Spring=Garden=Good

Spring is such a beautiful time for good food.  The wild—ramps, wild onions, fiddelheads, morels, dandelions, violet blossoms.  The cultivated—radishes, pea shoots, asparagus, chives, rhubarb, garlic scapes, tender greens, scallions.  That particular green of sunlight on leaves and the scent of fruit blossoms shake us out of hibernation.  It’s a wonder that we all don’t succumb to spring fever and skip out of work each fine day to forage and tend and till.

Spring is a time when we can set ourselves up to eat well all year-round by grafting fruit trees, planting our gardens, signing up for a CSA, or using that tax refund for a food dehydrator or pressure canner.  It’s gardening that’s on my mind this spring the most.  With a freshly tilled new garden at home and an increasingly popular community garden program at work, I’ve been reflecting on the powerful positive impacts of gardens. Which is why, of course, they’re spreading like wildfires in Milwaukee and across the country—supported by community activists and public health officials alike.

People garden for many reasons—the pleasure of being outside, the remarkable taste of fresh food, the connections made with other gardeners, the security offered by a plot of food, the money saved by growing your own groceries, and so on.  Intuitively, people feel that gardening is good.  And there’s been some good scientific research into the benefits of community gardens to support those intuitions.  A few of the benefits I like to remind people of if there’s even a whisper that they think its all just feel good fluff:

• Gardening is a promising practice for diabetes prevention and control through healthy activity and food.
• Children & adults who garden eat more fruits and vegetables.
• A garden program promotes healthy food security.
• Gardening reduces stress and calms the nerves.
• Gardening helps youth with self-esteem.
• Gardens strengthen communities.
• “Horticultural Therapy “can help with mental health issues, such as post traumatic stress disorder, depression; and anxiety and may help ex-convicts with rehabilitation
•  Gardening can reduce food miles & support local economies & cultures

Gardening can also promote food biodiversity.  The Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity estimates that “300,000 vegetable varieties have become extinct over the last century.”

By growing heirloom and endangered foods in our gardens we can help save these foods from extinction.  The vegetables that have been boarded onto Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste are a good place to start if you’d like to grow endangered veggies—they are rare and delicious and storied.  Some Ark of Taste vegetables (seeds may be sourced through Seed Savers Exchange for most of these) that may be well suited for growing in Wisconsin include:

• Amish Deer Tongue lettuce
• Grandpa Admire's lettuce
• Speckled lettuce
• Tennis Ball lettuce (black seeded)
• Early Blood Turnip-rooted beet
• Beaver Dam pepper
• Bull Nose Large Bell pepper
• Fish pepper
• Hinkelhatz Hot pepper
• Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Italian Frying pepper
• Sheepnose pimiento
• Amish Paste Tomato
• German Pink Tomato
• Sheboygan Tomato
• Red Fig Tomato
• Aunt Molly’s Husk Tomato (ground Cherry)
• Valencia Tomato
• Lina Cisco’s Bird Egg Bean
• True Red Cranberry bean
• Hidatsa Shield Figure bean
• Yellow Indian Woman Bean
• Hutterite Soup bean
• Mayflower Bean
• Turkey’ Hard Red Winter Wheat
• Roy’s Calais flint corn

If you want to learn more about growing food and/or want to be a part of an organized initiative to install home and community gardens in Milwaukee, consider being a part of the 4^th Annual Great Milwaukee Victory Garden Blitz. Their motto at VGI: “Move Grass. Grow Food.”  My thoughts exactly…

Protect the Wilds of Wild Rice

Photo from a wonderful, in depth article on Wild Rice at Circle of Blue.

Real wild rice is at risk of disappearing.   

Manoomin, the “good grain” in Anishinaabeg, the only native grain to Northern America, the richly delicious and nutritious aquatic seed that is a keystone traditional food of Anishinaabeg tribes (Ojibwe/Chippewa, Ottawa/Odawa, and Algonquian) has yet another threat to its existence.   Unique to the Upper Great Lakes' region, Manoomin, which is on Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste (and one of only seven US Presidia) for its amazing depth and diversity of flavors and its rich cultural heritage, is respected around the world as a true American food.  

But can we protect it here in Wisconsin?

Wisconsin State Assembly Bill 426, said to have been written “for” mining corporations, would repeal several environmental protections and limit public participation to streamline mining projects.  Of particular note is Gogebic Taconite's plan to open an open-pit iron ore mine in the Penokee Range in northern Wisconsin—a move which would directly affect the nearby Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe.  An open-pit iron ore mine with relaxed environmental standards would be devastating to the tribe’s watershed—including the wetlands that are home to wild rice.   

