Archive for the ‘Farmers’ Category
Double Brook Farm Autumn Zinnias by Tasha O’Neill Those of you who know me, know [-- long before my own year in Provence --] that my favorite fragrance in the entire world is lavender. A close second, –with the added benefit of that pungent evergreen flavor–, is rosemary. When I lived in Cannes, lavender honey was the key treat of weekly visits to its marche/market. Fresh herbs were a given, in that land where the mistral infused the very air with rosemary. However, never did I expect to taste rosemary ice cream. [As a food stylist in Manhattan, there was nothing trickier than photographing ice cream --Robin McConaughy's masterful image of their unforgettable new specialty: ]
Robin McConaughy’s Rosemary-Caramel Ice Cream! I tasted this remarkable creation, –rich as Devonshire cream, darkly complex with caramel, redolent of rosemary–, in next-door Hopewell, at Double Brook farm. There is no better flavoring for lamb — but ice cream? Splendid, never-to-be-forgotten, and probably unequaled. Even Shakespeare insists, “rosemary — that’s for remembrance.”
Double Brook Farm Fresh Bean Array by Tasha O’Neill Those of you who read D&R Greenway newsletters and the local media, know well that sustainable farming is alive and well in Hopewell, thanks to Robin and Jon McConaughy. This past Friday, friend and fine-art-photographer Tasha O’Neill attended Jon and Robin’s Friday farm produce sale, our first visit to the farm for that purpose.
Double Brook Farm Hot Peppers by Tasha O’Neill (This energetic young couple had hosted D&R Greenway’s Down-to-Earth Ball a year ago. Their handsome cattle are carefully moved a prescribed number of times per day, from grass field to grass field, on D&R Greenway’s St. Michaels Farm Preserve off Aunt Molly Road in Hopewell.)
Double Brook Farm Tomatilloes, Tasha O’Neill THIS day, Tasha and I encountered Double Brook Farm’s raison d’etre, FRESH LOCAL PRODUCE and salumi (exotic meats from their own tenderly animals — Tasha bought lardo and I soppresata) cameras in hand. She was kind enough to send her images this morning, so I’m sharing them with you.
Double Brook Farm Salumi, Slow-Food-Snail-Seal-of-Approval Tasha O’Neill As we insist, over and over in these virtual pages, New Jersey is beautiful. She produces such spectacular produce, ‘right in our own back yards.’
Garden State Bounty, Double Brook Farm by Tasha O’Neill Here is Double Brooks web-site — Robin herself could be a fine art photographer: http://www.doublebrookfarm.com/
Double Brook Okra by Tasha O’Neill Put yourself on Robin’s e-mail list, so you’ll know when the farmstand is open again. When the store on #518 is fully restored and providing this sort of bounty year-round. When the restaurant, on #518, that exquisite red brick home, is brought back to life and its brick-lined paths trimmed and ready for visitors. Tasha and I and I had been invited to explore the flower paths, the herb gardens behind the soon-to-be restaurants. But we “had promises to keep…”, in another dear old NJ Town, Kingston. So we don’t have herb pictures for you.
Robin’s and Jon’s Rubies - Red Onions of Double Brook Farm by Tasha O’Neill But we do have some of the essence of Double Brook Farm in these new scenes.
Succulent, Tender, Subtly Irresistible Shiitakes of Double Brook by Tasha O’Neill I am awash in gratitude, as you know, to those who KEEP THE meaning of GARDEN in the Garden State.
Preserved Farm, Salem County, New Jersey cfe I thank you for reading NJ WILD so often and so studiously. Last month’s statistics included 3500 viewers, most of you staying on for a page and a half, from virtually every country/continent. How can that be? Because New Jersey is beautiful and bountiful, and we’re lucky enough to live and farm-shop here!
SALEM COUNTY’S BUCOLIC HISTORY - ALLOWAY CREEK cfe NJ WILD readers know my favorite places to travel are the wild ones of New Jersey, –especially central and southern–, particularly near water, salt and fresh. Often in quest of birds, rare yet plentiful. You also know that the places I choose are havens on many levels. However, I may not have emphasized enough that one can visit NJ WILD sites, even on major ‘Holidays’, without crowds.
