News

Local Eggs

Leave a comment
Photo courtesy of Katrina Hall, She's In the Kitchen

By Laura Keir, Monadnock Localvore Project

The first time I heard the young rooster’s “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” I had no idea what the strange noise was. It was one of the first attempts made by the rooster at this iconic sound, plus it was early in the day and I was not fully awake. But as the weeks have passed by there have been many more attempts (at all hours) with great improvement. The rooster lives among a dozen hens in my backyard. Since they arrived in the mail a few months ago they have grown at an amazing rate- they are definitely not cute, fuzzy chicks anymore. And in short time they will start laying eggs.

Local eggs seem to be in abundance in the Monadnock Region, whether raised in backyards or at area farms. This month’s newsletter features the labor and fruits that go along with growing laying hens:

Backyard Chickens: CA residents laud the benefits of hens
By Carolyn Snyder, Published July 27, 2011 in Los Altos Town Crier

Shari Emling of Los Altos Hills, CA has something to cackle about. So do Nancy and Mike Schneider and Roberta Barns, all living in Los Altos. They’re among the growing number of people who keep chickens in their backyards. And they are quick to point out the benefits – namely food, fertilizer and pest control – that have contributed to this trend. Just consider the fact that the website www.backyardchickens.com gets 6 million hits a month and 4,000 new posts on its online forum each day.

Egg Producers and Humane Society Urging Federal Standard on Hen Cages
By William Neuman, Published July 7, 2011 on NewYorkTimes.com

Two groups that are usually squawking at each other – egg farmers and animal welfare advocates – announced an unusual agreement on Thursday to work together to seek a federal law that would require larger cages and other improved conditions for the nation’s 280 million laying hens.

Fresh Eggs So Local, They’re at Your House
By Florence Fabricant, Published June 7, 2011 on NewYorkTimes.com

Imagine fresh eggs from your own backyard. Jason Stroud, an antiques restorer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, knows that pleasure well. And he has started sharing it, helping urban homesteaders set up backyard coops with the appropriate kinds of chickens. He has been so busy since he started building and selling the coops a couple of months ago that he is phasing out his antiques business.

How Fresh Are Your Eggs?
Katrina Hall of She’s in the Kitchen explains how to tell if your eggs are too old, using a bowl of cold water. Find out how by reading on!

What’s your interest?

Do you raise chickens? Have some good egg recipes for when the hens just won’t stop laying? Do you have a favorite source for local eggs? Please share your thoughts via email, Facebook, and Twitter.

Localvore & Vegetarian/Vegan

Leave a comment

The July 2011 Monadnock Localvore Newsletter honored local foods that are vegetarian and vegan & compiled news and resources highlighting beans & grains:

Divine Burger
Published Monday, June 13, WMUR NH Chronicle

What do you get when you mix a love for cooking whole foods with the search for the best veggie burger in the world? Well the owners of the Divine Cafe and Grille in Exeter think they’ve found the answer. Jennifer Crompton stopped by to take a taste. Watch this news clip at WMUR.com.

Growing Beans for Beantown
By Naz Sioshansi, EdibleBoston, Winter 2010

As the chill of fall became the true cold of winter, Bostonians of Colonial times would settle in for a winter of baked beans and bean soups.”Beans were a hearty staple that would help the Colonists make it through the cold New England winters when there was little else to eat,” explains Charley Baer of Baer’s Best Beans. “The Native Americans taught the Colonists how to grow and cook the beans, along with corn. Back in those days, varieties of soldier beans and Jacob’s cattle were popular.”

MELOMEALS: Vegan for $3.33 a day…it’s yummy! A blog run by Melody Polakow in Portsmouth, NH. She is a vegetarian chef and photographer, and this blog is filled with recipes that incorporate lots of fresh ingredients: Melomeals.blogspot.com.

 

Four Star Farms, Northfield, MA: A family farm that grows and processes buckwheat, whole wheat, wheat berries, hops, barley and more. Their products can be found throughout western Massachusetts (find locations here) and at the Brattleboro Food Co-op! Check out FourStarFarms.com.

 

What’s your interest?
Are you a vegetarian or vegan localvore? Do you have great locally vegetarian resources to share? Do you just have more questions that you want answered?


Boundbrook Farm: Rice Would Be Nice

Leave a comment

By Meg Klepack, Serving Up Vermont, March 11, 2011

Photo courtesy of Boundbrook Farm

I’m worried you won’t believe me when I tell you what the latest local food prospects are for Vermont.