Concerned? If in Wisconsin, contact your legislators. The Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters makes it easy here.

              

You can also help by supporting producers,  read more about wild rice and find Native distributors from our region in a recent post of mine and at Native Harvest..  

And, if you need some more inspiration, listen to my friend, writer and environmental advocate Eric Hansen, speak about the risk of mining to the ecology of the Upper Great Lakes here.

"food ark" in national geographic

 

Our Dwindling Food Variety

As we've come to depend on a handful of commercial varieties of fruits and vegetables, thousands of heirloom varieties have disappeared. It's hard to know exactly how many have been lost over the past century, but a study conducted in 1983 by the Rural Advancement Foundation International gave a clue to the scope of the problem. It compared USDA listings of seed varieties sold by commercial U.S. seed houses in 1903 with those in the U.S. National Seed Storage Laboratory in 1983. The survey, which included 66 crops, found that about 93 percent of the varieties had gone extinct. More up-to-date studies are needed.

I had forgotten how much I loved National Geographic (whose tagline is "Inspiring people to care about the planet since 1888") when I was handed a copy of the July Issue...for it contained an article on a subject near and dear to my heart: food biodiversity.  The article Food Ark starts us off with this:

A crisis is looming: To feed our growing population, we’ll need to double food production. Yet crop yields aren’t increasing fast enough, and climate change and new diseases threaten the limited varieties we’ve come to depend on for food. Luckily we still have the seeds and breeds to ensure our future food supply—but we must take steps to save them.

Author Charles Siebert highlights work being done by Seed Savers Exchange: a Slow Food USA partner in the Renewing America's Food Traditions alliance and chief seed source for many of the foods on Slow Food's Ark of Taste.  He also re-tells the story of the "Green Revolution" --an effort to feed the world through industrialized agriculture, which in a tragically ironic turn of events, has turned out to put us at risk of the aforementioned food crisis. With climate change and growing pest threats, putting all of our eggs in the proverbial "one basket" of GMOs or any monocrops, leaves us at high risk.  No matter what the biotech industry would have us believe, we do not need expensive, resource intensive, patented seeds to feed the world.  Thousands of varieties of plants and animals have evolved with traits uniquely suited for their particular ecosystem niche. And people have been feeding themselves healthfully in unique ways for centuries.  By industrializing the food system, we've ended up with an industrialized, heavily processed, unsavory diet...and an epidemic of diet related diseases to boot.

As I've mentioned many times before here and when public speaking: biodiversity is a marker of a health in any system... Diversity in the food supply and in nutrition help to keep a healthier planet and population of people. For some ideas on how to protect and restore food biodiversity on your plate or in your own backyard, check out these previous posts.  Here too. 

Grow Endangered Fruits & Vegetables

Being a champion for food biodiversity is something people can participate wherever their locale....the following is adapted from a message to Slow Food WiSE members and friends in the Milwaukee area.

Slow Food Wisconsin Southeast is encouraging folks in our region to join us in the effort to restore some special foods at risk of being lost. "Eat It to Save It" is the basic idea.... 


By growing endangered foods in your own backyard and by supporting farmers that do, you can help save these foods from extinction.

Recover Forgotten Fruit

The Milwaukee Apple—just one of hundreds of endangered fruits that have disappeared from our plates and has been replaced by fewer than a dozen commercial varieties.  

Last year, our Slow Food WiSE chapter planted the Milwaukee Apple bench grafted trees (along with the varietals Pewaukee, Oneida, Ashmead’s Kernel, Autmun Beauty and one we’ve named the  Stahl-Conrad  Apple after the last tree standing on the original orchard site) in the spring of 2010 at the Historic Stahl Conrad Homestead in Hale’s Corners.  This year, we will be planting more and are especially excited about sharing a couple of trees with Walnut Way!  Join Slow Food WiSE in bringing back the Milwaukee Apple by planting your own bench grafted trees—Tony from Maple Valley Orchards said he will continue taking orders throughout the month of April.  

Description of the Milwaukee Apple: This seedling apple was found under a Duchess tree and then developed by George Jeffrey of Milwaukee, WI.  It appeared in commerce around 1899.  It’s tough but thin skin is greenish yellow and marbled, dotted or blotched with reds. Its yellowish white flesh is tender and juicy, with a pleasant acid flavor good for most uses except as a fresh dessert apple.

                  –Renewing America’s Food Traditions Alliance, Forgotten Fruits of the Great Lakes Region Project

To learn more about Endangered Food of South Eastern Wisconsin, check out Food Biodiversity.