Hancock House Historic Outbuilding - Revolutionary Site — cfe If you pull up NJ WILD, it has a search feature. Write in ‘Brigantine’ or ‘Pine Barrens’; ‘Sourlands’ or Sandy Hook; Bull’s Island, the Delaware River, Island Beach, etc. You’ll be given a string of posts on their wild beauty, and directions are often part of the saga. For deepest solitude, plan birders’ hours — first light and last light. In general, Take The Pretty Way, the back roads.
Salem Preserves — cfe Tomorrow, a friend and I will launch her new Prius into Salem and Cumberland Counties. We’ll be treated to golden stretches of marshland; to shimmering rivers with splendid Indian names, such as the Manumuskin. We’ll ride on and laugh at the sound of Buckshutem Road. We’ll wonder, as you always must down there, where on earth will we eat? Of course, there’ll be the freshest of Jersey Fresh produce on weathered stands in front of farmhouses of other centuries. Of course, we’ll slide coins into Trust Boxes, as we settle agricultural jewels into our sustainability bags to take home. We’ll see rare birds, especially eagles. Salem County held our only productive eagle nest during the grim DDT years, which my county (Somerset) is about to reinstitute, as it ‘adulticizes’ mosquitoes in the week ahead. Now, I am not kidding, in Salem and Cumberland Counties, we could see more eagles than we can count.
American Bald Eagle Floating - Brenda Jones Ditto osprey.
Osprey Claiming Nest, Brenda Jones Butterflies, too.
Cabbage Whites Nectaring — Brenda Jones
Especially ditto purple martins, but they had all left the Brigantine the last time I was there, weeks ahead of schedule. Theory is that our drought hinders the insect population to such a degree that martin migration is over. I’ll know tomorrow. If not, there could be hundreds of thousands of them, bending the marsh grasses, then darkening skies, along the Maurice River.
Alloway Creek, site of British Massacre of Colonial Soldiers, Salem County — cfe Look up these sites, and find them for yourselves. There won’t be anyone else on most of the roads to the unknown, actually usually forgotten, Delaware Bay.
Salem County, Tranquillity Base cfe
When both branches of the Millstone River, at #518 and Canal Road, show more pebbles than water When you can see white rocks, like rip-rap, ringing islands and fringing land along the Delaware River When the Mississippi River, in an aerial view, is more beige than blue - with surf-like curves of blonde sand like corn-row haircuts and her barges cannot carry full loads, and their pilots describe “the new river”, “the unknown” river when the Mississippi has turned from “The Big Muddy” to “The Big Sandy” When a meteorologist shows you a pie chart that is 90% hot red, 10% blue - (pie chart representing the year 2012; blue sliver cold extremes; all-conquering red being heat extremes) and she terms this a mere “anomaly” It’s time to face the C-words: CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE. When Terhune Orchards reports most fruit crops coming in one month early at least When any farm stand showed you that our strawberries not only began early, but finished bearing early When corn was head-high by the Fourth of July, some even tasseling out, now browning, then blackening with ceaseless drought It’s time to admit “the times are out of joint” weather-wise, as we have been warned for decades, re our ceaseless unremediated carbon emissions When there is no more soft rain, but only monsoon-blinding-downpours on the heels of waterless weeks Pollan and Hansen and Gore have alerted us for decades that extremes are the toll we pay for carbon excesses When hours of thunder and lightning don’t even dampen paving stones out my study window When trees along local highways, in July, sp0urt yellow brighter than highway stripes and it’s not flowers It’s time to FACE IT Not only is the weather severely out of balance in our time — it may well be past the famous tipping point. What we are experiencing on all fronts is the logical outcome of runaway consumption, ice-cap melt, glacial melt, and so forth and so on, ad infinitum the sky IS falling and nobody’s drawing correct conclusions, let alone turning excess around As your NJ WILD reporter, I cannot rhapsodize about nature, today, let alone insert pretty pictures. Nature is turning into a corpse before our eyes, and we’re talking about the equivalent of curls and manicure upon a corpse. Yes, I’ve been to what’s left of her beauty, a forest here, a river there, kayaking on the canal. I feel no better than Nero, fiddling while my beloved Nature burns, sometimes quite literally up in flames… Who is doing WHAT to turn this around? (to paraphrase Pogo re meeting the enemy) — There is extinction on the menu, and it is us. WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?
