Category: Farming

Phoenix Does Pork

| Posted in Cooking, Farming

This week’s Portland Phoenix has published a pair of articles about pork, both by Laura McCandlish:

The nomination process for the Phoenix Readership Survey is still ongoing. Go to make your recommendations for the top restaurants, bakeries, bartenders, food blogs, etc.

Pie Day & Maine Food Strategy

| Posted in Events, Farming

The Food & Wine section in today’s Press Herald includes an article about National Pie Day celebrations taking place in Portland and Rockland, pie facts, and pie recipes,

[Ned] Swain is a member of the elusive “Portland Pie Council,” a group of five or so Portlanders who fancy pie and for the past four years have organized a Pie and Art Gala at the Mayo Street Center for the Arts to celebrate Jan. 23, National Pie Day. Generally, they keep their identities secret, so Swain has become their spokesperson, using his pie hole to promote pies made of sweet potatoes, chocolate, pecans, berries, summer vegetables and just about any other ingredient you can think of that tastes good in a crust.

and an article about the Maine Food Strategy Initiative.

“Right now Maine imports the vast, vast majority of its food and most of it comes in on trucks,” said Lapping, who is a distinguished professor at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Policy. “But many of us believe Maine has the capacity to produce more food.”

Buying a Fruit Tree

| Posted in Farming

The Root has interviewed author David Buchanan to get his advice on buying fruit trees.

Which fruit tree is your favorite to grow?
I love apples, particularly for the hard cider they produce, and other trees like cherries, despite the work involved in harvesting and preparing them. But nothing beats a good peach. Peach trees grow very quickly, often yielding substantial crops in their third or fourth years, and varieties like Red Haven and Madison produce excellent fruit in the Portland area.

Interview with Phil Gaven

| Posted in Farming

The Root has published an interview with Phil Gaven, owner of The Honey Exchange on Stevens Ave, about Winter hive maintenance.

I spend many hours a day giving advice to beekeepers on all manner of subjects but the one thing I try to stress more than anything is “worry less.”  Good beekeepers want to do everything we are able to do to help our bees survive.  It’s important to remember bees survived for millions of years without human help.  Admittedly, given the world we live in today most beehives can’t survive more than a year or two without human help so we do what we can, in as natural a way as possible.  With responsible stewardship, most hives will survive.  Some will die, and while that’s sad it is also the natural order of things.

Wild Mushroom Foraging Law

| Posted in Farming

The Maine Sunday Telegram has published an update on the Maine mushroom foraging law.

But eight months later, the law still has not been implemented. The program to certify wild mushroom foragers and brokers has not been put in place. An advisory board established by the law has yet to be formed.

Meanwhile, wild mushrooms are still being peddled to restaurants and retailers — unchecked and unsupervised.

Food Gift Ideas, Slow Food Delegates, Butchering Workshop, Restaurant Inspections, Pirates Cooking

| Posted in General News, People, Cooking, Farming

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald includes a set of holiday food gift ideas,

Think of these items as hostess gifts you can take to all the holiday parties you’ll be attending this year, or as not-so-last-minute stocking stuffers. Some of these ideas are things I’ve written about earlier in the year, while others are brand new items I have given as gifts myself.

The common denominator: I promise you I have tried them all and liked them.

an interview with the Maine delegates who attended the Slow Food conference in Italy in October,

Fellow farmer and Maine delegate Sarah Bostick works for the New Americans Sustainable Agriculture Project at Cultivating Community, where she teaches Maine farming techniques to immigrant farmers from warmer climates. In addition, she runs a permaculture design business.

Bostick went to the conference looking for specific ideas that could help her in her work with immigrant farmers.

a report on a hog butchering workshop scheduled to take place at Local Sprouts in December.

Also in today’s paper is an update on restaurant health inspections,

The Wok Inn, which was shut down after failing four health inspections since April, is among four Portland restaurants to be closed in the past two months for health code violations. The other three — Sapporo Restaurant, The Loft and Mekhong Thai — have reopened after correcting violations.

and a report on a program that’s teaching Portland Pirates players how to cook healthy meals for themselves.

Chris Brown, a 21-year-old forward from Flower Mound, Texas, who calls himself “a sometimes cooker,” credited his ease with a knife to a lifetime of hunting deer. “I’m not a big vegetable person, so all these greens are freaking me out a little bit,” he said.

Brown said he is trying to eat better, and hopes the cooking class will help.

Growing Ginger in Maine

| Posted in Farming

This week’s food Portland Phoenix reports that several farms in Maine are now experimenting with raising ginger which is normally a crop for warmer climates.

Most ginger comes from Asia. Hawaii is the only US state with a real commercial crop. So when I recently relocated from Oregon to Brunswick, I was surprised to find Kennebec Flower Farm selling tropical ginger — and its cousin, fresh turmeric — at my local farmers’ market. But at least half a dozen farmers with that good ol’ Yankee gumption here in Maine, and farther south, down the East Coast through Florida, are warming up to this novelty crop.

Scarborough Winter Farmers Market

| Posted in Farming

Today’s Press Herald reports on a new winter farmers market that has started up in Scarborough.

The owner of Highland Avenue Greenhouse and Farm Market has filled one of his greenhouses – usually empty this time of year – with trays of 30 varieties of winter greens, all bound for local restaurants. In another greenhouse he’s started a winter farmers market. It opened Nov. 4 with six vendors selling beef, goat cheese and milk, preserves and crafts.