But Is it Organic?

Before signing up for our CSA, I imagined a Lucy Show in the kitchen, where I was stuffing all manor of recipes with zucchini, just to be overrun the following week with eggplant or tomatoes. While cooking from the CSA basket does take some management, it's mostly fun googling the week's vegetable combinations to find new recipes to try. The Fox Creek assortment is fairly pedestrian (no exotic greens or asian roots) which leaves me free to experiment on new things at the farmers market.

One nagging question I had, though, came from a fellow shareholder who's had a lot of health problems and asked if the vegetables from Fox Creek were organic. Hmmm. Because they hadn't mentioned organic, I decided to find out. 

The U-Pick garden contains herbs, flowers, and cherry tomatoes.

I picked a beautiful Saturday to drive out to Gallupville and take advantage of the U-Pick garden, which is part of my CSA membership. While there, I ran into Raymond, who explained that Fox Creek did farm using organic methods but that they hadn't applied for certification. I was reminded of a passage in The Omnivore's Dilemma, where famous-farmer Joel Salatin said that, given a choice, you should start with local food rather than big-box organic. If you buy local, you can always stop by the farm and simply ask about their farming practices. Plus you get to take flowers home!

Community Calling

I got an interesting appeal from our CSA, Fox Creek Farm, right before we went on a long vacation. Back now, and I wanted to bring it up to the Farm Share community and get your thoughts. Our friends at Fox Creek Farm sent along a link to an article in the New York Times: When Community Supported Agriculture is Not What it Seems.  I must say that I've generally been supportive of more ways to shop local. There are many folks whose schedules or lifestyles don't lend themselves to the routine of CSA pick-ups and organizations like FieldGoods allow them to enjoy fresh local produce "on demand." 

What the NYT article points out is that these new ventures are not really CSAs, though they use the language of CSAs in marketing. In fact, they're venture-capital-funded distributors that contract for produce from family farms. While they do provide a new outlet for family farmers, the farmers assume a lot of financial risk added to the inherent weather risks of farming. Fox Creek reports that with the rise of these alternatives, that their subscriptions have been stagnant after a period of robust growth.

It struck me, listening to all the presidential campaign rhetoric, that while globalization is demonized for declining wages in America, there's been no mention of the rise of huge internet corporations for erasing whole categories of work and community. The beauty of a CSA is that you establish a direct relationship with the folks who are growing your food. You get to help out in the harvest if you want. You get to watch their kids grow up. You get to contribute to the health and strength of the community you live in. 

In their latest newsletter, I saw that Fox Creek Farm is offering a 30% discount on mid-season sign-ups. This seems like a great way to check out their produce. They have a lot more pick-up locations than I realized. Pick up times are 4:00-6:00 p.m. If you're interested, you can e-mail them at  foxcreekfarmcsa@earthlink.net or find a pick up location near you on their website at www.foxcreekfarmcsa.com. 

Five Questions for Gade Farm

These are the greenhouses in mid summer, full of bedding plants and hanging baskets grown on the farm.

Last year I asked my CSA farmer for advice on starting seeds indoors. He looked a bit sheepish and replied that he bought his seedlings from Gade Farm. That’s good, I thought, so do I! Gade is located near the junction of Route146 and Route 20. Situated on a busy road in the center of Guilderland they’re well positioned for retail but still grow most of what they sell on 100 acres and in their extensive greenhouses. My garden is stocked with Gade perennials and I usually pick up annuals and lettuce plants in the spring as well.

The photo was taken March 1. Can't wait for retail operations to start on March 20!

Produce is labeled by origin, which helps me support local farms.                                                     

Started in the 1990s, the farm stand carries Gade-grown fruits and vegetables along with other locally grown food – all labeled as to origin. Prices are typically better than supermarkets and the food is always peak freshness. You can also find Meadowbrook Dairy milk, bacon from Oscar’s Smokehouse, local eggs, meat, cheese, and sausages. My neighbor swears by their raspberry pie. And because they also carry foods they don’t grow (you can get lemons and avocados) I’m often able to skip the grocery store altogether!

Gade Farm is a NYS Century Farm, which means that the Gade family has been farming here since 1878.  They support local food vendors and carry on a lively schedule of classes and other activities. You can find out more on their website: gadefarm.com. I caught up with a busy Jim Gade, who’s managing the farm now with his two brothers and getting ready for opening day on March 20.

1. How/when did you become a farmer? 

I grew up on our farm, and have been farming all of my life. I became a partner in the business in 1987.

2. What kind of farming do you do? 

We grow vegetables out in our fields, and in our greenhouses/fields we grow all sorts of bedding plants, vegetable starters, herbs, hanging baskets, perennials, and we have a large selection of roses, trees, & shrubs in our nursery.  We have about 1 acre in greenhouses (from cold frames to fully heated), where we grow all of our bedding plants, vegetables, hanging baskets, pots, perennials. Many start there and move outside, where there are about 3 acres for growing perennials and mums outdoors.   