Winter’s Fruits from Farm Markets cfe NJ WILD readers know I have been ‘hors de combat’ for some months now, recently remedied with hip/femur replacement. Beginning walks in nature — so glad to have feet on green growing matter and real earth after all those hospital and rehab strolls. One of the first events I’ll be visiting, of course, will be Indoor Winter Farm Markets - always a treasure to me, as NJ WILD readers know.
Bill Flemer’s Riverside Bluegrass Band at D&R Greenway Johnson Education Center cfe January 14, D&R Greenway, where I work, will host this constellation of foods, hand-made items, homemade music, and the like.
Brilliantly Crafted and Named Cherry Grove Cheeses at D&R Greenway cfe Our barn is always a convivial setting for parties - usually art (new exhibit, Textures and Trails, awaits on its weathered walls.) Music reverberates among the ancient beams, most from 1900, some from the 1800’s. Horses, cows, chickens, pigs and eggs once filled the stalls where we now work and you enjoy art and science to further preservation.
Home from Indoor Winter Farm Market - Slow Food/D&R Greenway cfe This from Jim Weaver, Founder/Chef of Tre Piani Restaurant at Forrestal as well as co-founder of Slow Food Central Jersey. Enjoy and join us! You’ll not only be happier for it, you’ll be healthier, And so will New Jersey land, farmland and her farmers.
New Jersey Farm Market Produce - grown and sold the ‘Slow’ Way… cfe ================ PRESS RELEASE ================
Contact: Beth Feehan, 609 577-5113, bfeehan@comcast.net
Stockton, NJ: Slow Food Central New Jersey presents an indoor winter farm market at the Johnson Education Center, a beautifully restored barn from 1900, on the grounds of the D&R Greenway in Princeton. D&R Greenway is located at One Preservation Place off of Rosedale Road in Princeton. This market will run from 10am-2pm. Visit www.drgreenway.org for directions.
Why NJ Farmstands, cfe
On February 19th, Tre Piani Restaurant in Forrestal Village in Princeton hosts the Market from 11am-3pm. Tre Piani is the original site where the Markets started seven years ago with Slow Food Central New Jersey. For directions to Tre Piani, visit www.trepiani.com.
Terhune Orchards at Slow Food/D&R Greenway Indoor Winter Farm Market cfe
Saturday, January 14 10am-2pm D&R Greenway Land Trust, Princeton 609 924-4646 www.drgreenway.org
For more information, call 609 577-5113. For up to date information on vendors, visit Slow Food Central New Jersey on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/279661868722992/.
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Why Choose Jersey Fresh: West Windsor Farm Market cfe
Cumberland County Fall Farm Bounty, CFE NJ Wild Readers are well aware of my passion for farms, farmers, farmlands and farm markets. The legendary Michele Byers, Executive Director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation, gives me willing, even eager permission to quote her recent column on these topics. Because, after all, she exults, “It’s all about education, spreading the word.” Count yourselves fortunate to have read and experienced the glory of NJ farms in these posts. And support Michele anywhere, everywhere, everyhow - in her campaigns to keep our NJ Green and Garden-y.
