What’s the Mission?
We got our first CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box this past Thursday! It’s exciting, because we’ve never belonged to a real CSA before. We’ve gotten produce from the farmers’ market, and from a couple of different food-buying clubs, but never through a CSA. Our first box included garlic chives, garlic scapes, broccoli raab, arugula, several [...]
Uncle Jack was old when we visited his farm, but he still kept cows. He milked the cows by hand twice a day, squatting on one of those funny little stools, and we were allowed to watch. I tried some of the raw milk, but I was a city kid, raised on supermarket milk. I [...]
People often say that organic and natural farming just isn’t profitable. Some farmers insist that conventional methods developed in the 20th century are necessary in order to make a living. But there are investors out there who see it differently. Yes, wealthy people who could be putting their money into Wall Street! In this OPB [...]
You can feed your kids up with good home cooking, and they’ll thrive, but what about when they get out on their own? Will they be able to feed themselves for life? Kim Painter wrote about this recently in USA Today. She points out that teens and young adults today often have no idea how [...]
I think I’m a pretty good cook. But sometimes I mess up, or stuff just happens, and we have to deal with it! Here are a couple of examples in which we did NOT deal with it by getting takeout. Pease Porridge Hot, Pease Porridge Cold I thought I’d throw some split peas, rice, and [...]
It looks like we’re near the end of our canning season. I still have pears in cold storage, waiting to be processed, but the tomatoes are done! Altogether, we’ve done applesauce, tomato sauce, tomato jam, crushed tomatoes and pear jam. I still plan on making pear sauce and/or pear butter. It’s not a complete winter’s [...]
The tomatoes. Sigh. Due to unseasonably cool weather, our garden didn’t produce enough tomatoes for canning, although we have had plenty to eat. So last weekend, I bought 40 pounds of tomatoes from a local farm store. And then I promptly became ill, so I didn’t get them all canned right away. Instead, I whittled [...]
After picking apples with the Portland Fruit Tree Project, I had enough apples (19 pounds) to make seven quarts of applesauce. Applesauce is super easy, especially if you have a food mill. I followed the instructions at PickYourOwn.org (my canning bible, since I don’t have a Ball Blue Book). However, I had to make the [...]
