Oxford Farmers' Market Uptown May 3

I hit the Oxford Uptown market yesterday -- great market, despite the rain. I'm always impressed that little old Oxford can support such a large and diverse farmers' market. The diversity of product Saturday was much greater than at Findlay last week. In the Findlay farmshed last week, there was one vendor of meats and eggs (Back Acres Farm), and he's only there until June when the regular stallholder (Turner Farms) shows up and Back Acres moves to an outdoor stall. There are no vendors of cheese or grains in the Findlay farmshed. Produce is king. Why is this? Is it that meat, egg, grain, and cheese farmshed stallholders would have a hard time competing with the permanent storefronts at Findlay selling these items? Someone clue me in.

At Oxford this week there was a goatcheese maker (I sampled Debra Bowles' block cheese, and it was so good I bought 4 packages), several meat vendors (Filbrun farms even sells lard, cracklings, bacon, and several kinds of sausage as well as spelt flour), and several egg vendors (Artistry Farm was even offering duck eggs.) Downing had cider and honey. Four baked goods vendors were there, including Mr. Peck, who bakes in a wood-fired brick oven in his back yard up in Monroe, and an Asian woman selling incredibly delicious pineapple rolls that my kids snapped up when I got home. And the produce was spectacular for this time of year -- I picked up kale, radishes, leeks, and asparagus.

Oxford is open for the season now, every Saturday 7:30 - noon. If you have the time (and gas) for a trip, go. And go early -- it's a popular market, and some items go very quickly, especially items that are early or late for their season. I bought the entire final week's harvest of the season's last leeks from Lucy at Boulder Belt and chopped them for my freezer yesterday afternoon to hold me until August when the coming season's first show up again. (Cleaning and chopping leeks is much more fun munching on Boulder Belt's last bunch of early purple asparagus -- she took the sign down after I grabbed the bunch.)

Farmers' markets May 3 - 9

Saturday May 3 (7:30am-noon at Main & High Sts.) is the opening day of the Oxford Farmers' Market Uptown season. The following vendors will be in attendance:

Boulder Belt Farm: pastured Cornish hens, lettuces, asparagus, radishes, leeks, dried herbs, cut fresh herbs, popcorn, potted perennial herbs, strawberry planters
Artistry Farm: goat cheese, duck eggs, baked goods, goatsmilk soaps, natural fertilizers, goat kids, beeswax candles
Salem Road Farms: bedding plants
Willow Pond Farm: produce
Ison Farm: lamb
5Gs: barbecue sauce, barbecued meats.
Downing Fruit Farm: honey
Mary's Plant Farm: cut flowers, baked goods, bedding plants
Locust Run Farm: lettuce
Morning Sun Farm: meats, eggs, grains

Tuesday May 6 is the opening day of the Wyoming Farmers' Market season. The market is Tuesdays 3 - 7pm at the corner of Wyoming Ave and Van Roberts. This week's Second Tuesday Chef features Dan Berger of Maple Grove Farm. Watch a cooking demonstration, sample food and buy maple syrup from this farm near Lebanon.

Vendors in attendance this week:

Back Acres Farm: Free-range eggs, grass-fed beef and whole hog sausage.
Bee Haven: Creamed honey, honey, beeswax candles, hand salve, lip balm, soap, hot/cold rice packs, strawberry-rhubarb jam, biscotti made with honey.
Blackbird Pond: Soap, foot bath teas, and a new southernwood moth sachet for putting away winter clothes.
Branstrator Farms: Green and purple asparagus, jams and strawberry lemonade.
Donna's Gourmet Cookies: ookies, brownies, iced flower cookies, granola and a limited number of Taste from Belgium waffles.
La Terza Coffee: Whole bean and ground, locally roasted coffee in half-pound and 1-pound bags
R.J. Veggies: Lettuce, green onions, parsley, basil, sage, chives, coriander, chamomile, chickory, endive, hanging flower baskets, hanging cherry tomato baskets, and pepper, tomato, broccoli and cauliflower plants. (This vendor accepts WIC.)
Sweet Miss Confections: Biscotti (chocolate almond, lemon poppy seed, almond brickle and cranberry apricot), Lil Bitz cookies, chocolate pretzels, chocolate dipped marshmallows, carmelicious corn, cookie pops, double chocolate banana bread, banana bread, plus Mother's Day cookie bouquets and gift baskets.
That Guy's Family Farm: Mesclun mix, lettuce mix, green garlic, fresh-baked boule bread and tulips.
Walnut Ridge Acres: Micro mix, gourmet salad mix, fresh herbs, herb and vegetable plants, geraniums, petunias, fern baskets, arugula, sunflower shoots, radishes, and onions.