Farm Market Central - West Windsor Farm Market, NJ cfe by Michele S. Byers, Executive Director, New Jersey Conservation Foundation
Cumberland County Autumn, cfe
Cumberland County Harvest cfe
Gov. Chris Christie recently approved a new package of bills that reinforce
A Ripeness of Melons, West Windsor Farm Market cfe One of the new laws requires “Jersey Fresh” and “Made with Jersey Fresh”
Cumberland County Decorative Corn cfe New Jersey grows more than 100 different varieties of fruits, vegetables and
An Apple A Day, Trenton Farmers Market cfe Only those growers who abide by the state’s quality grading program are
Cumberland County Bargains cfe So if you can’t make it to your local farm market in the upcoming fall
Cumberland County, Jersey Freshest cfe Just as New Jersey is a top national producer of fruits and vegetables, New
Symphony of Yellows, West Windsor Farm Market cfe The farmland preservation funds approved by Governor Christie will help
Home From the Trenton Farmers Market cfe For more information on the nation’s most popular farmers markets, go to
Peach Abundance, Trenton Farmers Market cfe To learn more about Jersey Fresh products, including
Awaiting Vincent West Windsor Farm Market cfe And if you’d like more information about conserving New Jersey’s precious
Farmstand Bounty, cfe NJ WILD readers know my passion for farm markets. What you may not realize is my nearly phobic reaction to supermarkets, with a couple of exceptions (Wegmans being one). What I view with enormous horror is those Weather Channel scenes of people madly buying milk and so forth before storms. So this week’s Category 2, then 1 Hurricane tenses me in ways not shared by most. On Friday, inadvertently, I found the ideal solution to readying for a storm. Drive over through Hunterdon County to the Delaware River, have a lovely breakfast at Miels, then head upriver and downriver on the Pennsylvania, then New Jersey sides. Our river has never looked more tranquil - to the point that rare houses were mirror-reflected in nearly still water. Along her edges floated necklaces of rhapsodic people, in flamingo-pink, buttercup-yellow and hot blue tubes. What does this have to do with hurricane-prep? Along the way, stop at every roadside stand. Pick up absolutely vine-ripened solid round tomatoes, in a crooked shady lane in front of a McMansion, of all things. No one tends this roadside stand - there is an honor box. There aren’t even prices. You just decide and tuck in your money. You can also buy white eggs and ice-green squash. At another tiny stand, gather field bouquets enriched with hardy zinnias in pinata colors. Next to a huge bright green and yellow tractor, choose between white corn and yellow corn from a man who writes your purchase down on a piece of paper with a pencil. Try to find water for your fellow explorer in a country store next to a brook and the Pennsylvania (pretty much abandoned) version of our canal. Have the cheery proprietress say, “Water? Of course! I had 8 delivered this morning!” It’s not even noon, and her waters are all gone. Revel in the peace of a part of the world where 8 gallons of water is a lot. Stop beside a high wiry bridge back over the Delaware, which you hope won’t be threatened with the dire rains about to be our fate. Enjoy the hand-painted signs: CORN, PEACHES, TOMATOES, FLOWERS. Choose onions with Pennsylvania dirt still clinging to the roots. Pick up a couple of tiny, rosy, fresh garlic that will probably squirt you when you cut it, the way it does in France. Get some huge heirloom tomatoes under a hand-scrawled sign that says, “BEAUTY ISN’T EVERYTHING!” As you choose your peaches, tell the woman of the stand that, to you, all heirlooms are beautiful.
Interstate Walkway - Bull’s Island Footbridge cfe Drove slowly south on the NJ side to Bull’s Island, and walk that dazzling footbridge over the hushed Delaware. Think what drama is in store for your beloved river. Stop at Maresca’s in Seargentsville, so Emil can cut you four tiny filets, three to freeze; then medium-slice his home-smoked bacon and impeccably wrap each collection of meat in real waxy brown butcher’s paper. Relish his smile and that of the woman (his daughter?) who is so helpful, who finds you their freshly gathered eggs; their fresh mozzarella; praises (so you buy it) their olive oil; and admits to having baked the biscotti and the apricot-centered tiny butter cookies.
Sergeantsville Reflection, cfe
All the way home, know that, in addition to the flavors and the vibrant health of the foods you’ve gathered pre-Irene, you will be savoring these memories.
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Filed Under (Agriculture, Farmers, Food, Local Food, NJ WILD, Solitude, South of France) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 16-04-2011
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Sundays are the hardest days for expatriates, even in Provence.
Old Cannes — Le Suquet — from Old Port
It was on Sunday that I most missed family, when I languished without familiar people, views and rituals.