3. What gets you up in the morning? 

Depending on the day, either the sunshine or my internal clock. Though some days when I’m really tired it’s my external alarm clock!! On market days (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) I get up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the Menands wholesale market to sell our product.

4. What keeps you up at night? 

The weather!  Especially when I hear that it is supposed to get really cold, I worry about the greenhouses staying up to temperature.  Also, when there is supposed to be a hail storm, too much rain, (or not enough), too cold, too hot... And it’s worse because these are things I have NO control over!

5. Do you have a favorite recipe to share? 

Some of my favorite foods are eaten best fresh out of the field -- watermelon on a hot summer day, corn on the cob, a fresh sliced tomato. Delicious!

Asparagus grown at Gade. © Laura Shore 2014.

Disconnecting from the industrial food system has been a fairly gradual process in our house. Our grandson still prefers Little Debbie brownies to Nancy’s homemade… and we still crave citrus in winter. But for the most part our food now has fewer frequent flier miles than we do and we couldn’t have done it without our farm CSA, the Schenectady Greenmarket, the Gade Farm, and the Honest Weight Food Co-op.

Five Questions for CeCe Tkaczyk

1. How did you become a farmer? 

It is in my blood.  I’m the third generation farmer in my family. My grandparents emigrated from Germany and started out as potato farmers on Long Island. They moved to a small hilltop dairy farm in western New Jersey where my siblings and I were born. I grew up on dairy farms, milked lots of cows, showed them at county fairs and was even a Dairy Princess. I have a B.S in Agricultural Science from Rutgers University where I met my husband. In 1989 we bought a small dairy farm that had not seen any animals in many years and have been fixing it up ever since.

2. What kind of farming do you do? 

We raise Jacob sheep, which are a primitive breed (they almost became extinct). They are a small breed, spotted, and can have two sets of horns. They are beautiful and very unusual.  I use their wool for yarn, mittens, and hand-spinning. And yes, they are also delicious.

3. What gets you up in the morning? 

Right now it's lambing season, so seeing what’s new in the barn is very exciting. It’s like Christmas morning every day!  

4. What keeps you up at night? 

I worry about whether the sheep are warm enough, especially when they lamb in this cold weather. The sweaters help!

Lambs born during an extended cold spell needed a bit of extra help so CeCe cut down an old sweater to keep them warm.

5. Do you have a favorite recipe to share? 

I love cooking things that take hours when it is so cold out! Here’s my favorite leg of lamb which is also a one-dish meal. The lamb is braised in the oven for several hours with fresh herbs and potatoes and carrots. It’s very easy, and promises to keep both you and the house warm!

Braised Leg of Lamb 

INGREDIENTS: SERVES 6–8 

• 1 6–8-lb. semiboneless leg of lamb 
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste 
• 3 lbs. small red potatoes, scrubbed clean 
• 15 cloves garlic, crushed 
• 6 large carrots, peeled and cut into 3" pieces 
• 6 sprigs fresh rosemary 
• 2 bay leaves 
• 1 large yellow onion, cut lengthwise into eight wedges 
• 2 cups chicken stock 
• 1 cup white wine 
• Minced flat-leaf parsley, to garnish 

INSTRUCTIONS 

1. Arrange a rack 8" from broiler element and heat broiler to high. Put lamb in a large roasting pan, season generously with salt and pepper, and broil, flipping once, until browned, about 25 minutes. Remove lamb from oven and heat oven to 325°. 
2. Arrange potatoes, garlic, carrots, rosemary, bay leaves, and onions around lamb; pour in chicken stock and wine. Season wine mixture with salt and pepper and cover pan tightly with aluminum foil. Place roasting pan in oven and cook, turning lamb once, until fork tender, 4–5 hours. 
3. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool 20 minutes. Transfer lamb and vegetables to a large serving platter and sprinkle with minced parsley; serve pan juices on the side. Serve with the potatoes and carrots that are cooked in the braise.

This recipe was printed in SAVEUR Magazine, 2010.

Farm Share Studio Launched One Year Ago

Asparagus © Laura Shore 2014 from Barber Farms in Middleburg, NY

I started Farm Share Studio because I believed that the best way to preserve the agricultural landscape I love would be to create a demand for local farm products. Providing a living wage to farmers would make farmland more desirable for farms than for real estate. By painting seductive images of local produce, I thought I could inspire people to shop at local farm stands and join CSAs. I can’t know if my produce paintings have ignited any sparks. I do know that they make people stop and smile when they see the cards and prints at shows. I expect that the people who are drawn to the paintings are already members of CSAs, shop at the co-op, and farmers markets. But their purchases have allowed me to share nearly $400 of my revenue to The American Farmland Trust and to the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy. What I didn’t realize was how much this would change my own life.

Barber Farms is one of our first stops at the Schenectady Greenmarket every Sunday.

We live in an agricultural paradise, surrounded by farm stands, so why do we shop at grocery stores that import our produce from California and Mexico — even in the summer?

Inspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle, we committed to eating all of the organic produce in our CSA basket each week and to purchasing the rest of our needs (as much as practical) from farmers markets or the co-op. What this means, in practice, is that we cook a lot more at home. Each week is an adventure as we figure out what to do with French breakfast radishes or collards. What we’ve learned is that home cooking from farm fresh ingredients tastes immeasurably better at a fraction of the cost. 