Tuesday is also opening day of the Sayler Park Farmers' Market (4 - 7pm 6610 Parkland Ave.) Among their vendors this week will be Carriage House Farm with lettuce mixes, spinach, and radishes.

At the Findlay farmshed (1801 Race St, Saturday 8am-6pm) the following vendors will be attending:

Back Acres Farm: eggs, beef cuts, whole-hog sausage
Bauer Farm: cut flowers, container tulips
Kist Greenhouse: bedding plants, many of them already in bloom
Margaret's Garden: herb plants, pansies, violas, perennials, rosebushes, cut flowers
Mockingbird Hill: cut flowers including ranunculus
Neltner's: hanging baskets, bedding plants
Northgate Greenhouse: bedding plants, hanging baskets, perennials and landscape plants
Shady Grove: lettuce mix, swiss chard, green garlic, herbs, tomato plants, maybe basil seedlings
Thistlehair Farm:asparagus, spinach, spring mix, chard, arugula, sorrel, cut herbs, honey, asparagus crowns, heirloom tomato plants, potted herbs, hostas, a few perennials.

The Boone Co. Market is open daily now, 9am - 6pm at 1973 Burlington Pike.

End of the leeks

Lucy at Boulder Belt, one of the few farmers around here who grows leeks in hoophouses as a winter crop, says the leeks will be gone this week and won't be back until the summer crop is harvested in late August. So if you want local leeks, you might want to hit the Oxford Farmers' Market this weekend for their first day of the season. I'm hoping to get there and buy some for freezing.

Review: Greenup Cafe

There's a review of Greenup Cafe, which sources locally, over on Grazing Locally in the Bluegrass.

President Bush: Eat Local Foods

In yesterday's press conference, George W. Bush recommended Americans and the world eat more locally:

One thing I think that would be -- I know would be very creative policy is if we -- is if we would buy food from local farmers as a way to help deal with scarcity, but also as a way to put in place an infrastructure so that nations can be self-sustaining and self-supporting. It's a proposal I put forth that Congress hasn't responded to yet, and I sincerely hope they do.

Wow! I agree with the President. That's a new experience for me.

Ohio beekeepers asking for help

The Ohio State Beekeepers Association is requesting letters from Ohioans to Governor Strickland and Ohio Director of Agriculture Robert Boggs protesting planned cuts in the Ohio Department of Agriculture's Apiary Program, which would eliminate the last remaining trained apiculturist from the program and assign his duties to pest inspectors. The OSBA believes this will cripple the program at a crucial point, when honeybees are already threatened.

Here is the OSBA position paper:

The honey bee, essential to crop pollination and a healthy environment, is threatened by planned cuts to the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s (ODA) Apiary Program. Honey bees not only produce honey, they are essential for the pollination of over 90 food and forage crops. One third of our food supply, or every third bite you take, depends on honey bee pollination. The USDA estimates the value of honey bee pollination to U.S. agriculture to be in excess of 14 billion dollars annually. A 2005 Ohio Department of Agriculture report estimates the value of honey bee pollination to Ohio agriculture to be 44 million dollars annually.