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Typical View as I’d Set Out for St. Tropez on Any Day But Sunday
Any other day, I’d be off on a jaunt, –through the Esterel Forest to St. Tropez; up to Nice for real Provencal foods at Lou NIssarda (where even my neighbors in the villa had never been!); over to the Picasso Castle, then the Musee Napoleon in Antibes; a walk out the back way, away from the sea, toward Vallauris; Roman days in Frejus. But Sundays, no. On Sundays, the French were likely to be out on their roadways, with their own unique responses to traffic, signals, signs and laws. On Sundays, I didn’t want to learn new things. I needed something familiar. Hard to come by in a strange land, even one I’d chosen with my entire being.
View From My Cannes Balcony - though I was closer to hotels
In my Cannes life, I quickly learned the only antidote for the homesickness of the expatriate - a very early visit to the Marche Forville in the steep and stony Old Town. The part of Cannes nobody knows - on rue Meynardier in Le Suquet, where I would attend Midnight Mass given in Latin, French and Provencal with dear new neighbors in a matter of months.
What would be somewhat familiar, of course, was food shopping.
What was anything but familiar was the sight of all those farmers, at 8 a.m., literally belly up to bars strung all alongside the old market, downing the local red wine from glasses more like tumblers than ‘ballons’. They’d had long hard drives into ‘the city’ from the country. They had a long day of sales ahead of them, followed by another drive back to their carefully tilled fields. One must be fortified.
Open-Air-Sided Marche Forville, Rue Meynardier, Cannes
It was fortification enough for me to stroll those echoing (open-air-sided) lanes. What always surprised was that the weather followed us IN there. Yes, certain rains - during my first days there, Nice Matin headlines blared, “The Rains of One Month in One Week-End” That was more urgent news than the dire stock-market plunge back home, October of 87. Pompiers - Firemen - were called and called, to pump out wine cellars… I was definitely not in Kansas.
Probably the only truly familiar food was olive oil. The charming man (all the Cannes stall people were charming - real, hearty, hardy, in peasant garb, proud of hands most often in the soil, and eager to share and to teach) asked me what kind of olive oil I preferred. I didn’t know there there was more than one kind. “Well, what kinds are there?,” I managed to ask. He answered at length, and I chose the one with the most beautiful name – ”fruitier”. He absolutely beamed: “C’est mon favorite!”, and gave me the bottle. As in, refused my francs. He had grown and harvested and pressed all the olives that rendered these varying hues and flavors of oil. His full life and pride were in every bottle. Needless to say, I went to him every time I needed olive oil thereafter! Which happened a whole lot more frequently than it had in my American life.
Tomatoes look this ripe in Provence all year round
I knew chevre (goat cheese) - so I went to the chevre lady. “Which chevre to you prefer?,” she inquired, glowing like the parent of a newborn. “What kinds are there?,” I asked anew. This belle dame offered me the chevre of the morning, the chevre of the week, the chevre of last month, or aged. These came four to a squat canning jar; submerged, of course, in olive oil the color of the sun. It was divine. In later weeks, I would try each ‘vintage’, savoring major and surprising differences. What really amazed were “crottins”, which the no-nonsense Provencals loved to offer to foreigners, because “crottins” are goat droppings - in other words, smaller rounds of chevre.
Next came the honey lady. “I would like to buy some honey, s’il vous plait,” I began. You KNOW what she asked. You know my response. This savvy apicultrice took me on a tour of the products of her very mobile bees. Acacia, I remember, and wild flowers (des fleurs sauvages), orange blossom of course. Absolutely new to me, and irresistible forever was lavender honey. Milky in color, slightly granular and yet so smooth - I who never put honey or sugar in tea or coffee, who don’t even LIKE sweets that much, could not sip tea at home from that morning on, without lavender honey.
You would think shopping for chicken for Sunday dinner would be normal (same word in French), familiar. Wrong! I had to wait for the chicken lady to finish her previous transaction (actually, I really wanted to buy her eggs.) A man bought a chicken. It was alive. She tied its legs together. After weighing it and the exchange of francs, she handed it to the man who walked out of the market, chicken flapping like an upside-down angel, until he faded from sight in the increasing crowd.
