School Food Forum Rocks!

For those of you who missed it, the Montgomery County School Food Forum on November 2 was a fabulous, moving event. A packed house of 150+ attendees heard fantastic information and ideas from a speaker lineup that included a doctor and a scientist, an MCPS teacher and MCCPTA Vice-President, two County council members (Valerie Ervin and George Levanthal), MCPS Food Services Director Marla Caplon and of course our keynote speaker, nationally-recognized school food reformer Tony Geraci, aka "Cafeteria Man."

You can read the Gazette's coverage of the Forum here, and the Post's pre-event coverage here. (There was also a good article in the Montgomery Sentinel, which is subscription only but you can read the text of the article on the Montgomery County Civic Association website here.) And you can read selected speaker presentations from the event at the RFKM website.

You will hear much more on this critical issue of school food (and school gardens!) as we move forward. For the moment, though, we want to give MVG's heartfelt thanks to our Forum co-host, Real Food for Kids-Montgomery, to the MVG members who sponsored the event, including Christ Congregational Church, David and Lynn Vismara, Denny May and Betsy Taylor, Tim Willard, Joe Gorin, Matt Cohen, Chuck Schuster, Danielle Meitiv, Gina Angiola, Lisa Buttner and Ian McDonald, Nadine Bloch and Woody Woodruff, and to the MVG members of the host committee which included Lisa Buttner, Suzy Lane, Denny May and Laura Otolski. (With special thanks to our graphic artist Elisa Rappaport.)

Last but hardly least, a huge thank you and shout out to all the elected leaders, starting with MD Governor Martin O'Malley, who joined our Host Committee, attended the Forum, or supported the event in other ways. The list is honestly too large to put them all in this space (!), but you can see them all by clicking on the event flyer here - please make sure to thank these elected leaders for their support of improving school food the next time you see them!

One Day Left to Stand Up for Small, Organic and Sustainable Farmers

You have read in this space over the past months about the Food Safety Modernization Act, or FSMA. Undertaken with the best of intentions, no doubt, these rules are written, not atypically, with large commercial/industrial farmers in mind - and could be a disaster for small, organic and sustainable farmers.

And that's what we've been hearing from virtually every small farmer and organic/sustainable farming advocacy group across the country: that the new FSMA regs will be a crushing burden to small farmers, that they will disrupt normal economic and community transactions between small farmers (read more on this from a MD farmer here), and that they will seriously impede the ability of farmers to use compost and worm castings in their operation. Can you believe it?

The deadline for public comments on FSMA was supposed to be November 15, but due to computer malfunctions (them too), the deadline has been extended to Friday, November 22. If you haven't done this already, please take a moment to use one of the easy forms below and send your comments to the FDA. Small, organic and sustainable farmers work hard to give us the food we want - now is the time to stand up for them.

Click here to sign the letter from the Organic Consumers Association.

Click here for complete information (and call-in talking points) from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

Better Know a Local Famer - and Where to Get the Best Winter Squash!

We all want local food, but how many of us truly know any of the local farmers who grow it?

  David Heisler of Comus Markets, in Comus, MD (up county, near Sugarloaf Mountain) is one of the most thoughtful, pro-bee and pro-pollinator farmers I've ever had the pleasure to speak with - and he grows some of the tastiest winter squash you'll find anywhere. After I heard him speak a couple years ago about his bees, and then about biodiversity at a farm conference this past January, I knew I had to meet him and visit his farm - which I did this past August. (He is pictured leading the tour, at right.) 

Read his thought provoking ideas on farming here in this latest edition of MVG's (very) occasional series, "Better Know a Local Farmer." And then get yourself up to Comus Markets to get some of the best winter squash to be found anywhere!

Using Your Low Tunnel This Winter

We at MVG have long been passionate advocates of fall and winter food gardening - and given the number of MVG members and community gardeners who attended our "Low Tunnel Construction" workshops this late summer/early fall (picture of the workshop at Briggs Cheney Community Garden, below), we know that passion is spreading! (And what's not to love? No bugs, no weeds, and fresh, delicious greens in the middle of winter!)

