Somewhere in Maine

Yay!  Discovery of the joys of supporting your local farmstand. 
More more!  Those big box stores will be no more.

psst.  One beef with the linked article/blog thingy.  If you're touring your local farm, be ready to put in some serious work!  These guys are busy growing your food, would love to chat, but need to get a ton of stuff done.   (Exceptions made for NY Times reporters, who will produce tremendous amounts of free advertising)

Salad Recall

There's a recall on bagged salad coming from potential salmonella contamination.  Kudos to Taylor Farms Retail for recalling this stuff BEFORE any people reported being sick.  Though, I can't help but wonder if this extra caution is due to the recent cantaloupe catastrophe with listeria.  Extra scrutiny is good, but why does it have to follow on the heels of people getting sick and dying?  It's not a new pattern of course, our society always examines circumstances surrounding a disaster very carefully, until there is a more exciting...

OMG! Lindsay Lohan got arrested again!?

...Squirrel!

Attention span of our collective consciousness?  A 6 months, tops.
But you know who has a long term view of your health and environmental health?  Your local organic farm.  These guys care about the soil from decades to generations.

And they take good care of their products,
to keep the products safe,
because they care about you,
because you vote with your fork.

 

Urban Gardens in Detroit

So Detroit has been pretty crummy thanks to our economic gyrations.  The upside is that there have been a number of empty lots converted into gardens.  Some people are even growing on many different lots.  One guy is making 1000 bales of alfalfa!  All within the city limits?  Now thats local.

The trick is, gardens and green spaces in urban environments make places more desirable to live. (Yay!...but)  More desirable locations fetch higher prices, and are prone to development, which paves over, or pushes out the gardens.  (Dammit!) The farms around Detroit are also in a legal gray area that gives them no protection.

What to do?  Get your fork of course!