From GENE LOGSDON

I wonder if a book titled A Guide To Insane Farming would sell, especially when, upon opening the book, the reader would encounter descriptions of how farming is actually done today. But what I’m talking about at the moment are ideas that really are off the grid, outside the box, beyond normalcy, agronomic lunacy. Or to assume a more positive attitude, ideas like maybe the earth moves around the sun which by golly turned out to be true.

For years I have watched agronomic lunacy take place in our yard but, blinded by my cultural attitudes, I did not pay much attention to it. When I perform the yearly ritual of The Shelling of the Pole Beans at planting time, I sit out under a shade tree and shell out last year’s Kentucky Wonders, still in pods in a paper sack where they spent the winter. Cracking and stripping open the dry pods means that a few beans pop out into the lawn round about me. Never mind, I’ve got plenty and am in too big a hurry to retrieve these fugitives.

Usually within the next week or so, rain falls, and then I am quite surprised to find that the fugitive seeds have taken root and are merrily growing right in the lawn grass. (I hope you can see them in the photo accompanying this essay.) I am way too busy sweating my life away hoeing in the garden to think twice about what the yard beans are telling me. Maybe beans don’t need planting and hoeing. Just throw them out on the lawn, like Jack’s beanstalk. If in my sweaty work of churning up soil I do think about the yard beans, I shrug and remind myself that they won’t do well growing in the shade and that the grass will overtake them anyway. more

From JEFF COX

One of the best ways to celebrate the season is to enjoy the great outdoors, with great food and great company. Be it a picnic in the park, a snack on the beach, or dinner on the patio, eating outdoors is truly a pleasure in the warm summer months.

It’s important to keep safety in mind when thinking about eating outdoors, or about transporting food from one location to another. Keep these tips in mind when preparing, cooking, and transporting your delicious dishes:

• Marinate food in the refrigerator, not out on the counter.

• Don’t reuse marinade that was used on raw meat, poultry, or fish.

• Don’t use the same platter or dish that previously held raw meat, poultry, or fish.

• Keep food cold when transporting from one location to another. Use a cooler with ice packs. Food should be kept at a temperature of 40°F.

• Use separate containers or coolers for beverages and perishables.

• Pack food in the cooler in the reverse order you plan to eat it. This allows for easy access and minimizes the length of time the contents of the cooler are exposed to the elements.

• Wrap raw meat, poultry, and seafood securely so that the jices don’t leak onto other raw foods.

• Pack dressings and vinaigrettes separately and toss just before eating.

• Always rinse raw fruits and vegetables before packing. Dry them with a paper towel.

• Keep coolers in the air-conditioned section of your car, rather than in the hot trunk.

• Keep cold foods cold, and hot foods hot.

• Always remember to wash your hands before beginning.

• Hot food should be kept at or above 140°F, wrapped and insulated if necessary.

• Try not to keep perishables out for longer than 2 hours. Try to keep food in the shade as much as possible.

• Food should not be kept out for longer than 1 hour at temperatures at or above 90°F.

For more information, visit www.foodsafety.gov.
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Image Credit: © Noam Armonn | Dreamstime.com
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From WSPU Penn State

This nutritious one pan meal is provided by Jessica R. from Gilbertsville, Pa.

Ingredients

7 – 8 ounces extra-firm tofu cut into thin 1-inch segments
a couple pinches of fine-grain sea salt
a couple splashes of olive or peanut oil
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup pecans, toasted and chopped
3 tablespoons fine-grain natural cane sugar or brown sugar
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
12-16 oz. greens, such as spinach, bok choy, kale, coarsely chopped

Directions

Cook the tofu strips in large hot skillet with a bit of salt and a splash of oil. Sauté until slightly golden, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic and pecans, and cook for another minute. Stir in sugar. Cook for another couple of minutes. Remove from heat and stir in cilantro. Scrape the tofu out onto a plate and set aside while you cook the greens.

In the same pan (no need to wash), add a touch more oil, another pinch of salt, and dial the heat up to medium-high. When the pan is nice and hot stir in the chopped greens. Cook for 2 – 3 minutes, stirring a couple times (but not too often) until the greens are wilted.

Serves 2 – 3 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish.

(Adapted from 101 Cookbooks by Heidi Swanson)
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Original recipe here.
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From MARION NESTLE

On a tour arranged and paid for by the Alaskan Seafood Marketing Institute (see Note below),  I spent last week observing salmon fishing and processing in Anchorage and at remote places 600 miles to the southwest.

