trip, to pick up a homeopathic remedy. We heard that one of our greenhouse customers, a farm family who grows certified organic produce in western NC from our vegetable transplants, had some fresh produce items at Earth Fare and we wanted to see the end result of the seeds we planted displayed at a "fancy" store. We were disappointed to find that the lettuce sitting under the label for our customer was actually from California and looked, let's just say, very well traveled. The blemish free, perfectly uniform organic tomatoes were from Canada. In fact, there was very little local produce and only about half of the items were organic. We do understand that local produce (our definition of local as the Piedmont Region of NC when it come to produce) is in limited supply. Farmland has disappeared due to development (at the height of the boom we were losing 5 acres of NC farmland an hour to development), farmers have disappeared due to financial struggles or retirement (the average age of the American farmer is now 59 years old), and farming is not a high paying, glamorous or easy profession. Add the weather challenges our local farmers are facing this year and you have a big supply and demand imbalance. I also know local farmers that take home produce from the market each week.
So if you have seen the movie, you've read the books, you are aware of the issues, and you want to vote with your food dollars, what do you do? I realize I am preaching to the choir here, because the main audience of this piece is CSA members and farmer's market devotees. This weekend was a kind of mid-summer revival meeting to remind Ray and me of these questions and to remember that our farm needs to continue to be a part of a healthy food system even though we sometimes get tired, overwhelmed and feel like we are too small to make a difference. I ask you to continue to support your local farmers even when the climate and the economic weather is less than ideal and the offering is small. Buy what you can locally whether it be veggies or bread or soap. Appreciate the differences between a reseller and a producer who has invested their energy and resources into bringing their products to you. Remember that by spending your food dollars with a local, sustainable practice farmer, you support your health by buying nutritionally dense food, you support your community by spending your food dollars with your neighbors and you support open spaces for nature and biodiversity.
CSA - Our first year report
We considered starting a CSA program at our farm for several years before offering our first 10 shares this year. We talked with several local and regional CSA farms, bought books about CSA programs, created planning spreadsheets, trialed a work shares program last year, weighed the commitment we were making to CSA members and reviewed prior harvest records to determine how many shares we could reasonably offer and still have enough product to bring to market for continued income through the seasons. Then life happened, as it always does when you make the best laid plans. We have had pleasant surprises, like the earlier than expected spring harvest and abundant blueberries. We have had some disappointments, like the loss of our early tomato plants and the reduced harvest due to abundant and/or scarce rain. We have had challenges, like my hip injury and allergic reaction, and the pleasant consequences to those challenges such as the new dedication of our daughter to the farm and the extraordinary (emphasis on extra) support of valued farm friends. All of our produce (expect for the blueberries and flowers) has gone to the CSA, leaving us with little to sell through the rest of the summer season. We have learned a great deal in this first year, as we hear other area CSA's are learning from first year experiences. Each farm is unique because each farmer and each piece of land is unique. With what we know now had we started our CSA in prior years, the pleasant surprises, the disappointments, the challenges and the harvests would have been different, but they would still have been there all the same. We appreciate the commitment our shareholders have made to us early in the season, to face the unexpected challenges of farming and well as the harvest.
As we wait for the tomatoes to ripen, we are planning and planting for the fall season. We are continually thankful that we have the hoop houses to protect crops from spring and fall frosts, and sudden summer downpours and to give us an extended season. One of the most important characteristics of a farmer is to be ever hopeful that the next season will be better than the last, no matter how the last season turned out.
Ray and I appreciate the support you have given to us over the past five years and we are hopeful that with hard work, good intent and the growing awareness in our culture about our food system, we will have a successful next five years.
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Sincerely,
Mary Roberts
Windcrest Farm
To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight--and never stop fighting.
-E.E. Cummings
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