Colorful French Fries!

We've been turning some of our gourmet potatoes into these colorful and delicious French Fries. It's interesting how the keep their colors - hues of rosy red, deep purple, yellow and white. Don't they make a unique presentation - a change from the run-of-the mill fries?
Want to try some yourself? We still have quantities of these colors available. Call (814-274-8004) or email (metzgerfarm@gmail.com) for information.
We also have potato assortment bagged and available for sale at Costa's ShurSave Food Shop in Coudersport at the Schoolhouse Natural Foods just outside Eldred.

Agricultural Coexistence

Farmers As Healers

I sat in a packed meeting room to spend some time with Daphne Miller, M.D. last week. The audience was a roomful of farmer-types, gathered for the opening keynote of PASA's 23rd Annual Farming For The Future Conference in State College.

Dr. Miller has most recently published her second book "Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing" that was the focus for her highly-engaging talk.

In researching her book, she spent time at seven sustainable family farms around the country - including time with one of my heroes, Wendell Berry (see blog post from January 2014).

She says, "The more I learned about the science of farming, the more I recognized its connections to medicine. For example, did you know that our gut physiology actually mirrors what happens in the soil? The intricate nutrient exchange between soil, microbe and plant is like the dance that takes place in our intestine, involving the mucosal lining, resident microbes and food (plants and animals). The biochemical makeup of soil also roughly matches ours, with a similar nitrogen-to-carbon ratio and the same range for normal pH (6.0 to 7.5). In fact, the carbon, nitrogen and every other mineral and vitamin building block in our body is derived from soil (via our food)."
She continues, "In other words, we are not simply nourished by the soil, we are of the soil! So, starting from that premise, it stands to reason that we should care for our bodies in the same way that a mindful farmer cares for the soil. And, of course, we should treat our farms and soil as if they are an extension of our body."
Dr. Daphne (as she is called by her patients at a busy Family Practice office in San Francisco) organized her talk around five health lessons to illustrate connections between health and soil. Her Health Lessons included:

• Farm As Vitamin
• Farm As Immune Support
•  Farm As Community
• Farm As A Model For Cancer Care
• Farm As A Model For Stress Reduction

Dr. Daphne was interviewed during the PASA Conference by Patty Satalia from WPSU and that interview will air this afternoon (Friday, February 14) at 1:00 p.m., repeating at 1:30 a.m. Saturday and 7:00 a.m. Sunday. WPSU is heard in our area at 90.1 FM.

Farming For The Future

Metzger Heritage Farm was well represented at PASA's 23rd Annual Farming For The Future Conference. Arthur was present for the whole conference while Jen, Joe and I attended for a day or two.

This is our fourth visit to the conference and each time we marvel at the joy of being in a space with so many folks who are part of the sustainable agriculture community of farmers, foodies, artisans, vendors and activists.
Where else can you take part in workshops with such diverse topics as "Animal Powered Farming: The Path To Draft," "Farm Bill 2014," Homeopathic Methodology for Plants," "A Conversation On Milling," "Producing Asian Greens For Market or At Home," "Plant Communication, Behaviors and Environmental Interactions," or "The Business of Farming: $100,000+ on a Small Vegetable Farm."
I sat in on the Educational Programs Discussion Group for our North Central Region of PASA  (Bradford, Cameron, Centre, Clearfield, Clinton, Columbia, Elk, Lycoming, McKean, Montour, Northumberland, Potter, Sullivan, Tioga and Union Counties) on Friday. It was good to see Lisa and Jeff Werner (hosts of a regional field day at their farm last summer) from Blue Marble Farm there! In a roundtable discussion, Board members asked us to provide them input on our unique educational needs.
I shared my perspective that PASA should consider building stronger relationships with existing organizations (particularly in our very remote and rural area) such as Cooperative Extension, the Conservation District, Education Council and Chambers of Commerce/Tourist Promotion Agencies. I also reminded the group that many of us don't have access to truly high speed internet to take advantage of videoconferencing streamed over the internet while centrally-located public facilities (such as the Potter County Education Council) has access to that technology.
We'll be blogging more about the PASA Conference in future posts. I'm particularly excited to share information from the Keynote Speech by Daphne Miller, M.D.

This post linked to From The Farm Blog Hop

http://www.sunnysimplelife.com/2014/02/from-farm-blog-hop-and-recipe-for.html

Food In Jars

  We're fortunate to live in a house with a large collection of canning jars. They've been lined up on deep, weathered shelving units in the cellar for more years than any of us can remember.

There's quite a variety of jars in the collection down cellar. Many of them are  "lightning jars" (using a glass lid with a rubber gasket held in place by a metal clamp) in sizes ranging from half-pint to half-gallon. It is recommended that these not be used for canning these days but the rubber gaskets are still available.

With my limited research today, I expect that our jars would represent purchases made from the 1920s through the present. Many manufacturers have their insignias emblazoned on this collection of jars. It seems that Kerr jars were used more in the midwest and the west and Ball jars were more popular in the east. Square jars never gained popularity among housewives I read. I was also interested to read that the blue glass jars were manufactured until the late 1930s and took on their distinctive color from minerals in the sand and the amount of oxygen in the furnaces.

