White House Garden

The First Lady and students from the Bancroft Elementary School in DC will break ground for a vegetable garden at the White House. The garden has been the goal of the Eat the View campaign, organized by Scarborough resident Roger Doiron. According to a press release, Doiron and Eat the View now hope to reach “out to other people and identifying other high-profile pieces of land that could be transformed into edible landscapes. Sprawling lawns around governors’ residences, schoolyards, vacant urban lots: those are all views that should be eaten.”

Hood Downsizing Organic Dairies

Today’s Press Herald published a pair of articles from the Bangor Daily News on downsizing in the organic dairy business. Hood has decided not to renew contracts with about a third of their organic dairies in Maine and asked the rest to decrease their output.

The farms being dropped by Hood are in Aroostook and Washington counties only, an area courted heavily by Hood just three years ago, when the organic boom was at its peak.

Hood ships Maine’s organic milk to New York to be processed and packaged and then returns it to Maine where it is sold as Stonyfield Farm Organic Milk.

Chicken Farmers Corner Grace

There are several articles of interest in today’s Portland Daily Sun:

  • A feature article on the new restaurant initiatives that are proceeding during a downturn in the economy. The optimists behind The Corner Room, The Farmer’s Table and Figa were all interviewed for the piece.
  • An update on Grace, the new restaurant being built in the renovated Chestnut Street Church.
  • An article on Portland’s local food movement and the new Portland chicken ordinance.

Maine Street Marketplace

There’s an article in today’s Press Herald about the goals of Maine Street Marketplace initiative that’s meeting this week at USM.

Maine farmers, fishermen and others are working to create a new delivery system to connect customers with locally produced food and agricultural products.

The idea is to set up an online grocery store that would take customer orders for the wide range of produce, fish, meat, poultry, dairy and other agricultural products produced around the state. A warehousing and distribution system would be part of the venture, which may also include a retail store and commercial kitchen for food processing.