Viva Italia!

We are all about resilience thinking, cooking, shopping, eating.

Join us at the Miller Hall Collaborative Space 2-4 tomorrow (Nov. 15)! Students made beautiful posters for the Ecogastronomy course. Hope to see you there, or at an info session on the 29th. 

Europe-bound, including Switzerland this time

3-day, 3-night Switzerland excursion --  three-day study tour on biodynamic agriculture, Goethean art and science, and biodynamic foods. This excursion serves an as introduction to our work in Italy. It is available only to those students registered for the 2013 Ecogastronomy summer intensive.

Thursday, June 20 – Sunday, June 23

Additional fee (beyond the Ecogastronomy course fee): $575

Includes 

•    Section visits and farm work at the Goetheanum (Dornach, Switzerland)

•    Lectures at the Glass Haus (Goetheanum)

•    Tour of the Goetheanum and grounds

•    Visit to the Ita Wegman Klinik (Arlesheim, Switzerland)

•    Hillside hikes

•    Accomodations for three nights at Begegnungszentrum (Dornach, Switzerland)

•    Group cooking and dining at self-catering facilities in Begegnungszentrum  (food cost are extra)

Includes accommodation at Haus Friedwart or Begegnungszentrum in Dornach with biodynamic foods.

Informational Session, Monday, Oct. 29, Summer Ecogastronomy Intensive in Florence

Here's a note about the informational session on Monday, Oct. 29. 

Join us for another summer of intensive food study at WWU and in Italy -- June 17-19 (WWU, online option available) and June 23-July 7 (in Florence). Enrollment limited to 18. See http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/eesp/summer/swissitaly/index.shtml

Optional excursions, Switzerland and Lopez Island (San Juan islands)

Informational session for this ecogastronomy intensive is Monday, Oct. 29 in CH 137,  2:30 pm....please spread the word.

Florence, Italy Faculty-led Study Abroad Info Session

When

Mon, October 29, 2:30pm – 3:30pm

Where

College Hall 137

Description

Learn more about this Faculty-led Study Abroad course in Florence, Italy. Travel with Western students and faculty while earning credit through a faculty-led study abroad program.

Participants will:

•           Study Italian language and food culture at the University of Florence’s sensory taste sciences department.

•           Learn about food aesthetics and sensory taste science in the home of northern and central Italy’s “Slow Food” movement.

•           Experience Italian farmhouse cooking in a hands-on culinary intensive.

•           Participate in carbon-offsetting at Inspiration Farm in Whatcom County (optional).

Here are some images from 2011.

And, here are some images from 2012.

...and busy September -- Whatcom Farm Tour and more slow food

 Farm Tour with Farmer Ben

...and good pies

 ...first harvest of plums

and the flock's first egg.

Busy August -- From One Straw Revolution (revisited) to good, slow food

Larry Korn at Inspiration Farm in Whatcom County

...and at Village Books, promoting Sowing Seeds in the Desert

 Larry Korn walked with Masanobu Fukuoka

 ...back to Slow Food, on Shaw Island

 ...the farm enterprise

...and a gathering for 130 or so. With much slow food available.

Farm Professor George Conneman: A Tribute

My recent trip to Cornell had a very nice surprise: A visit with Professor George Conneman, my Farm Business Management professor in Agricultural Economics in the 1970s at Cornell. I attribute so much of what I do and teach now to the classes I took in Agricultural Economics and Agronomy at Cornell. Dr. Conneman was very gracious, even to a city girl from L.A.

Fourth from the bottom, Gigi Berardi

Professor Conneman, in his office at Cornell

The Cow Whisperer

Also in the Ithaca/Watkins Glen area, the cow whisperer -- Melanie Janke. Ms. Janke knows by name (she named them) 175 of the 700 cows she milks on my friends' dairy farm in Schuyler county. Her experience is vast, her wisdom the same -- and there's no one more sensitive to sick and needy livestock. And she's gracious, too -- she gave me some good pointers on cow handling. They worked!

Ithaca is not just gorges, but the most delicious of foods (August 2013)

Ithaca Farmer's Market -- going strong for almost 40 years.

Slow Food for Symphony Camp

Fresh, Local, Organic (more or less), Sustainable, Seasonal....FLOSS for young musicians (working with a sympathetic institution, much is possible!). July 2012.