Resources

List of recommended reading and viewing

Take a look at what you can do with a small urban lot! Since the early 80's the Dervaes family has slowly transformed their ordinary city lot into a self sufficient urban homestead. Click here to view a short documentary about the Dervaes family experience, in Pasaden, CA.

MSNBC segment on the "growing" trend of home gardening in these recessionary times. As the economic downturn encourages people to get back to the basics, food from home gardens has become a recipe for success. NBC's Chris Jansing reports. March 20, 2009.

Obamas to Plant Vegetable Garden at White House, The New York Times, March 19, 2009

60 Minutes interview with Alice Waters, March 15, 2009. An interview with the founder of the legendary Chez Panisse restaurant and the woman who started - back in the 1970s - the movement toward eating and cooking with locally grown, organic food.

Want to calculate your savings from growing your own vegetables at home? Read this interesting article by Kym Pokorny, complete with an online calculator. The Oregonian, February 5, 2009

System Meltdown: It Could Happen to Our Food Supply, Too, The Oregonian, December 5, 2008

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, launched a national conversation about the American way of eating. His sequel, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, shows us how to change it, one meal at a time. Click here to watch Bill Moyers’ interview with Pollan to discuss what direction the U.S. should pursue in the often-overlooked question of food policy.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver chronicles the year that Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores–those who eat only locally grown foods. This first entailed a move away from their home in non-food-producing Tuscon to a family farm in Virginia, where they got right down to the business of growing and raising their own food and supporting local farmers. For teens who grew up on supermarket offerings, the notion not only of growing one's own produce but also of harvesting one's own poultry was as foreign as the concept that different foods relate to different seasons. While the volume begins as an environmental treatise–the oil consumption related to transporting foodstuffs around the world is enormous–it ends, as the year ends, in a celebration of the food that physically nourishes even as the recipes and the memories of cooks and gardeners past nourish our hearts and souls.

Caroline's Blog Postings

Our favorite foodie website is Culinate, which is full of great articles, columns and recipes. Caroline is honored to have been invited to be a guest columnist, and is writing regular blog postings about the connection between gardening and food. Many of these include seasonal recipes - check them out and please feel free to comment. Postings to date include:

• An Inside View of the Hillsdale Farmers Market, April 29, 2009
• The Beauty of Vertical Gardening, April 2, 2009
• Soupe au Pistou, March 16, 2009
• Raised-Bed Gardening, February 26, 2009
• Transitioning to Spring, February 17, 2009
• Cooks' Gardens, February 12, 2009

Relevant links

Dig the Dirt is an exciting new resource for gardeners. Structured somewhat like Facebook, Dig the Dirt provides a forum for gardeners from beginners to professionals to connect and ask and answer questions, share information, and post photos. Now in its beta test phase, Dig the Dirt will formally launch this spring. You can sign up now as a Founding Member to create a free profile.

Two of our favorite farmers are Cory Carman of Carman Ranch in Wallowa, who provides us with the most delicious grass-finished beef we have ever had, and John Neumeister of Cattail Creek Farms near Corvallis, who raises incredibly good lamb. Cory's beef is sold by the quarter or half beef, which they'll deliver to Portland in the fall. Now is the time to sign up, though, as they sell out every year. John's lamb is available online as well as at Pastaworks and Viande Meats & Sausage Co. in the Portland area. Do yourself a favor and check out both of them!

We are members of Oregon Tilth, a nonprofit research and education membership organization dedicated to biologically sound and socially equitable agriculture. We also participate in the Yard & Garden program, a registry of organic gardens that confirms our commitment to maintain biologically diverse gardens and to prevent contamination.

Another group we belong to is Friends of Family Farmers, a local nonprofit that promotes and protects socially responsible agriculture in Oregon.

We have also joined Chefs Collaborative, a national organization dedicated to provide chefs with the latest information and skills they need to make sustainable choices.

Ecotrust is a Portland-based nonprofit organization based on the idea that economic and ecological systems are mutually interdependent. They support local businesses and host numerous events open to the public.

Slow Food U.S.A. is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to supporting and celebrating the food traditions of North America. Slow Food U.S.A. believes that pleasure and quality in everyday life can be achieved by slowing down, respecting the convivial traditions of the table, and celebrating the diversity of the earth's bounty. The members of Slow Food Portland are a diverse group of food enthusiasts with a curiosity about food traditions and heritage, local artisanal products, sustainable agriculture and the protection of the biodiversity of our local and global food sheds.

We are members of Chefz Table, an online resource site that offers in-home cooking classes, personal chef services, and more.

The Robert Reynolds Chef Studio offers a variety of superb hands-on French and Italian classes for culinary professionals as well as serious home cooks.

If you're a chef or other culinary professional, check out Classic Foods' website for the best homemade ravioli and pasta we've ever tasted. They also offer an extensive line of top-quality herbs, spices, cheese, sauces and other staples of a well-stocked professional kitchen. Wholesale customers only, please!

Are you in the Boston metro area? If so, check out our friends at Green City Growers, who run an organic urban farming business very similar to our own.