Local Lunch at The Academy

  • Post published:05/12/2010
  • Post comments:3 Comments

Jeannie Bartlett, a senior at The Academy in Charlemont, has many interests including “farms, food, the environment, health and community” which she put together in a delicious way. Local Lunches, her Independent Senior Project, fed Academy students a monthly lunch composed of local ingredients all year. Todd Sumner, Academy Headmaster, explained “Senior projects are intended to extend a student’s classroom learning to provide service, and to apply and implement their learning. Students have to be responsible for a…

More Than Maple Farmers

  • Post published:03/31/2010
  • Post comments:2 Comments

My neighbors, Brooks McCutchen and Janis Steele, are very models of the modern maple sugarers.  When I went to visit their sugarhouse I saw the familiar steam billowing from the roof, but as I got closer I saw modern elements. Inside the sugarhouse is a huge steamy stainless steel evaporator but there is no fire in sight. This operation is run mostly by solar power. Solar power is not the only modern element. McCutchen and Steele use a…

Real Pickles

  • Post published:03/07/2010
  • Post comments:4 Comments

When I met Dan Rosenberg, founder and owner of Real Pickles at the newly renovated building on Wells Street I got a shock. Looking into the bright new kitchen I understood the reality of what raw, fermented food means. There is no stove. I have made pickles, which require no cooking, just brine, vinegar and seasoning. Then I’ve spent hours with the canning kettle to finish the preservation process. Rosenberg has built a substantial pickle business in less…

Reading and Planning

  • Post published:02/28/2010
  • Post comments:4 Comments

I am still in the middle of reading and planning season. Two very different books have sent my imagination into high gear. Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars: Grandma’s Bag of Tricks by Sharon Lovejoy  ($14.95 Workman Publishing) is ostensibly for grandmas, but among the 130 activities described and illustrated with engaging photos and charming drawings, many will engage mommies and daddies as well. The opening chapter, Preparing Camp Granny, gives advice about welcoming a visiting grandchild so that…

Hydrangeas for All

I haven’t always liked hydrangeas. As a child living in the Bronx, I saw a number of houses on our street wirh tiny yards that held a blue hydrangea or two. In spite of the interesting color and flower heads that everyone called ‘snowballs’ I did not like them.  Who can explain dislikes? And the things a child takes against are even more mysterious. Though I rarely saw hydrangeas in gardens as a new gardener,  over the past…

Grow Something New

  • Post published:01/25/2010
  • Post comments:6 Comments

We are only halfway through January so I think we are still in new resolution season.  Now that I am a garden blogger, as well as a garden columnist, I read other garden blogs. One of my favorite bloggers, Carol at  May Dreams Gardens in Indiana has challenged gardeners to grow something new this year. Actually, Carol challenges us all to grow something new every year. It is fun to try something new, even if we never plant…

Wonderful Winterfares

  • Post published:01/18/2010
  • Post comments:3 Comments

In the February/March issue of Organic Gardening magazine, Gordon Hayward who gardens in Vermont, talks about our ‘food shed.’ I know about watersheds, that protect the quality of our water, and was amused when I heard people talk about their ‘view sheds’ the landscape view they enjoyed from their house, but I had never heard the term ‘food shed.” However, aware as I am of the 100 mile diet, I should have realized the term put me on…

Laughing Dog Farm

  • Post published:01/13/2010
  • Post comments:5 Comments

December is not usually a good time to visit a small farm in action, but when I visited Daniel Botkin and his wife, Divya, at Laughing Dog Farm in Gill I got a tour of a thriving garden in the big hoop house (or long tunnel) and a lunch of delicious vegetable soup with bread and goat cheese made that very morning. This is local food at its finest. I had specifically gone to Laughing Dog Farm to…

What Will I Do?

  • Post published:01/04/2010
  • Post comments:2 Comments

My view to the northwest is of an unblemished snowfield. The snow is clean and bright, the sky a brilliant blue. The landscape is as untouched as the new year.. What will I do with 2010? How will I approach my landscape? Recently a friend of mine said he was gearing himself up to buy a tiller for his tractor, usually used for work in the woods and plowing snow. His wife chimed in that he was tired…

Obligations at the Edge

  • Post published:12/29/2009
  • Post comments:3 Comments

As I prepare for the new year I have been thinking about the importance of conservation, about preserving the best of what we have for the benefit of the next generations.  Today I am posting a piece I wrote three years ago after talking to an inspiring conservationist and speaker.  My inspiration is a gaggle of grandchildren, two of whom love to play in the old apple tree in our field, home and pantry to birds - and…