I could not help thinking about federal dietary guidelines.  The 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has just filed its report.  It recommends consuming two 4-ounce servings of seafood per week, preferably fatty fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

Develop safe, effective, and sustainable practices to expand aquaculture and increase the availability of seafood to all segments of the population. Enhance access to… information that helps consumers make informed seafood choices.

This, among other fish, means salmon, particularly wild Alaskan salmon because they have higher levels of omega-3 fats than the farmed fish and because Alaska is working hard to maintain the sustainability of its wild fish.

To be sustainable, fish have to remain in the sea and steams long enough to reproduce. This means controlling the number of people who are allowed to catch fish (through licenses and permits) as well as the number of fish they catch (through restrictions on fishing methods and times and places).

The Alaskan system for doing this works fairly well but is under constant pressure.  Commercial fishers want to be able to catch all the salmon they can with no restrictions. Communities that have always depended on salmon for sustenance want to be able to continue doing so, and do not want fish caught before they get to community spawning streams.  Hence: salmon politics.

Here are some thoughts about what I observed:

more here
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From GENE LOGSDON

There is a delightfully droll old book by that name lamenting the ways that nature humbles and humiliates farmers every step of the way from planting to harvest. I have been a victim of nature’s whims (my whims really) this spring and I’ve got the acres and the aches to prove it. I planted a plot of open-pollinated corn like I do every year in hopes of developing giant-sized ears of corn. I do this mostly for fun, not for money, and it’s a good thing, because this year my corn growing has been a rather pathetic experience. There is a great learning experience involved, about how cultural habit so often overwhelms rationality but I am trying not to think about that.

Considering my primitive planting method— two hand- pushed garden planters connected together to do two rows at once— the corn came up nicely in soil worked well with a tractor-powered rotary tiller. The date was May 12, the perfect time for corn planting here. Oh happy days. Yeah.

Birds pulled up nearly every little spear of corn and ate the sprouted kernel. I think crows were the culprits because if it were less wary robins or blackbirds, the usual attackers, I would have caught them in the act.

I have tried scarecrows in other years, but not with much efficacy. So I waited, thinking (hoping) that the birds would lose interest before much damage was done, as is usually the case. Not this time. I had planted very shallowly because continuous rains had kept the soil wet and cool. Made it easy for the birds to uproot the kernels. When I re-planted on the last day of May after the soil had warmed up, I planted three and a half inches deep, risky in any event and something I could not have done earlier in spring. If the cussed birds were going to eat the kernels, they were going to have to work for them.

More heavy rains followed, plastering the soil down so only two thirds of the corn came up. At least the birds didn’t eat it this time. Whether it was because the corn was planted deep or because the foul fowls were no longer hungry for corn, I don’t know. But then some of the corn that did come up turned yellow, then brown and died in the moisture clogged soil. Hardly a half crop remained and it looked poorly.

Interestingly, I could not find bird damage out in the fields of neighboring farmers. Does my old open-pollinated corn taste better than hybrid corn, especially GMO hybrids? Lots of old-timers think so, but I don’t know. Commercial hybrid seed is usually treated with a fungicide. Maybe that’s why the birds didn’t bother it. I used to douse my corn seed in a slurry of kerosene and tar before planting when I had bird problems years ago, but the birds ate it anyway. So who knows? There is so much mystery in farming. Maybe that is why we poor souls who want to feed the world keep at it, despite the acres of pain.

I write this on June 21. I replanted for the third time yesterday, the ultimate madness. Corn planted this late has about as much chance as the proverbial snowball in hell. But hope springs eternal. Perhaps we will be overcome by global warming this fall and it won’t frost until November and I’ll have a crop after all. Or perhaps the small portion of the crop that survived from the May 31 planting will produce some 16-inch ears of corn which I can foolishly brag about. I am obviously demented, a perfect example of how culture so often wins out over reason. Tilling soil is my heritage. We could raise most of our food without tearing up millions of acres of soil every year, but I must remain faithful to my culture.

Learning experience? How about this lesson. Before I replanted the third time, the quack grass had swarmed and frolicked gaily over the bare soil, threatening to overwhelm the struggling corn that still remained from the second planting. Quack grass loves rainy weather and bare soil. It is one of nature’s defenses against soil erosion. Nature hates bare soil. I eyed the quack grass ruefully, knowing full well how livestock love this free gift from nature when it is young and lush. The obvious madness of growing annually cultivated crops was staring me right in the face, but I remained unmoved, chained to corn by my culture. I ripped up the quack grass with the tiller. Take that, Mother Nature. We raise corn in the cornbelt, and by heaven we will continue to do so until death do us part.
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Image Credit: Quackgrass Ohio State University
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