Very obvious foreigners were rare in the Marche, except for the date sellers. Childhood’s had come in long gold packages from my California aunt, the only good cook in that (former Ohio) family. Her dates had a kind of skin that was papery, a little unpleasant to little girls’ tongues. We usually chopped Aunt Helen’s dates into ‘her’ cookies or ‘her’ date/nut bread. The dates of the datesellers of Cannes came on a long gold stem, fresh from the tree! I had to have a golden string of dates- even though it looked like a life supply. When I sampled the first one, back home on l’Observatoire hill, the fruit was stunningly moist - as though the honey of my new apicultrice had somehow been infiltrated into these strange brown things.
Lavender Crop at Abbey of Senanque - which I did visit, but not in Lavender Time
Philippe Maille
(all pix from internet - not easy to come by old Provence nor La France Profonde…)
Fish - o.k. — Cannes is a working fishing port. I love fishing villages. This should be familiar. No, indeed! The small fishing boats of my new town, –brightly colored, very Van Gogh–, were only out for a handful of hours. The men would arrange their catch upon oilcloth, UNDER which was ice. The fish came from salt water, you see; Provencals insisted it dies in fresh water - loses all flavor, than which there is no greater crime in France. Each fisherman’s table was right out of Cezanne’s The Card Players – rickety dark legs, the top small and square.
A slendr tuyau, tube, drained meltwater from invisible ice into a bucket that had seen better days. Each fish table looked like a relief map of the mountainous region between Cannes and St. Tropez, without the cork oaks and the stunted pines. Lying on the mountains and slanting down into the valleys were fish. Only they didn’t lie. They actually leapt! into air, flipping bright tails, arching supple necks. Sometimes launching themselves right off that cold oilcloth and onto the Marche floor.
The Old Port, the hill of Le Suquet
There was absolutely not one whiff of what my daughters had called, wrinkling their pretty noses, “eau de fishmarket.” On the contrary, a hint of sea breeze was the present at best, ever enticing. No fish fresher. Living bouillabaisse.
By this time, my string bags were cutting into my fingers. If there were a wind, let alone a mistral, it would be whipping around my ankles, chilling feet and legs despite serious walking shoes and thick socks. Time to return to the car. (that tiny little, tinny little, expensive Renault, then Peugeot which passed for a car…)
First, however, to read with my Sunday meal - a new copy of Nice Matin. In the kiosk outside the Marche, I stopped to buy the paper (they don’t have Sunday papers on Sunday in Provence.) The venerable woman behind the cashregister, also waved away my francs. “Mais, pourquoi?”, I protested.
“Vous etes Americaine. Vous avez sauvez nous,” was her heartfelt answer.
“You are American. You saved us.”
I wasn’t homesick any more.
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Filed Under (Activism, Agriculture, Farm Markets, Farmers, Farmland, Farms, Food, NJ WILD, New Jersey) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 20-02-2011
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NEW JERSEY APPLE MIRACLES, CUMBERLAND COUNTY
NJ WILD readers well know that I love New Jersey. In fact, that first autumn of my year in Provence (in an unheated villa atop Cannes’ Observatoire Hill)I realized I had to return home because of apples.
Home being the United States. Home being New Jersey. For all my passion for France. Because Provence has lousy apples.
NJ WILD readers have read right along with me when I compare our Trenton Farm Market with the Cannes Marche, a.k.a., Marche Forville, and the Marche aux Fleurs in old Nice.
WEST WINDSOR FARM MARKET HARVEST
So it won’t surprise NJ WILD readers that I love our regional food magazine, Edible Jersey. For beauty alone. For the very HIGH calibre of its editor and writers. For dramatic photographs. For lively quotes. For taking me to farm markets when I’m snowed in, and causing me to relish food even when I am ‘under the weather’, as now…
TRENTON FARM MARKET FOODS READY FOR OVEN
Edible Jersey is free at so many places we frequent, such as Terhune Orchards on Cold Soil Road, for example. I read it cover to cover, copy articles for others, and cannot generally bear to throw them away - although I’m a demon for ‘use it or lose it’ re objects! The magazine features Four-Star writers, who are passionate about savory healthy local food, and preserving the lives and lifeways of farms, farmers and farmlands in the Garden State.
