Celebrate the culture of agriculture & share skills (Growing! Cooking! Eating!)

Cornelia's Blog – June 2009 Archive (6)

Book: "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer" by Novella Carpenter

Novella is a fearless and often hilarious Oakland city slicker, determined to achieve a respectable level of self-sufficiency while still reaping the rewards of urban life. Her book is a chronicle of how she did it, what went wrong and what went well. Here is the first chapter for free:

NYT exerpt

Here is a… Continue

Added by Cornelia on June 30, 2009 at 12:08pm — No Comments

The building of a potato condo

The Building of a Potato Condo

From GardenFreshLiving blog:

"This is bio-intensive gardening and vertical gardening at its best!

The idea is that you build a wooden box and plant potatoes in the bottom layer. As the potatoes grow, you keep adding wood boards (and soil) to keep… Continue

Added by Cornelia on June 25, 2009 at 3:30pm — 1 Comment

Preacher Fred of the Church of the Heirloom Tomato - from Public Radio Kitchen blog

http://publicradiokitchen.org/2009/06/24/for-this-preacher-tomatoes-are-gospel/

An excerpt, below:

...In a cluttered front yard tableau that might be called American primitive, or uncontemporary casual, (in which Fred demonstrates his priority is growing, not prettifying), you can find a hundred and eighty varieties of genuine heirlooms. Let’s see, Fred’s got sungold, Brandywine, Yellow… Continue

Added by Cornelia on June 24, 2009 at 3:49pm — No Comments

An intern's day on the farm - "the sowing holds the potential..."

From the Atlantic:

"So you do, in fact, reap what you sow. Eventually. The elaborate labors in between make that harvest possible.

In my second week on the farm, I learned, for example, to thin beets. Tiny beet seeds tend to cluster, so plants spring up in mini jungles that won't give anyone room to grow. Thinning means crouching--or, when your back aches, crawling--through baby beet beds to pluck out all but the healthiest plants, four fingers' width apart."… Continue

Added by Cornelia on June 22, 2009 at 10:33am — No Comments

NYT: “You can vote to change the system,” (the broken food system) “three times a day.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/opinion/21kristof.html

"Growing up on a farm near Yamhill, Ore., I quickly learned to appreciate the difference between fresh, home-grown foods and the commercial versions in the supermarket.

Store-bought lettuce was always lush, green and pristine, and thus vastly preferable to lettuce from my Mom’s vegetable garden (organic before we called it that). Her lettuce kept… Continue

Added by Cornelia on June 21, 2009 at 10:02am — No Comments