Tied to The Blogging Post

While, my posting have been a tad light and a bit cranky, I have been posting well & up a storm on the Portland Farmers Market blog. It is truly a joy to meet farmers, growers and ranchers and help promote small agricultural businesses. Having 1,000s of small farmers is so much better for the future of food than having a handful of industrial businesses, breed, grow and distribute our food supply. The passion, the stewardship of the land, the institutional know-how and innovation are all great things.

In recent weeks, Christie Hansen, reminded me that in the arguments for and against Genetically Modified Organisms – part of the problem of spending millions of dollars to develop a cultivar aren’t the big man v. technology issues but fewer and fewer companies exist who will sell a variety of seeds -saving seeds, open pollinators can actually be kind of radical.

From Rachel Reister I learned it takes 130 acres, 7 dogs and 4 people to raise a flock of 300 sheep. And Jennifer Callison, who has gone from backyard gardener to small-scale farmer in the last 12 months will be bringing her first crop to market on Thursday. Half of America’s farmers will be over 70 in the next decade, it is good to have young growers getting in the game. I also maybe claimed raab is the new asparagus.

Plus, the Farmers Market writing is just fun. This week I got to trade emails with gardener and baker William Alexander author of $64 Tomato and 52 Loaves for an interview that will be posted next week. And monitoring a contest to see the best way to cook mushrooms on Facebook & twitter. There seems to be many good cooks out there or more accurately, many good ideas about how to cook.

Finally, I was saddened to learn the designer of NYC’s blue coffee cup passed away earlier this week even though I had no idea he was alive. RIP Leslie Buck, you can read his obit here.


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