Home cooking also takes more time. Last year our family grew from three to four when we took in our autistic granddaughter. My partner was working overtime and I became the default cook and caregiver. I planned meals and shopping the way my mother used to. We had a lot of soups and stews. I planned for leftovers, which I froze, for eating when I needed a break from planning, chopping, and cooking. Life in the kitchen, for me, was a battle to be waged, with dinner on the table precisely at 6:00 every night because of our granddaughter’s need for structure. She returned to her home mid year and my partner retired about the same time. Since then we’ve become more relaxed in the kitchen. Sometimes taking turns, sometimes sharing the work. Nancy is a bread baker and is more inclined to pull together recipes from far away places like South America, Japan or Turkey. Cooking has become a journey... a way of life. We spend more time in the kitchen because we can, rather than because we have to. It’s sad that this is a luxury in today’s world but I've learned that we all have more time than we think. It’s all about how we choose to use it.

Tim Rau with his grandfather, Everett, in in front of one of their historic Dutch barns.

One of the best outcomes of this project was meeting the farmers. I realize now that our culture idealizes farms but looks down on farmers. We like our farmers to be ivy league graduates with clean fingernails in barns fit for wedding receptions. Otherwise they can grow our food but we don’t invite them to the party. This summer I conducted a public interview with Everett Rau, a 95 year year old farmer from Altamont, to coincide with a Village Archives exhibit on the Altamont Fair. Though Ev has spoken widely on Dutch barns, wooden tools, and farming history, he had never spoken in his home town about his life. The village hall was packed with nearly 100 friends — ranging in age from 16 to 90. Ev held forth for over an hour on his personal history on land farmed by his family since before the Revolution. He talked about an age when farming was done with horses and harvesting was shared between farm families. He experienced the shift to combines and the lure of off-farm work after World War 2. He spoke with enthusiasm about the new projects on his Pleasant View Farm — pigs and pastured turkeys raised with solar electric fences and non-gmo feed. He sees the new farming methods described by our friend Gary Kleppel in his book, The Emergent Agriculture, as salvation for the small family farms that still make up the landscape in Upstate New York.

“While other jobs make you a living, farming makes you life.”

— Ev Rau

After our performance, Ev asked if I’d write a book with him. I told him I’d never written a book and he said he hadn’t either, but we could figure it out together. Each week we spend two hours recording his story and he answers all my naive questions about agriculture and history patiently and with good humor. Ev has the ability to make friends with people of all kinds and I’m honored to be counted among them. What I learned from Ev is that, while other jobs make you a living, farming makes you life. Some were born to farming, but today, many farmers have day jobs as computer programmers, heavy equipment operators, salesmen. The successful ones are hard working, smart, and optimistic. They’re mechanical wizards and entrepreneurs. They’re caregivers and environmentalists. This year I’m looking forward to sharing Ev’s story. This year I’ll learn to write a book.

 

Working Progress

When I visited Patroon Land Farm on its cold, windy hilltop behind the Helderberg escarpment, I was struck by how impermanent it all seemed. Half-plowed fields were still waiting for a string of warm days for planting to begin. It’s hard to believe that this scruffy collection of buildings and just five employees could produce over 450,000 pounds of produce for the Northeast Regional Food Bank since 2006. 

The project began when Pauline Williman placed her family’s 162 acre farm in a land trust and began producing food for the food bank on her own. In 2006 the Patroon Land Foundation and the Food Bank became partners and hired Mark Weinheimer, a professional farm manager. The partner’s vision was to create a sustainable farm that would supply fresh produce to the food bank, educate community volunteers, and create an income stream through the sale of CSA (community supported agriculture) shares. In CSAs, consumers pay for their weekly share of the harvest in advance and share in the bounty (and the risks) of the farm.

According to Mark, the CSA had 450 shares last year and expects to sell 600 in 2014.  Most of the farm shares are delivered to members who work in NY State office buildings but a small percentage of shareholders stop by the farm to pick up their produce every week. Popular items that can’t be grown in the rocky hilltop soil are sourced from other like-minded farms — corn from Barber’s farm in Middleburgh and carrots from Schoharie Valley Farms. 

Mark and I looked out across the empty fields. It was mid May and the wind was brisk. “We have a bunch of volunteers coming tomorrow and I hope it doesn’t rain,” he said. It’s been too cold and wet to plant so far and the greenhouse is bursting. He pointed out the flats of larger vegetables waiting outside the greenhouse for planting. “Hardening them off?” I asked, trying to sound knowledgeable. “Not by choice,” he said, and shook his head. 

Volunteers transplant seedlings in the greenhouse.

The next day, when I stopped by to take pictures under towering clouds and warm, humid air,  the place was humming with volunteers transplanting seedlings in the greenhouse and working on a road project. If you’re looking to join a farm CSA, your membership in Patroon Creek Farm will not only feed your family but many others by supporting the work of the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York.