Granny's Garden School, the largest and most comprehensive school garden program in the Midwest, is offering a series of three family-oriented Super Sunday Suppers, a unique opportunity to assist in the entire garden-to-table process. Guests will participate in every aspect of the meal from harvesting, cleaning and preparing the meal under the supervision of a local chef, gathering bouquets, setting the table, and cleaning up afterward. Each meal's menu is determined by what is ready to harvest that week from the school's gardens at Loveland Primary/Elementary.
JULY 12: Philippe Audax, Executive Chef, Thomas More College, will be joined by fellow chefs Spyros Gravas & Ian Sroufe and local food writer Rita Heikenfeld.
AUGUST 9: Mark Metcalfe, Owner & Chef, Veg Head
SEPTEMBER 13: Shawn Hobson, Chef, The Works
Sundays, 6 to 9 pm, 600 Loveland-Madeira Rd. $15 per diner (Children four and under free.) Seating is limited. For reservations email SchoolGarden@fuse.net or call 513-324-2873, or make your reservation online.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Super Sunday Suppers at Granny's Garden School
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Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Food Safety Enhancement Act HR 2749
What appears to be an extremely silly law is now before Congress.
HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act (FSEA) treats every food producer from Blue Oven Bakery, a small artisan bakery that sells at many local farmers' markets, to food industry giant Kraft as if they're the same: as if the food they produce presents the same risks of adulteration and as if the same preventive measures are necessary for both. This just isn't the case; small artisan producers are providing safe, healthy, sustainably-produced foods made by hand, often using traditional methods that have been in use for centuries and sourcing local ingredients from small farmers. Such foods are already safe, and in fact are the solution to our country's food safety problems. We should be encouraging these producers into the market, not erecting more barriers for them. This new bill will erect barriers, possibly insurmountable ones, to local artisan food producers.
For example: the bill requires every food producer to pay a $500 fee and undertake a "hazard analysis" to prevent their food from presenting a safety hazard to the public. So Blue Oven and other local artisan food producers such as Fab Ferments (which make fermented sauerkrauts and sells them at local farmers' markets) and Linwood Sausage Co. (which makes artisan sausages and sells them at Hyde Park FM) will pay the same fee as Nestle or Kellogg's and be saddled with the same paperwork burden. I'm thinking Nestle and Kellogg's won't miss the $500 and can probably absorb the costs of developing their "hazard analysis." I don't think the same can be said for Blue Oven Bakery.
Here's another example: Food producers engaging in "interstate shipping" must develop a "Food Safety Plan." Again, it doesn't matter how small or new a producer is or how they produce their food product. Capriole, a small goat cheese maker in Indiana who might want to sell at Ohio or Kentucky farmers' markets, is treated the same as Tyson, which ships tons of factory-farmed chicken to all fifty states. Under HR 2749, both will be required to develop a food safety plan including these elements:
- preventive controls being implemented;
- procedure for monitoring preventive controls;
- procedures for taking corrective action;
- verification activities for the preventive controls, including validation, review of monitoring and corrective action records, and procedures for determining whether the preventive controls are effectively preventing, eliminating, or reducing to an acceptable level the occurrence of identified hazards or conditions;
- recordkeeping procedures;
- procedures for the recall of articles of food, whether voluntarily or when required;
- procedures for the trace back of articles of food, whether voluntarily or when required;
- procedures to ensure a safe and secure supply chain for the ingredients or components used in making the food manufactured, processed, packed, transported or held by such facility; and
- procedures to implement the science-based performance standards issued.
It's always difficult to parse out the various reasons people are against any new law to figure out whether it's hysteria from those who simply distrust the government (though I have a lot of sympathy for these folks, too) or whether the provisions in a certain law are really as alarming as some would have us believe. For instance, I've seen headlines trumpeting that this law would "control home breadmaking." Uh, no, it won't, and such headlines just make those opposing this bill look like hysterical alarmists. It's easy to dismiss alarmists; let's dial down the hysteria. However, this bill, if passed in its current form, will make it significantly more difficult for small and artisan food producers to start and maintain a viable business. This will make it harder to find such foods. This bill, if passed as written, will actually make the food safety problem worse by eliminating sources of good, healthy, locally-produced artisan food products.
I believe small, new, and artisan food producers should be exempted from this law. At the very least, I believe that the compliance requirements should be as reasonable for Just Cured, who source and smoke sustainably-produced salmon, as it is for Hormel -- which means that Just Cured probably ought to pay $25 to register and be required simply to maintain records of purchases so that if a food safety issue arises, those records can be used to figure out what happened. But to require Just Cured or Blue Oven or Fab Ferments to jump through the same hoops as Pepsico and Heinz is not only silly but doesn't address the fact that Fab Ferments, which uses traditional fermenting methods to produce sauerkraut the same way it's been produced for centuries, isn't the source of the food safety problems we've seen over the past ten years. Artisans don't cause e.coli outbreaks. Industrial food giants do. Artisan food producers are the solution, not the problem. Let's ask our lawmakers to recognize that.
