Showing posts with label Ben Hewitt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ben Hewitt. Show all posts

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Everyone Needs Safe Food!


Sunday, October 16, 2011
Blog Action Day


44° here on the mountain with a 6 mph wind that offers up gusts with much greater speeds. At 5:15 AM it's darker than a pocket and I can hear rain on the standing seam roof. Karl the Wonder Dog is laying on the rug in front of the soap stone wood stove, still warm from last night's fire. He snores loud snores for his size and occasionally does dog mumbles during obvious dog dreams.

Today is Blog Action Day, a world wide event that brings together comments from around the world about a single subject. I try to participate but haven't made it every year. This year's topic is food and there probably could not be a more important consideration after the disasters that have occurred not just in Vermont but world wide this year.

Vermont is an agrarian state and it has been one since the early 1700s when new villages formed and farms sprang up in river valleys and on mountain tops. By the end of World War II tiny Vermont had over +10,000 dairy farms, cows were still hand milked and milk was shipped to processing plants in 40 quart milk cans. Unpasteurized milk was the norm and rural neighbors took their jugs every couple days to farms for a fresh supply and often added a couple dozen eggs or a couple pounds of homemade butter to the journey back home. Fast forward to 2011 and there are well under 1000 dairy farms in Vermont, many well automated, some organic, most not, some as small as a dozen cows, some exceeding 400 milkers. Things have changed!

Along with the dairies are CSAs, Community Supported Agriculture opportunities at their finest. These are growers and producers who offer vegetables, fruits, flowers, cheeses, meats, trout....anything you can grow, raise, produce or preserve offered up for an annual price over the summer season or more recently almost year round. In Vermont there is an extensive and growing number of CSAs but their popularity has now reached out to even the largest cities. Vermonter growers now travel weekly to places such as New York City and city folks have organized CSAs, farmers markets and traveling markets that stop at apartment complexes and senior housing facilities to extend the reach of good food for everyone.

Discussions about food have broadened of late and concern for safe food is real big. It should be. Although family dairy farms continue to diminish and large, bazillion cow farms replace them, we still have to be vigilant about the food we offer up for sale. Bigger doesn't always mean better. Up the river from my village of Marshfield is Cabot, Vermont, the home of Cabot Creamery. This is a milk cooperative that buys dairy farmers milk at a good price and turns out a variety of award winning cheeses that make cheese lovers smile. But Cabot Creamery is only one of many cheese producers in Vermont. In fact cheese is so big in Vermont that the Vermont Cheese Council has prepared a marketing scheme named The Vermont Cheese Trail to help residents and visitors learn about all the great cheeses we produce in Vermont.

But CSAs, great farmers and special cheeses is only part of Vermont and safe food is dear to Vermonters. Also in Cabot is a young writer named Ben Hewitt. Ben is one of those off the grid kind of guys, a family man who farms about 40 acres where dairy, beef, pork, lamb, vegetables and berries prevail. Ben's first book, The Town That Food Saved told about Hardwick, Vermont and how food and people became so important to each other in a struggling Vermont town that was stepping boldly into the future. I liked the book a lot and you will too but perhaps his latest book is spot on to my title Everyone Needs Safe Food!

Making Supper Safe: One Man's Quest To Learn The Truth About Food Safety
is Ben's second book. It informs and scares at the same time. It's not a Halloween scary book it's a "do things right or get sick or die" kind of book. It contains tales, research, and discussions that are so accurate that a few times I stopped reading and went to the kitchen and rewashed fruit and vegetables from the grocery store. It's a book to read and it offers some clear thinking about some things that need to change.

Here in Vermont we are a small state of 630,000 people. But we love our farms and farmers and we love buying locally produced food. The food needs to be safe and we are on track here. No matter where you live or how you eat, remember that everyone needs safe food and part of that experience is knowing where your food comes from and how to handle it. Those might be topics you have overlooked but try reading Making Supper Safe and I'll bet you sees things differently.



