Archive for the ‘local food’ Category
July 12th, 2010 by Outreach Department
How long are you willing to wait for locally grown strawberries and are they worth the wait? Those big, perfectly shaped orange-red berries that always precede the locals are tempting, especially now that food science has been able to sweeten them up. Never “designed” for shipping, local berries are juicy, soft, and a deep, blood red color. Their sweet/tart flavor is something I dream about in January. By March I am all but counting the days until local berries ripen. I even view the arrival of the big orange berries as a sign that it won’t be much longer until local berries are ready. My intuition tells me that dark red color is a sign of higher antioxidant levels and the tart part of the flavor is what gives strawberries their exceptionally high vitamin C content. This is not why I eat them, I am fulfilling a year long wait for that combination of flavor, juiciness, and color that is so deeply satisfying. It is the strawberry who taught me to wait for fruits and vegetables to be in season where I live. I grew up eating Willamette Valley berries so I cannot be fooled by the orange berries from afar. I will wait, and I wait for other foods too like corn, tomatoes, and peaches.
Tags: Strawberries
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August 31st, 2009 by Matthew
“A Georgia peach, a real Georgia peach, a backyard great-grandmother’s orchard peach, is as thickly furred as a sweater, and so fluent and sweet that once you bite through the flannel, it brings tears to your eyes.” -Melissa Fay Greene
Dave Belzberg is no georgia-peach-growing great grandmother. But given the right mood and circumstances, his peaches just might bring tears of joy and delight to your eyes. They are really that good.
Dave has been growing his organic peaches at Rolling Hills Farm in Southern Oregon (Griffin Creek area) for almost 24 years. Before moving south to the Rogue Valley, Canadian-born Dave grew plums up in British Columbia for 10 years. That gives him almost 35 years of experience in the orchards!
To view full blog with pictures and links click here!
Tags: Ashland Food Co-op, Eat Local Week, Heirloom Foods, Local Farms, local food, organic, Slow Food, sustainability
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August 20th, 2009 by Matthew
“Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.” -Frank Lloyd Wright
When Ken and Susan Muller first looked at the Rogue Valley with their new farm in mind, they saw an abundance of exceptional produce farms and talented produce farmers. Operations like Whistling Duck, Barking Moon, Hi Hoe Produce, Blue Fox, Rolling Hills, and a multitude of others were getting the job done, and doing it well.
But the one thing that Ken and Susan didn’t see much of was poultry. Specifically, high quality pastured poultry and eggs. And so a little over two years ago, equipped with family histories in farming, experience and skills gained from WWOOFing, and a healthy dose of inspiration, Ken and Susan set out to fill this niche and transform Margaret Krout’s (Susan’s mother) seven acres into a bonafide pastured poultry operation.
Today that transformation is complete. The infrastructure is in place, the chicken houses are beautiful, their flocks are growing strong, and their customers are spreading the word. And as a new customer myself, it’s time for me to help spread the word about this amazing local food resource!
There have already been some great articles about Rogue Valley Brambles that are worth a peek: Mail Tribune, Friends of Family Farmers, Daily Tidings. But in this article, I want to delve a little deeper into all the amazing foodstuffs the farm is producing and let you know where and when you can find Rogue Valley Brambles.
FARM FRESH EGGS:
Rogue Valley Brambles’ eggs are truly in a different class. They’re beautiful, rich in color, extremely fresh, flavorful, and sustainably raised. They’re some of the best eggs I’ve seen, and well worth the cost and a trip to the growers market to find them. This is what sets them apart from the rest:
COLOR – Ken and Susan’s eggs are so beautiful you’re almost tempted not to touch them. Many of the rare breeds that they raise (Araucana, Wyandotte, Buff Orpington, Delaware, Polish, New Hampshire,Cochin, Jersey Giant, and Gold Sex Link) lay eggs with unique and beautifully colored shells. The blue eggs from their Araucana hens are particularly striking………
To view full blog with pictures and links click here!
Tags: Ashland Food Co-op, Eat Local Week, Heirloom Foods, Local Farm, Local Farms, local food, organic, Pastured Poultry, Rogue Valley, Slow Food, sustainability
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July 30th, 2009 by Matthew
“Bread, MILK and butter are of venerable antiquity. They taste of the morning of the world.” -Leigh Hunt
THE MAGIC OF MILK
Today, in contrast to this statement, most of us humans view milk as an ordinary commodity. A pasteurized, homogenized industrialized, and subsidized commodity. We “creatures of the breast” (mammals) have forgotten what an extraordinary substance milk really is.
In its purest form, milk is a magical, living fluid that contains all the vitamins, minerals, nutrients and calories necessary for new mammalian life. Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, puts this fact in a larger context when he states that:
[Milk] gives newborn [mammals] the advantage of ideally formulated food from the mother even after birth, and therefore the opportunity to continue their physical development outside the womb. The human species has taken full advantage of this opportunity; we are completely helpless for months after birth, while our brains finish growing to a size that would be difficult to accommodate in the womb and birth canal. In this sense, milk helped make possible the evolution of our large brain, and so helped make us the unusual animals we are.
The cultural practice of dairying and drinking the milk of other animals (sheep & goats, and later yaks, camel, cattle) is believed to have originated over 10,000 years ago, and has also had a significant affect on human development. Although milk from dairy animals was not as beneficial and suited to us as mother’s milk, its efficient source of calories and nutrients played a major role in the success and spread of early human civilization.
Pholia Farm Cheese
And perhaps most importantly (at least to the culinarily-inclined among us), milk is the foundation from which the myriad of other amazing dairy products are built. Cream, butter, ghee, yogurt, buttermilk, creme fraiche, sour cream, koumiss, kefir, and thousands of fresh and aged cheeses are all derived from milk.
This all being said, we have most likely forgotten about the magic of these substances because most of today’s milk is the opposite of magical……
To view full blog with pictures and links click here!
Tags: Ashland Food Co-op, Eat Local, Eat Local Week, local food, milk, sustainability, Umpqua Dairy
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July 17th, 2009 by Matthew
In Southern Oregon, Eat Local Week 2009 will take place the week of September 12th – 19th, coinciding with Organically Grown Week throughout Oregon. Ashland Food Co-op has teamed up with THRIVE in organizing a week packed with events: the Eat Local Festival 2009, the week-long Eat Local Challenge, two exclusive Movie Screenings of the food documentary Ingredients, two Local Farm Tours, and more. Ashland Food Co-op, THRIVE, and the other Eat Local Week sponsors hope to build upon the already strong local food movement and get the community excited about and aware of the abundance of amazing local foods found in and around the Rogue Valley.
Over the next two months, I will be traveling to local farms, vineyards and fisheries in search of agricultural (and aquacultural*) excellence – taking pictures, meeting some amazing growers and producers, and learning a few things along the way. You will be able to find these blogs on the Ashland Food Co-op Blog and on Return to Tradition. My partner in crime, Mary Shaw, will be examining another side of local food on her blog, Local Pantry. In particular she will explore local food preservation, traditions, lore, and recipes.
Well….it’s hot, it’s Friday, and there’s a salmon to cured and smoked. I’m off.
Tags: Eat Local Week, Local Farms, local food, Sustainable Food
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