While I’ve known that rice is technically possible to grow in Vermont for the past few years, I couldn’t have anticipated that we’d be able to offer it for sale here so soon – we’re hoping to have a small amount for sale this fall with much much more for sale next year.

But I’m getting ahead of the story.

A few years ago Linda and Takeshi Akaogi, who farm down in Westminster, realized that the climate of Vermont is very similar to the climate of northern Japan. Their hypothesis was that if rice could grow over there, it should also be possible to grow in Vermont. They got some research money, grew some test plots, and confirmed that rice seemed to grow very well here.

I had heard the Akaogi’s trials had gone well, but hadn’t heard much more about the project until we got a surprise call from Eric Andrews. Eric, who farms Boundbrook Farm and runs Good Companion Bakery in Vergennes, came up to meet with us yesterday. The plan he laid out before us to grow rice on a commercial scale made our jaws hit the ground.
Eric is developing a few acres of rice paddy this year with… get this… ducks! The ducks in the rice paddy help keep weeds at bay and provide a source of fertility for the plants.

At first I wondered if rice was a crop that would tax our soils and water and require more energy input to grow, but Eric soon convinced me otherwise. In fact many of the heavy clay soils of the Champlain Valley have been converted from wetlands and turning them to rice paddies is ecologically more sensible than growing any of the crops that don’t like wet feet. As Eric says, “If the Champlain Valley had been colonized by Asians and not by Anglo-Saxons, we would already have been growing this crop for a few hundred years.”

At the end of this season Eric hopes to be able to offer not only a few thousand pounds of rice, but also duck meat for sale. While he’s in the experimental phase this season, he hopes to be producing 16,000 pounds of rice next fall!

Eric’s story kept getting more and more amazing the longer he talked. He farms with horse power, currently growing wheat for his bakery. He built a ‘Savonius’ wind generator out of plywood and 2 by 4s to power his farm. And, in addition to the rice, his other project for the season is trialing growing sugar beets to make sugar and molasses (that’s a whole other story that I’ll have to pass along soon!).

I’m excited to work with Eric as the season progresses. I’ll keep you all posted!

Cooking with a CSA Share

Leave a comment

Below are resources to help you get the most out of your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm Share:

Bounty in a Box: Support local farms by learning to make good use of your CSA box
By Linda Murphy, Published May 17, 2011 in The Herald News

Picking up that first CSA box from your local farm can seem like Christmas in June for those who love to cook and eat locally grown food. But as the growing season progresses, and weekly shares become more abundant, good intentions of supporting local farms can quickly turn into a fear of opening the refrigerator and finding a rotting produce Little Box of Horrors….

How to Tame Spring Greens
By Jessica Walsh, Published May 12, 2011 in NewportPatch

When we first became members of the Simmons Farm CSA program, the cooking greens were probably the most intimidating to me. Our first year as CSA members also happened to be a cold, rainy growing season, so we were getting a lot of greens.  I had never been a big fan of cooked greens to begin with, and I suddenly found myself staring down a fridge that was overtaken by kale, chard, dandelion greens, collard greens…..

Cookbooks

Rosaly’s Garden Cookbook – Rosaly’s Garden Cookbook  from Rosaly’s Garden in Peterborough, NH. Visit the Rosaly’s Garden website for more information. “So many people come to our farmstand asking about different ways to prepare the many varieties of herbs and vegetables that they buy here. Our garden cookbook was created just for that reason and offers many simple but stylish recipes to enjoy.”-Rosaly Bass

edible: A Celebration of Local Foods More than a Cookbook- The Voice of a Movement – “Edible honors all those who have been…diligently working to re-create a world where the power of good food can change our lives.”- From the Foreword by Michael Ableman, farmer, photographer and author of Fields of Plenty. Click here for more info.

Recipes from Local Farms

Simple & Delicious Farm Recipes from Tracie’s Community Farm in Fitzwilliam, NH

Recipes by the Month from Abenaki Springs Farm in Walpole, NH

Collection of Recipes from Hillside Springs Farm & CSA Garden in Westmoreland, NH

Recipes by Crop from Daloz Farm CSA in Hancock, NH

What’s Your Interest?
What are your favorite local foods recipes? What produce do you really struggle with? Have a great cookbook to recommend? Please share your thoughts.