Mounting threats to the honey bee such as parasitic mites, diseases and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), which has received much publicity in the past year, have endangered the honey bee and the beekeeping industry in Ohio and around the world. The ODA Apiary Program has worked to protect the honey bee in Ohio since 1905 through a program of inspection and regulation. However, a series of cuts in the Apiary Program over the past decade has reduced the trained apiary staff within the ODA from a total of six to one, a level of staffing that is barely adequate to maintain an effective program.

Due to the budgetary crisis and the need to cut expenditures, the ODA plans to reduce the apiary program even farther this summer. The sole trained and experienced apiculturist (beekeeper) responsible for supervising the apiary program will be eliminated and his inspection duties will be assigned to plant inspectors within the plant pest program. These hastily trained persons with little or no prior experience as beekeepers will be expected to fulfill the responsibilities of a state bee inspector while dividing their time between their duties as plant inspectors and bee inspectors. The ODA maintains that their plans are adequate to protect the honey bee industry in Ohio.

The Ohio State Beekeepers’ Association (OSBA) disagrees. To be effective the apiary program requires a trained, experienced apiculturist in a supervisory capacity not just to maintain the bee inspection program but to advise the ODA on issues affecting honey bees in Ohio and to represent the state of Ohio in critical cooperation and collaboration with other states and federal agencies to protect the beekeeping industry. If the ODA implements these reductions in staff as they plan to do this summer we feel that the safety net that has helped to protect the honey bee in Ohio since 1905 will collapse. These cuts would jeopardize the honey bee population in Ohio, an essential natural resource, and would in turn jeopardize Ohio’s agricultural production, Ohio’s environment and Ohio’s economy. Please contact the Director of the Department of Agriculture and the Governor to urge them not to make these cuts to this essential program.

Here are email links for Governor Strickland and Director Boggs.

Here's what I sent:

I am writing to protest the proposed cuts in the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Apiary Program. I urge you to rescind the proposed cuts to the apiary program. Rather than cutting this program, perhaps the funds to continue it could be found by raising fees to beekeepers for the services the program provides.

Thank you.

Make sure to sign it! And providing your phone number will let the recipients see you are indeed an Ohioan.

Recognizing rural America: soybeans

Around here, pretty much everyone recognizes corn. What many of us don't realize is that the corn we see in the fields isn't usually sweet corn but field corn. They look almost identical, so it's not suprising Americans don't realize those are acres and acres and acres of animal feed and industrial inputs, not people food.

But soy, we aren't so familiar with. Given that Ohio and Indiana are prime soybean territory -- it's Ohio's second- biggest crop after corn -- it's amazing how many folks here have no idea what a field of soy looks like at any point in its growing cycle. Here's a map of US soybean territory.

This is a young soybean plant (glycene max) close up.

Soy can grow as tall as a man, but generally the crops we see around here don't grow much above thigh-height. Farmers often will rotate fields between corn and soybeans to help control disease, so you'll often see a field of soybeans beside a field of corn. Here's a row of soybeans alongside corn, for size comparison.




Soy is planted in rows. Here's a field of soy just emerging.






A little later:











Here's a field of growing, healthy plants in early summer.




By later in the summer, the plants have filled out so much you can barely tell they were planted in rows unless you're standing in the field. From even a few yards away, a healthy field of mature soybeans will look like a sea of emerald green, about hip-height.

In late summer, the fields turn yellow and the leaves drop off. This is a field of soy ready to harvest.







Here's a closeup of the ready-to-harvest plant. You can see the individual bean pods have split open to reveal several beans within each.












Here are the harvested beans. Most soy beans grown commercially are used as industrial food inputs and animal feed, but they're also used in recipes similar to other dried beans, and of course many traditional foods such as tofu, miso, shoyu and tempeh are made from soybeans.

Soybeans are also eaten as a fresh garden vegetable, known as edamame. They grow well in our area and are great for the garden if you don't have a deer or rabbit problem. Here's what your edamame crop will look like if you do have a deer and rabbit problem.