I'm not sure the answer is to ask our lawmakers to simply vote against this bill. We do need to address food safety issues in our industrial food supply. But we don't need to behave as if those same problems are inherent in all food production. They aren't.
Ask your congressperson to change this bill to exempt small, new, and artisan food producers. To email your congressperson, visit the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund's petition page, which takes you to a handy form where you can enter your address. Enter your message in the blank box, and it will be sent to your congressional representative. The message I'm recommending you send is this:
I believe small, new, and artisan food producers should be exempted from this bill. They are not the problem. They are the SOLUTION to our food safety problems. We should not be creating new barriers to entry and new compliance burdens for these small producers of healthy food.
Posted by
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4:26 PM
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Labels: food, Food Policy, Industrial Food, Politics of Food
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Screening of Fresh Friday June 26
Wyoming Farmers' Market has arranged a showing of the movie Fresh. From the Fresh website:
Fresh celebrates the farmers and businesses who are re-inventing the American food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.Fresh features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Guy and Sandy Ashmore of That Guy's Family Farm, Warren Taylor of Snowville Creamery, Imago co-founder Jim Schenk, and Chef Mary Swartwood.
Friday, June 26th, 7:30pm, at Wyoming High School's Pendery Center, 106 Pendery Ave. $14. For map, directions, and to purchase tickets online, visit the Wyoming Farmers' Market website.
Posted by
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2:08 AM
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Labels: Local Eating Events
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Chalk Food+Wine Menu
I'm really happy to see this. It's been difficult to know which local restaurants are sourcing locally when so few menus call out their local suppliers, and seeing this information on menus is very helpful.
I had dinner last Friday with some friends, and while I don't feel qualified to do restaurant reviews, I do have to say that the Summer Bean Cassoulet (with green beans and edamame in a broth flavored with pecorino romano) on the current menu is one of the best things I've tasted in a very long time. I think I could literally eat it every day and not get tired of it.
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12:01 AM
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Labels: Chalk, Local Restaurants
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Chicken Manifesto
Last night, the City of Montgomery's Planning Commission considered what possible exemptions to Montgomery's proposed new "Ordinance Prohibiting Farm Animals" they would recommend to City Council.
We'd done quite a bit of research to try to demonstrate to the Planning Commission that it was absolutely possible to allow chickens without causing a nuisance. Last week, we finished work on a document called "Chickens for Montgomery" and gave copies of it to City Hall to distribute to the Planning Commission and City Council.
I am happy to report that the Planning Commission voted 5 - 1 (one member of the 7-member commission was not in attendance) to recommend the zoning/land use codes be revised to allow up to 6 chickens, no roosters, with chickens required to be contained and enclosures required to be no closer than 15 feet to property lines. We feel this is a very fair outcome, and provides an excellent basis for allowing Montgomery residents to keep chickens while still addressing possible concerns from the rest of the community.
We aren't sure how likely City Council is to accept this recommendation. They have no requirement to do so, I don't think, so we do still need to show them there's support for this. But I am feeling very positive, and very grateful to the Planning Commission for taking what I think is an extremely open-minded approach to the question. I'm sure most of them probably originally thought, when City Council first asked them to consider this issue, that of course Montgomery wouldn't want to allow chickens. But they really listened to us, and last night spent a very long time discussing what additional restrictions might be needed and which possible issues could be addressed by current ordinances regarding noise, odors, setbacks, etc. They asked questions, and they were very fair in considering our responses. For instance, their initial idea for limiting the number of chickens was 4, but when we told them that most day-old chicks could only be sold in quantities of six, they changed their motion to allow up to 6 chickens.
The document -- which my husband is calling my 'Chicken Manifesto' -- is unfortunately at 12MB too large to be uploaded to any free file-sharing sites, but I've got it in both a .pdf file and a Word 2008 file, so if anyone wants a copy, please email me and tell me which version you'd like me to email you. (If you don't have Word 2008, I'd recommend asking for the .pdf file, as converting it to Word 2004 causes significant formatting changes which make the document much less usable.)
And if anyone has server space and would like to host this document so that it can be downloaded and used as a template by other chicken-keeping groups trying to change their town's laws, let me know! Anyone interested in using it for their own efforts on behalf of chicken-keepers should feel free to do so with my blessing. My sincere thanks to Chickens In The Yard, whose own similar document provided a template from which to work.
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8:06 AM
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Labels: backyard chickens
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Locavore Dinner Series at Nectar
Nectar (1000 Delta Ave, 45208) is offering another Locavore series of dinners.
- June 25 & July 23: The Delicate Sweetness of Berries with Vicky Tewes, Thistlehair Farm, Union Kentucky. The June dinner will feature bluerberries and the July dinner will feature blackberries.