As we begin to experience some significant temperature variations, though (such as 60 degrees on Friday going down to the mid-20s Sunday night), it's important to know when to deploy your low tunnel - and when to take it off.

While there is no single hard-and-fast rule, most cool weather veggies can take a couple of hours of 32 degree weather, or even 30 or 29 degrees, without much damage. (And some, like Swiss Chard, kale and collards, can take even lower temperatures.) So if it is just hovering around freezing for a few early morning hours, consider leaving your low tunnel off. (And the best place to check for expected night time lows in your zip code? - Weather.com)

On the other side however, if you are using plastic for your covering, leaving it on during sunny winter days with temperatures in the 50s or even 40s can generate 90 degrees under the plastic, and bake your plants. (Think of the last time you saw a piece of plastic left on a lawn on a sunny day, and what it did.) Of course you should use your own experience as a guide, and if you are using floating row cover follow the manufacturer's instructions, but just make as sure that you keep your tunnel uncovered on warm days as you do keeping it covered on cold nights - and you will have many weeks of crisp, fresh, delicious greens to look forward to!

Backyard Chickens Take Over an MC Zoning Hearing!

As you know from past MVG updates, a battle over backyard chickens has erupted during Montgomery County's current zoning regulation rewrite, with Planning Committee suggestions to liberalize the backyard chicken regs for setbacks and necessary structures being met with some resistance.

The Montgomery County Council held two hearings for public comments on the zoning rewrite last week, and to everyone's surprise (including mine, and certainly that of the Councilmembers in attendance), backyard chickens became THE hot topic of the hearings - on the second hearing night, a full 1/3 of all public testimony was on the issue of chickens, with the overwhelming majority of them (14 out of 16 speakers) being pro-chicken. There were home-owners, business-owners, doctors and veterinarians preaching the pro-chicken gospel - and perhaps most significantly, a very thoughtful and heartfelt pro-chicken statement from Councilmember Hans Reimer.

It's unclear where the zoning rewrite is going at this moment, but one thing that is clear is the widespread public support evident for backyard chickens in Montgomery County. For updates on this issue, and for great information on how you can get your own backyard chickens (and how to do it RIGHT), check out Montgomery County Backyard Chickens. (And serious props to MCBYC for organizing the speakers at the Council hearing - a more masterful job of organizing I have rarely seen!)

Why Does America Refrigerate Its Eggs?

And speaking chickens, have you ever wondered why you can buy local eggs, at farmers markets and such, in the open air, while supermarket eggs must be refrigerated? Did you know that the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world where we refrigerate our commercial eggs, and that in many countries in Europe it's against the law to refrigerate them?

For a fascinating look at this issue, check out the blog post "What the Hell, America," which explains in documented detail how we have come to this point. In a nutshell (or should I say eggshell?) it starts with the industrial process (in America) of obsessively washing commercial eggs - which might sound like a good idea, until you learn that this washes off not only dirt (and feces) but also the cuticle, a thin membrane on a freshly laid egg which does a remarkable job of protecting it from salmonella. But wash we do, and then of necessity we have to refrigerate the now more pathogen-prone eggs. And to make matters even more ridiculous, our FDA has declined to make chicken vaccination against salmonella mandatory, which is why our salmonella rates are still much higher than in countries with non-washed, non-refrigerated eggs like England.

Once again, an example of industrial agriculture gone awry. And another reason to buy local, and buy fresh!

That's it for now! This will be the last MVG update until 2014, but keep your eyes peeled for our Holiday Food Book Selection... and please accept our best and warmest wishes to all MVG supporters and your friends and family for a delicious, fresh, local Thanksgiving! And just look at those squash at Comus Markets... make plans to go get some now!

Best wishes for the season,