Here is grand news, re Nancy Painter, winning a 2011 EDDY Award for Best Editorial Letter FROM and Editor, for “Finding Our Way Home.”
HOME FROM THE MARKET- NJ FARM, OF COURSE
For many of us, New Jersey IS home, and we’re finding more and more reasons to be glad of this. Enjoy Nancy’s paean to our unsung state:
EDIBLE NEWS
Jersey brings home the gold! At the annual gathering of Edible Communities’ publishers in California last week (did you know there’s now more than 65 Edibles across the U.S. and Canada?), our own Nancy Painter received one of the organization’s top awards for publishing excellence: a 2011 EDDY Award for Best Editorial-Letter from the Editor for her letter “Finding Our Way Home” that appeared in our Summer 2011 issue. If you missed it, be sure to take a read!
| AT THE TABLE |
 Finding Our Way Home Summer 2010 I fell in love with New Jersey in the summer. My dad was a company man, in a company that tightly rationed its meager allotment of vacation days. But his passion for the sea, earned along with his Navy stripes during the war, led him to want to spend every possible vacation moment at the Jersey Shore. So, each summer, sometime ‘round late July, our parents would pack us four kids into the car and we would head off from our upstate New York home to our annual family vacation at the Jersey Shore. To Dad, it was paradise; and it became our paradise, too. And, along with all that the Jersey Shore came to mean to us—the waves, the sand, the friends from other places, the boardwalk—there was the food. New Jersey meant sweet corn, cream-filled donuts, lobster and scallops, Mr. Peanut, the Brigantine Diner, juicy tomatoes, juicier peaches, and hand-churned ice cream. These were our family’s luxuries, as savored and as special as the one night each vacation when we would all dress up for dinner at Zaberer’s or The Smithville Inn, enjoying meals that defined “fine dining” for me for years to come. What I didn’t know at the time was that the New Jersey of our travels was a land in transition. Sure, we rolled up the car windows against the industrial smells on the northern New Jersey Turnpike; we listened to the devastating news from Newark in the heat of July 1967; we saw houses multiply and then multiply again over the years, seeping out across open spaces. But I didn’t realize that a vital aspect of the Garden State was vanishing. Bonnie Blader points out in “Open Spaces; OpenMinds” (page 49) that New Jersey lost over 13,600 farms—an average of nearly three farms a day—between 1950 and 1963. As its population exploded and farms were plowed under by highways and development, the Garden State once hailed for its bountiful fresh food and agriculture began to fade away. But, today, at last, the tide is turning. On page 23, Secretary of Agriculture Douglas H. Fisher writes that, after hitting a low of 8,100 farms in 1990, New Jersey now has over 10,300 farms— topping the 10,000 mark for the first time since 1966. That is profoundly exciting news, and it’s just one part of the story. With this issue, we celebrate our third anniversary and the belief that the Garden State is rising again, thanks to the many people and organizations who are working so hard to make things right, to create a community that thrives within the knowledge that, especially when it comes to food and environment, every action causes a reaction. SinceEdible Jersey launched in the summer of 2007, it has been our honor to cheer these people and groups on in our pages. They are the heart of a new Garden State. New Jersey still has it all: shoreline, farmland, big city, rural township. The most densely populated state in the nation, we also have the most to lose and the most to gain in terms of our food and agriculture. If we can find our way home to a true Garden State for the 21st century, we can show the world how it should be done. It’s happening. Pay attention, get involved and know what food means to you and your community. There’s no better time than summer to join the journey. Welcome to the Garden State. Nancy Brannigan Painter |
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Filed Under (Activism, Agriculture, Butterflies, Farmers, Farmland, Farms, Food, Jersey Fresh) by Carolyn Foote Edelmann on 14-02-2011