Grow Endangered Vegetables

“300,000 vegetable varieties have become extinct over the last century”

 – Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity (from FAO reports on Agricultural Biodiversity)

“The US Ark of Taste is a catalog of over 200 delicious foods in danger of extinction. By promoting and eating Ark products we help ensure they remain in production and on our plates.”    For more info: www.slowfoodusa.org   

Consider these Ark of Taste heirlooms for your garden:

Ark of Taste Vegetables that have ties to Wisconsin:

Beaver Dam pepper * seeds recently spotted at Outpost’s Capital Drive location

Amish Paste Tomato

Sheboygan Tomato

Additional Ark of Taste Vegetables that may be well suited for growing in Wisconsin:

Amish Deer Tongue lettuce

Grandpa Admire's lettuce

Speckled lettuce

Tennis Ball lettuce (black seeded)

Early Blood Turnip-rooted beet

Bull Nose Large Bell pepper

Fish pepper

Hinkelhatz Hot pepper

Jimmy Nardello's Sweet Italian Frying pepper

Sheepnose pimiento

German Pink Tomato

Red Fig Tomato

Aunt Molly’s Husk Tomato (ground Cherry)

Valencia Tomato

Lina Cisco’s Bird Egg Bean

True Red Cranberry bean

Hidatsa Shield Figure bean

Yellow Indian Woman Bean

Hutterite Soup bean

Mayflower Bean

Turkey’ Hard Red Winter Wheat

Roy’s Calais flint corn

***Most of these seeds may be sourced through Seed Savers Exchange.***

Be a Biodiversity Champion--Volunteer!
Slow Food WiSE notes an array of opportunities for you to get invloved in restoring our region's food traditions--planting antique apple trees, tabling at events, building a simple website for local farmers (such as local producers of Sorghum Syrup on the Ark of Taste), starting seeds, researching heritage breeds …and so much more!  Please do et us know if you are growing any of these foods or find others that are....contact me at Jcasey@slowfoodwise.org to get involved.

Reflections on Terra Madre 2010

 

Terra Madre

Having just returned from Terra Madre, Slow Food’s international conference in Torino, Italy, I find myself in awe of and inspired by the beautiful people I met from around the world—sustainable farmers and fishers, food producers, chefs, educators and activists working towards a food system that is good, clean, and fair. For everyone. Thousands of people from over 150 countries came together to share their stories. At the Opening Ceremony an Ethiopian man said, “Food is life. Food is us.” This seemed to me to sum up the spirit of Terra Madre. The practice of Terra Madre is found in the continuing use of traditional knowledge about food, land and sea stewardship to guide our way forward.

To some, this may sound obvious. To others, it may seem naive, unrealistic. But this is not pure rhetoric. In moving towards an industrialized, anonymous food system over the last several decades, we have lost our close connection to food and land and with great consequences. We are besieged by the problems of global warming, hunger, chronic disease, pollution, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, and the marked injustices faced by people on both ends of the spectrum—eaters and producers alike. The further away we’ve removed ourselves from the source of our food, from knowing and understanding our food, the worse things have become. A Guarani man from Brazil put it like this, “The world is sick.” But, he went on to say, “There are other ways. The world can and must change.”

Terra Madre stands for change through recognizing our roots—seeking innovative solutions to modern problems through the collective wisdom of our tried and true foodways. Those sane traditions that have kept people and places happy, healthy, and whole for generations; practices like sustainable fishing, ecologically sound farming, gardening, seed saving, cooking, and preserving can tie together the past and the future. Corporate interests would like us to believe that they have the key to feeding the world, but while they may have a monopoly, big ag can never feed the world in a way that fosters true health of people and places. We need the diversity of our worldwide communities instead of “putting all of our eggs in one basket.” The one size fits all mentality found in the practices of industrial ag’s GMOs, monocrops, and seed patenting only compounds the problems we face.

Over sixty meetings and workshops took place at Terra Madre, exploring subjects such as Food Policy, Sustainable Education, Healthy Food in Schools, Eco-Friendly Farming, Fair Trade, Agro-biodiversity, Food Sovereignty, Hunger & Poverty, Slow Fish, Cooks & Places, the Youth Food Movement, and so much more. One of the most exciting workshops I attended was a global meeting of indigenous people working together to create the Terra Madre Indigenous People Network. The TMIP Network will host their first meeting in 2011 to form a united voice, strong enough to take to the United Nations and to be heard around the world. “We have a lot to tell the world,” one woman explained. She affirmed what Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, had said at the Opening Ceremony, “Keepers of traditional knowledge; natives, farmers, women, elderly….should be listened to.”