Edamame pods look like this. If you've never tried them, get thee to a Thai restaurant (Amarin in Madeira is a good choice) and give them a shot. They're usually offered as an appetizer. They're steamed and arrive hot and salted, and you pull the pods between your teeth (a little like eating artichokes) to scrape out the tender beans inside.

Here's what the fresh beans look like, removed from the pod. They're sweet and slightly crunchy. You can also use them in place of lima beans in recipes. I love succotash, but my husband isn't fond of lima beans so I make it with edamame.
Here's my recipe, which since corn, edamame and jalapenos ripen together can be considered a mid-to-late summer seasonal recipe:

EDAMAME SUCCOTASH
Serves 4

1 slice bacon, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 onion, chopped fine
1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped fine
2 c sweet corn, removed from cob
2 c fresh edamame, removed from pods
salt & pepper to taste

In a medium saute pan, fry bacon until crisp. Add garlic, onion, and jalapeno and saute until onion is transparent. Add corn and edamame and saute 5 minutes. Correct seasonings and serve.

Still harping on Monsanto

Sorry to keep going on and on about Monsanto, but I had to call attention to a great article in Vanity Fair this month (thanks, Lucy, for the heads up) about Monsanto's long history of dirty tricks.

From the article:

Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.

Well worth reading.

Monsanto vs. farmers

Monsanto has recently settled with Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser, whom they'd sued for patent infringement when it was discovered that their Roundup Ready canola seed had crosspollinated with his own plants. They've agreed to pay clean-up costs of removing any Roundup Ready canola in Schmeiser's fields. Schmeiser believes "this precedent setting agreement ensures that farmers will be entitled to reimbursement when their fields become contaminated with unwanted Roundup Ready plants."

Monsanto has spent years suing small farmers across North America for 'patent infringement' in cases in which Monsant's genetically-modified and patented 'Roundup Ready' canola seeds had been found to have cross-pollinated with local farmers' crops without those farmers' knowledge or permission. Monsanto's argument has been that whether or not the farmer knew of or wanted such cross-pollination, the resulting plants and their seeds belonged to Monsanto, thanks to its patent on the Roundup Ready seed. (For excellent and compelling background on this story, watch The Future of Food, the award-winning 2004 documentary by Deborah Koons Garcia (widow of Jerry Garcia) which is available from the Cincinnati Public Library.) Thousands of small farmers across North America have been sued by Monsanto for patent infringement because they'd inadvertently (and involuntarily) ended up with Monsanto seed in their fields.

Monsanto's solution? Buy all your seeds from Monsanto. Then you're safe. Oh, and pay Monsanto $15 an acre in royalties on the patented seed.

At the time of filming, Schmeiser, who had saved his canola seed for replanting for decades, carefully selecting over a progression of years that seed which was best adapted to his Saskatchewan growing conditions, was being forced to destroy the product of his life's work because it had become contaminated by the Monsanto gene and Monsanto was claiming ownership of the seed. And the courts have backed Monsanto up on the ownership question -- the genes are patented, and if a farmer knowingly replants seed that has been crosspollinated with Roundup Ready seed, even against his will, he is guilty of patent infringement.

Monsanto grows its research GMO seed in thousands of confidential locations. For all any farmer knows, the about-to-be-patented pollen from plants in the next field could be blowing into his fields right now and crosspollinating with his crop. It is the nature of genetics that once a gene enters the gene pool, it's nearly impossible to get it back out again unless it's both dominant and fatal before reproductive maturity. It is quite possible that hundreds of years from now every canola, corn, soy, and cotton seed in North America will have a Monsanto GMO seed as an ancestor. (Monsanto has discontinued its Roundup Ready wheat project.)