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READERS, BEWARE - USDA WANTS TO LEAD US DOWN EVER FARTHER ALONG THE PRIMROSE PATH OF GENE-ALTERING. Immediate danger is to caterpillars who become butterflies, especially MONARCH BUTTERFLIES. Ultimate danger is to humans. Your NJ WILD author’s personal theory is that all this acid reflux with which we are suddenly plagued, all this irritable bowel syndrome is directly related to splicing ROUND-UP, that dire poison, into grains. Its effect upon caterpillars is to DESTROY THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. Think about it… What’s YOUR theory? All the more reason to preserve land (as does D&R Greenway Land Trust in Princeton), especially farmland. And to shop at local farmstands where you actually get to talk with the farmers who grew your foods and carried them to market. There’s a lot more to Jersey Fresh than freshness. It’s up to us to counter agribusiness at every turn. We’re lucky enough to have many year-round Pennsylvania Dutch Farm Markets in our state, as well - the nearest being just north of Kingston (Kendall Park); one in Columbus, reachable off #295; and one on the highway to Long Beach Island. The Trenton Farmers’ Market is ever available. Save the farmlands alongside D&R Greenway Land Trust. Save the farmers with your wallet at their markets. By these means, you save your state, your state’s economy, your own food and that of your children, your own health and that of your children. Small farmers know to nourish the land, not exploit…. Your ever-vigilant NJ WILD author, Carolyn |
USDA DECISION ON GE ALFALFA LEAVES DOOR OPEN FOR CONTAMINATION, RISE OF SUPERWEEDSROGUE AGENCY CHOOSES “BUSINESS AS USUAL” OVER SOUND SCIENCE CENTER ANNOUNCES IMMEDIATE LEGAL CHALLENGE TO USDA’S FLAWED ASSESSMENT The Center for Food Safety criticized the announcement today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that it will once again allow unlimited, nation-wide commercial planting of Monsanto’s genetically-engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa, despite the many risks to organic and conventional farmers USDA acknowledged in its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). On a call today with stakeholders, Secretary Vilsack reiterated the concerns surrounding purity and access to non-GE seed, yet the Agency’s decision still places the entire burden for preventing contamination on non-GE farmers, with no protections for food producers, consumers and exporters. “We’re disappointed with USDA’s decision and we will be back in court representing the interest of farmers, preservation of the environment, and consumer choice” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director for the Center for Food Safety. “USDA has become a rogue agency in its regulation of biotech crops and its decision to appease the few companies who seek to benefit from this technology comes despite increasing evidence that GE alfalfa will threaten the rights of farmers and consumers, as well as damage the environment.” On Monday, the Center sent an open letter to Secretary Vilsack calling on USDA to base its decision on sound science and the interests of farmers, and to avoid rushing the process to meet the marketing timelines or sales targets of Monsanto, Forage Genetics or other entities. CFS also addressed several key points that were not properly assessed in the FEIS, among them were:
“We in the farm sector are dissatisfied but not surprised at the lack of courage from USDA to stop Roundup Ready alfalfa and defend family farmers,” said Pat Trask, conventional alfalfa grower and plaintiff in the alfalfa litigation. The FEIS comes in response to a 2007 lawsuit brought by CFS, in which a federal court ruled that the USDA’s approval of GE alfalfa violated environmental laws by failing to analyze risks such as the contamination of conventional and organic alfalfa, the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds, and increased use of glyphosate herbicide, sold by Monsanto as Roundup. The Court banned new plantings of GE alfalfa until USDA completed a more comprehensive assessment of these impacts. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals twice affirmed the national ban on GE alfalfa planting. In June 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban on Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Alfalfa until and unless future deregulation occurs. “Last spring more than 200,000 people submitted comments to the USDA highly critical of the substance and conclusions of its Draft EIS on GE Alfalfa,” said Kimbrell. “Clearly the USDA was not listening to the public or farmers but rather to just a handful of corporations.” Share This | |
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About Author
by Tasha O'Neill
Carolyn Foote Edelmann is a poet, writer and photographer on nature, travel, history and art.
She considers nature in general and the D&R Canal and Towpath in particular her university, mentor and constant inspiration - particularly from a kayak.
Her quest is the wild that infuses our beleaguered state, the wild out our windows.