Next door to Terra Madre was the Salone del Gusto –a vast artisanal food marketplace and exposition of food producers that embody the principles of Slow Food. Here, delegates from Terra Madre, and thousands of other visitors were able to taste food and drink from Europe, Asia, Africa, the America's and beyond. Raw milk cheeses, fruit preserves, cured meats, pastries, breads, dates, wild rice, legumes and beans, nut pestos and pastes, wine, spirits, seaweed, seafood, fermented foods, and much, much more were on display.  Foods especially in danger of extinction were highlighted through Slow Food's Presidia projects. (In the USA we have only a few Presidia, including wild rice or Manoomin, but the Ark of Taste, a catalogue of more than 200 foods, works along these same lines of preserving biodiversity.) The Salone helped me to truly understand the concept of terroir-- the unique flavors that come from the soil, geography, weather, of where a food was produced. One cheesemaker said to me, “I want you to taste my land.” And I did.

After the conference was over, I had an opportunity to explore a bit of my own cultural food heritage. Taking the train down to Sicily, I was able to find my grandmother’s birthplace. A small mountain village overlooking the sea with terraced groves of olives and citrus dotted with figs, persimmons, grapes, prickly pears, wild mint, fennel, hens, and sheep. In Sicily I tasted the sea in the anchovy, sardine, octopus, squid, eel, swordfish, and jackfish that the small fisherman had brought to the fish market that morning. I tasted the land in the olive oil, sheep’s milk cheeses, almonds, pistachios, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, beans, strawberries, grapes, olives, and vino. It was lovely. And the people of Sicily seemed warm and welcoming and truly happy. My friend said of the fishermen at the market, “they seemed the happiest people on the planet.” Imagine, living in close concert with your surroundings, living in balance, and finding pleasure… In my travels throughout Italy I witnessed people eating together. In homes, cafes, street-scapes, restaurants, markets I saw people enjoying each other’s company.

I left Italy at first with some reluctance, but in the end, returned with a renewed passion for seeking out the terroir of my home: the wild rice, winter squash, raw milk cheeses, hickory nuts, apples, organic oats in my pantry, the wild asparagus that will shoot up next spring, and the berries that will follow, the lake fish, the wild game. All places have foods worth celebrating. It is our job as humans to ensure that this food diversity remains. So, as my Sicilian grandmother would say, “Mangiare, mangiare!” Jc

Buried Treasures

Unearthing potatoes makes one think of buried treasure. Our row of Austrian Crescent and New Red elicited cries of delight as spud after glorious spud made its way into the light. We were digging for true sustenance.

The poor potato too often gets a bad rap. I hear often from clients who have been sadly misinformed that there’s no nutritive value to a potato. Whether this is a hangover from the Atkin’s diet craze or a result of misunderstood diabetic education, I’m not sure, but, “potatoes are just like white sugar” seems a common misconception. And while all things carbohydrate will eventually break down into blood glucose (our body’s preferred source of fuel) the potato has a lot more to offer than just the energy from it's storage of complex carbohydrates...

Potatoes are a good source of vitamin C, B-vitamins, potassium, phosphorous, magnesium as well as providing dietary fiber and cancer fighting antioxidants. Unfortunately, the most common form of potatoes enjoyed in the U.S.- french fries- do not get distinguishing marks for good nutrition. Ditto for processed potatoes like flakes and other such nonsense. The nutritive value remains highest when the potato remain whole- skin and all.

And while not a substitute for whole grains, unlike wheat, rye, barley, quinoa, and so on, potatoes are a good source of carbohydrate energy that can easily be grown and processed (processing is the key here) by home gardeners. Home grown carbohydrates = very local and very delicious.

Originally hailing from Peru, potatoes are now one of the world's largest crops- likely owing to the economic virtues of the energy dense tuber. The few varieties grown on a large scale and found in the grocery store (yellow, russet, and red) belie the wide diversity of potatoes that exist- there are literally thousands. A few of my favorites- Purple Peruvian, La Ratte, Adirondack Blue, Rose Finn apple, Red Norland, Russian banana, Russet Burbank. The lovely Ozette potatoe has made it’s way onto Slow Food’s Ark of Taste- a catalogue of delicious foods in danger of extinction. Farmers and gardeners keeping these varietals growing and in circulation improves biodiversity- a marker of health and resilance in our food system.

Sustainable Nutrition Bottomline:
Eat potatoes. Eat a wide variety of them. Eat them roasted, grilled, baked, and steamed. Seek out new varieties from local farmers- 'tis the season! Grow them at home- if not this year, maybe next. Seed Savers Exchange gorgeous catalogue can get you started.

If you have diabetes or suffer from “portion distortion”- a reminder: ½ cup of potato counts as one serving of carbohydrate and balanced meals include 3-5 servings of carbohydrate.