For those of you interested in learning more - perhaps to help date your own canning jar collections – a history of home canning in jars can be found here:

http://www.freshpreserving.com/guides/jarsOfThePast.pdf

I've done my share of canning over the years and really enjoy it. There's something infinitely satisfying about prying the lid off a jar of home-canned anything! Sometimes I'm transported back to the moment I opened the lid on the canner, carefully directing the steam away from my face (thanks, Miss Goodrich!). Or maybe I remember pushing that huge Cherokee Purple tomato down amid the rosy redness of Brandywines or the deep redness of the Stupice tomatoes. Maybe I'm taken back to the time spent with my mother and mother-in-law snapping the ends from the green and wax beans enjoying the breezes on the back porch. Or maybe it's remembering the fiery peppers that went into the batch of Salsa I before I decided I really needed to wear food-preparation gloves when chopping them!

Sometimes my thoughts wander to what had been canned in those jars by others. Did that jar hold tomatoes grown by Papa Matteson? Maybe Auntie Snip and Grandma Metzger sat in the shade in the side yard and snapped beans that went into this jar. Did the jelly jar hold jam from blackberries picked on the fenceline?

Eating Responsibly

My grandchildren love to cook in their pretend kitchen. Their fresh produce boasts vibrant colors and shiny finishes. I was struck at how much that pretend food resembles much of what we find in the gleaming produce aisles of the supermarket.

Is this stylized version of food what folks want to eat?

Wendell Berry shares the following observation in his essay "The Pleasures of Eating."

"... food wears as much makeup as the actors. If one gained one's whole knowledge of food from these advertisements (as some presumably do), one would not know that the various edibles were ever living creatures, or that they all come from the soil, or that they were produced by work. The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of prepared or fast food, confronts a platter covered with inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. "

Berry contends that eating is an agricultural act.

"Most eaters ... think of food as an agricultural product but do not think of themselves as participants in agriculture. They think of themselves as consumers. If they think beyond that, they recognize that they are passive consumers. They buy what they want – or what they have been persuaded to want – within the limits of what they can get. They pay, mostly without protest, what they are charged. And they mostly ignore certain critical questions about the quality and the cost of what they are sold. how fresh is it? How pure or clean is it, how free of dangerous chemicals? How far was it transported and what did transportation add to the cost? How much did manufacturing or packaging or advertising add to the cost? When the food product has been manufactured or processed or precooked, how has that affected its quality of price or nutritional value."

These questions are some of what I'm thinking about on this cold January afternoon as the snow swirls around the high tunnel, drifting in the fields and coating trees in the orchard with white.

Beans On A Branch

We've been experimenting with growing edamame (defined as "a dish of green soybeans boiled or steamed in their pods") for several years. For the uninitiated, I'll share the correction pronunciation: "ed-ah-mah-may."
Edamame soybeans are different varieties than the those grown to make tofu, soybean oil or other soy products. They're are harvested while they're still green, before the pods dry, much like fresh peas.
Edamame are loaded with nutrition and packed with fiber. One cup provides 34 percent of daily protein needs while boasting exceptionally high folate, manganese and Vitamin K levels. They also offer a source of iron, magnesium, thiamin, phosphorous, potassium, copper., calcium and Vitamin C according to my sources.
We'll be growing edamame again in 2014 and already folks who have been our edamame customers in the past have placed orders for this summer. 

American farmers lead the world in soybean production, growing 75 million acres in 2011. But production of the “vegetable soybean,” called edamame, lags far behind Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, and Thailand. - See more at: http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/april2012/edamame-non-gmo-us-farmers.php#sthash.iApL1HBR.dpuf

My mother (who has had a hand in shelling a lot of edamame destined for the freezer here on Crandall Hill) saw a piece about an upsurge in commercial edamame production in Arkansas (where my brother and sister-in-law, also with edamame shelling practice, make their home) on CBS News this morning. NPR ran this piece ( http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/10/16/234764120/arkansas-aims-to-make-edamame-as-american-as-apple-pie ) in October.
If you'd like to try fresh edamame next summer and want to assure that we'll grow enough for you, please email, comment or telephone us to get your name on our list. (See previous blog post http://www.metzgerfarm.blogspot.com/2014/01/whats-on-horizon.html .)

American farmers lead the world in soybean production, growing 75 million acres in 2011. But production of the “vegetable soybean,” called edamame, lags far behind Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, and Thailand. - See more at: http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/april2012/edamame-non-gmo-us-farmers.php#sthash.iApL1HBR.dpuf

American farmers lead the world in soybean production, growing 75 million acres in 2011. But production of the “vegetable soybean,” called edamame, lags far behind Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, and Thailand. - See more at: http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/april2012/edamame-non-gmo-us-farmers.php#sthash.iApL1HBR.dpuf

American farmers lead the world in soybean production, growing 75 million acres in 2011. But production of the “vegetable soybean,” called edamame, lags far behind Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, and Thailand. - See more at: http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/april2012/edamame-non-gmo-us-farmers.php#sthash.iApL1HBR.dpuf

American farmers lead the world in soybean production, growing 75 million acres in 2011. But production of the “vegetable soybean,” called edamame, lags far behind Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, and Thailand. - See more at: http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/april2012/edamame-non-gmo-us-farmers.php#sthash.iApL1HBR.dpuf