The Myth of Sustainable Agriculture

Obvious disturbance (in CA), with subsidized water

Cover crops, yet another disturbance

See The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith-- interesting analogies

Cover crops redux

 Small-scale on-site generated soil fertility -- multi-species cover crop, on former wheat land

Fertile soil, even under marsh marigold, buttercup ("weeds")

Vigorous root growth, fertile soil

Various means of composting, all with pros and cons

Vigorous cover crop growth

Over-wintered greenhouse soils, in need of compost

Spring chickens

Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rock (one week old)

Spring, chickens foraging outside

...and a watchful cat

 

Our lovely Bellingham Community Food Co-op event — Tuesday, May 1 — a Slow Food celebration........The Slow Food movement links the pleasure of preparing and eating food to environmental sustainability and food community resilience, as embodied by marine forager Jennifer Hahn, master chef Charles Claassen of the Book Fare Café, Fourth Corner Slow Foodie Lisa Dailey, ACME Farm and Kitchen's Cara Piscitello, and BellinghamRealFood's Daravan, more.

Gigi Berardi

Gigi Berardi and Lisa Dailey

Jennifer Hahn

Charles Claassen

Cara Piscitello

Living the Good Life -- processing (and baking with) our wheat

The process began with seeding the winter grains some time ago (see earliest posts) in our backyard homestead in Bellingham, WA. Then -- separating the grain from the chaff, in a process called threshing and winnowing. Great video on this at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgVtZY3ouYM.

Then the extra-cleaning begins, making sure there are no small stones present, before grinding into flour...

followed by making the sponge (Tassajara Bread recipe, one I've been using for decades)...

kneading bread for rolls

The "sponge" rising

Making pizza with local cheese and home-grown/-made tomato sauce

Crackers and pizza dough with our own wheat, pizza with heirloom tomatoes, 

Samish Bay cheese, and venison sausage

Final products: Bread, pizza, crackers

Trussing a chicken (delivered by Acme Farm + Kitchen)

..... and beautiful macrobiotics, prepared by chef and food coach Teresa Rieland, see

sweetveg.org

Tuesday food event at the Bellingham Community Food Co-op

A huge success..... with natural forager/adventure sea kayaker Jennifer Hahn, Fourth Corner Slow Food, RealFoodBellingham, and ACME Farms+Kitchen.  May 1 at the Bellingham Community Food Co-op. See my article in the April issue of the Co-op Community News, "Slow Food: Resilient Food Systems."
The event featured examples of environmental sustainability and food community resilience. But leaving a clear message that practice, experience is everything. Experiencing real, slow food; farming -- struggling with farm-generated fertility, more. Refreshments were provided by Charles Claassen of the Book Fare Café. It was divine.