August 13 & August 20: Peaches, the Flavor of Summer with Beiersdorfer Orchard, Southeastern Indiana. - September 10 & 17: Chiles, A Spicy Harvest with Nancy Ogg, Shady Grove Farm, Corinth Kentucky.
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5:31 AM
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Labels: Local Eating Events
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Slow Food Potluck
Slow Food Cincinnati and Gorman Heritage Farm (10052 Reading Road, Evendale 45241) are offering a potluck lunch to celebrate the late spring bounty on Saturday, June 13th. They ask those interested to stop by their local farmers market that morning (here's a link to CORV, which lists farmers' markets on a given day) and make a seasonal dish to share with the group.
The event will start at 1PM for those interested in a farm tour and 2:30PM for the pot luck. $8 for admission and tour/$5 for general admission to the farm with no tour. For more details or to RSVP, email Laura.
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Labels: Local Eating Events
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Chicken-Keeping and Property Values
I've been doing a lot of research on chicken-keeping in Greater Cincinnati over the past few weeks since the City of Montgomery proposed an ordinance prohibiting 'farm animals' (including a few backyard chickens) on lots of less than three acres. As I'm hard pressed to think of even a single noncommercial property of three acres that isn't city-owned, this effectively will prohibit residents from keeping backyard chickens.
As one of the key issues for a lot of folks seems to be whether or not chicken-keeping will hurt property values, I started there. Here's what I've found:
Communities which allow chicken-keeping tend to have HIGHER property values than those that prohibit it.Here's the data (please do call any mistakes to my attention -- this is the best I could determine from various communities' ordinances as posted online):
| Suburb | Chicken-Keeping Ordinances* | 2007 Average Home Sales Price** |
| Indian Hill | Permit | $1019K |
| Terrace Park | Generally Permit | $ 400K |
| Wyoming | Generally Permit | $ 326K |
| Symmes Township | Permit | $ 313K |
| Montgomery | Generally Permit (currently) | $ 297K |
| Evendale | Generally Permit | $ 288K |
| Glendale | Generally Permit | $ 274K |
| Mason | Essentially Prohibit | $ 213K |
| Madeira | Generally Permit | $ 212K |
| Blue Ash | Case by Case*** | $ 202K |
| Loveland | Generally Permit | $ 174K |
| Fairfield | Essentially Prohibit | $ 166K |
| Sycamore Township | Essentially Prohibit | $ 165K |
| Sharonville | Restricted | $ 157K |
| Milford | Generally Permit | $ 152K |
| Springdale | Essentially Prohibit | $ 144K |
| Reading | Restricted | $ 131K |
| Deer Park | Generally Permit | $ 130K |
| Silverton | Essentially Prohibit | $ 127K |
| St Bernard | Generally Permit | $ 124K |
| Norwood | Prohibit | $ 119K |
| Mt Healthy | Essentially Prohibit | $ 116K |
** Source: city-data.com
*** Blue Ash requires "suburban farms" practicing "poultry husbandry" to have at least five acres, but they don't define "poultry husbandry." The city compliance inspector I asked about this said that a few backyard chickens would likely be handled on a case-by-case basis if there were complaints.
Now, I'd never use this data to argue that keeping chickens actually raises property values, but it certainly doesn't prove the opposite, either.
Montgomery is giving their proposed ordinance its second of three required public readings at tomorrow's meeting (Wednesday June 3, 7:00, 10101 Montgomery Rd) if anyone would like to attend, if only to provide evidence that I'm not just the Crazy Chicken Lady of Montgomery. The last meeting I attended started right on time and ended at 7:35, so there's not a huge time commitment to showing your support for suburban chicken-keeping!
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1:21 PM
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Labels: backyard chickens
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Vote for America's Favorite Farmers' Market
American Farmland Trust is running a "Favorite Farmers' Market" contest. See if your market is listed (or download a flyer for to give to the farmers' market manager if it isn't) and then vote for your favorite market. Top vote getters in for small, medium, and large farmers' markets will win inning farmers' markets will receive No Farms No Food totebags to use in customer giveaways.
Currently NO local farmers' markets are listed, so get going and dowload those flyers to give to your favorite markets' manager this week.
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9:28 AM
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Labels: Farmers' Markets
Monday, June 1, 2009
CORV Eat Local Food Guide 2009
The Central Ohio River Valley (CORV) Eat Local Food Guide 2009 is hot off the presses and now available for pickup at locations around town. For now it's available at the Whole Foods and College Hill Farmers' Markets, but the list of locations will grow in the next few weeks.
The Eat Local Food Guide, expanded for its second year, lists farms, farmers' markets, vineyards & wineries, restaurants sourcing locally, and farm markets in the tri-state area.
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7:04 AM
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Labels: Central Ohio River Valley Local Foods Initiative (CORV)


