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…
The New York Times Magazine had a story on Sunday about Crop Mobs down in North Carolina. The idea is that volunteer 'pop up farmers' can show up at a farm to slave away for a day or afternoon, doing all that labor intensive work that small farms have so much of. I know the Greenfield Garden Club has Weed Mobs before their annual garden tour, but I wonder if any local farms need a Crop Mob? I'll…
CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) is familiar to many of us because of the bright yellow Local Hero signs at farmstands, farmer’s markets, supermarkets and car bumpers. We have recognized the benefits of buying food from our local farmers: keeping our money in the local economy; preserving local farms that produce the rural atmosphere we all treasure as well as a variety of crops; and cutting down on oil-dependent food transportation. As consumers we see some of…
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…