Monsanto, by patenting seeds and then using their wealth to aggressively protect those patents, is attempting to completely control the world's commodity crop production. Many will remember their plans to develop the truly evil "Terminator Technology," which produced seeds with the Terminator gene which rendered second-generation seeds sterile -- thereby ensuring the farmer couldn't save seed from one year to the next. The repercussions of such a gene escaping into the broader gene pool were horrifying, with visions of third-world farmers innocently planting their saved seed and waiting...and waiting. Monsanto did acquire Delta & Pine Land, the developer of Terminator, but after a public outcry at the technology's potential for causing disastrous crop failures and resulting starvation, they announced they will not use the technology. (The USDA is a co-patent holder on the technology, retains the right to develop it, and so far has refused to commit to not developing it in the future. Our government at work for you.)

Monsanto continues to aggressively market their Roundup Ready cotton, soybean, canola, and corn seed, including with disastrous results to developing-world farmers who can't provide the necessary irrigation to be successful with such crops. And even diversified farms aren't safe. Monsanto already owns Seminis, the largest producer of fruit and vegetable seeds in the world, and a few weeks ago Monsanto finalized plans to acquire De Ruiter Seeds, a producer of seeds for the greenhouse vegetable market.

Percy Schmeiser, in the meantime, is happy with his win but estimates his legal bills top $400,000 Canadian. And even if he could get his destroyed seeds back, they'd still contain the Roundup Ready gene and be the property of Monsanto.

Sorrel soup

Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) is an early-spring easy-to-grow perennial which does well even in heavy clay soil like many of us have in the Greater Cincinnati area. Its flavor is tangy, almost lemony. The smaller, tender leaves can be used in mixed-greens salads and larger leaves can be made into sorrel soup, a traditional spring tonic. This is what sorrel looks like in the garden.

Vicky from Thistlehair Farms had some good-looking sorrel on Saturday at Findlay, big half-pound bags for $2.75 each. A big pot of sorrel soup seemed like a great idea on a blustery spring day, so I bought a couple of bags.

Sorrel is one of the easier greens to clean. After washing it to remove any grit (sorrel always seems to have lots of grit, so don't skip this step), instead of having to trim off the vein completely you can just fold the leaf in half lengthwise (front to front), grasp the vein at the base, and pull to remove any woody strings. With these removed, sorrel will fall apart as it cooks, melting into the stock to provide a thick velvety green base that looks as if it's been pureed. (Sorrel is sometimes called 'green sauce' because of this unusual characteristic.)

Here's my cleaned sorrel, chopped. It's a beautiful bright green, which unfortunately doesn't survive cooking. Even a short cooking time turns it a not-so-pretty muddy dark green, which doesn't exactly sing to me of spring. Fortunately, the spring-fresh tangy taste does survive the cooking.

This recipe is an adaptation from one in Bert Greene's Greene on Greens book, one of my all-time favorite vegetable cookbooks. The addition of potatoes would seem to make this a not-truly-seasonal soup, but nearly every sorrel soup recipe I've found does contain potatoes which tends to suggest the combination is traditional. Perhaps if you have a good root cellar, in April you're still pulling out potatoes that are in good enough shape to cut off the bad parts and chop the rest for soup?

SORREL SOUP
Serves 4

4 strips bacon, diced
3 leeks, cleaned and chopped fine
1 onion, chopped fine
3 cups chicken stock
1 pound boiling potatoes, peeled and diced fine
1 pound sorrel, cleaned and roughly chopped
salt & pepper to taste
sour cream to taste

In a heavy pot (don't use cast iron, as the acidity of the sorrel will react with the iron and you'll end up with metallic-tasting soup), saute bacon until crisp. Add leeks and onions and saute over medium heat, scraping up brown bits from bottom of pan, 10 minutes. Add chicken stock and potatoes and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer 15 minutes. Add sorrel and continue to simmer another 15 - 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, until potatoes are tender and sorrel has dissolved into the broth. Correct seasonings, ladle into bowls and top with a dollop of sour cream to serve. My son ate nearly three bowls, so I have to declare this one a winner.