Writing from the mountain above Peacham Pond where a couple stars still twinkle outside my office window. Canada geese compare breakfast notes and talk loudly on the pond, waiting patiently for first light so they can become airborne and continue their journey south. I'm off to the kitchen to make an apple cake for breakfast...with local apples, butter, milk, eggs...most everything local but the cinnamon and nutmeg. Be safe, eat safe, everyone needs safe food!

George Africa
The Vermont Gardener
Vermont Flower Farm
On Facebook as Vermont Flower Farm and Gardens and also as George Africa
On Twitter as vtflowerfarm

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Oft Forgotten Astilbes


Thursday, March 11, 2010

Another fine spring day in Vermont with temperatures starting at 18 degrees this morning and rising into the high 40's here, almost to 50 in other parts of Vermont. The temperature spread made for free flowing maple sap and some fine maple syrup for the hundreds of producers in Vermont.

Friend Harold Cross from Morrisville just called tonight to confirm our syrup order for 10 gallons. Although Harold always taps and boils for himself, he also buys some more and last year Gail managed to turn our friendship into Harold the syrup delivery person. Harold would have helped us out anyway because that's the kind of person he is. He's one of those Vermonters I know would come at any time, for any reason if we needed a hand. Deliverying good maple syrup isn't a crisis but it sure is helpful. Thanks, Harold!

Along with smoke and steam rising from sugar houses, this time of year sees gardeners getting out into their gardens to clean up last year's leftovers. I have noticed lots of comment on various blogs, Facebook, and Twitter about people cleaning up their astilbes. The picture up top is intended to serve as my annual cautionary reminder that cleaning up astilbes can be hazardous to your health. Do beware!

As astilbe stems desicate in the fall they become very brittle. As they break it's an uneven event that produces needlelike pieces that can penetrate a finger or palm in nano seconds. Wear gloves and go slowly, grabbing leftovers from the side and cutting what will reasonably fit in your clippers, avoiding extra fingers of course.

Although many folks plant an astilbe here or there, Gail is into masses when she can find the space or the plant material. Here's a picture of some masses that are along a forest line just in back of a small daylily nursery at our house. At bloom time this is quite a site.



Years back I planted 35 different astilbes (just below) in a garden for Gail. They have naturalized since then and provide a stunning backdrop to a line of hostas and are a nice under planting to a couple small trees. There are thousands of seedlings under a Discovery Elm that need a little attention--perhaps this summer-- to really determine if there's anything of merit there to dig out and reproduce.



When our gardens and sales area were here at our house, we lined the potted astilbes under the sugar maples by the road and used Parker-Davis Step Stake markers to delineate names, descriptions and prices. The astilbes were at their best from late June into mid August and slowed the traffic as people enjoyed the colors.


I have to admit that despite some very nice comments on my photograhy, I am not a photographer, I am a person with a pocket full of rechargeable batteries and buttons on my digitals cameras that I push-push-push. I have always had trouble photographing astilbes as they move in the wind and have millions of focal points. A few years ago I just moved to closeups and that's where I'll stay. The advantage for someone unfamiliar with these plants is the opportunity to see the way hundreds of little blooms make up the flower scape. Here is Astilbe 'Bressingham Beauty' just below. I've named a few more too for you to see. Take a quick peak.


Bressingham Beauty


Elizabeth


Elizabeth Bloom


Erica


Flamingo


Hyacinth


Montgomery


Visions

Here at Vermont Flower Farm I have to admit our supply of astilbes changes annually, both in number of varieties and quantity available for sale. Obviously some are more popular than others but it's not always easy maintaining a good supply or adding some of the older ones in quantity. When I finish the hosta and shade garden I intend to line out some of every astilbe we have so we can do a better job providing a flower that is very dependable in this climate, beautiful in the garden or as a cut flower, and deer proof about anyplace.


Writing from the mountain above Peacham Pond where it's quiet except for Gail's occasional laughter as she finishes up Ben Hewitt's new book, The Town That Food Saved.

George Africa
The Vermont Gardener

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