County Fare

Growing Power recap

Sunday, March 21st, 2010 | Food Activism, Health, Organizations | No Comments

The Growing Power workshop in Milwaukee, WI I have just finished was nothing short of amazing! A great and diverse crowd from such places as Washington State and D.C., Ohio, Long Island, Colorado, South Dakota, South Carolina and even as far away as Ghana and Mozambique! The Garden Girl herself, Patti Moreno, was there shooting an episode. All in all, it was an exhilarating experience teeming with talented amazing people, great ideas, projects and wonderful instruction on real world ways to begin agricultural projects.

Now I am exhausted. I’ll share a few photos that I snapped over the weekend soon.

Friends Neighbors Countrymen lend me your ear (or your farm beginnings info)

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 | County Fare Site, Food Activism, Food Writing, Health, Minnesota | No Comments

It may seem that this little food media experiment has bit the dust. I assure you it has not. In fact things are looking pretty exciting for the next year.

First, a little about the extended hiatus. Last summer as I excitedly worked my first real job in over three years at a reputable advertising agency here in Minneapolis my youngest daughter developed eczema as a result of some nasty FOOD ALLERGIES. At the same time the eldest daughter became violently ill with Lyme’s Disease. It took six weeks and five doctor visits to find this out. AND THEN I came down with shingles! Uber stress I guess. So I decided I was going to stay home for awhile and get things in order. Shingles and Lyme’s are treatable and were nipped in the butt within a couple of weeks. Food allergies on the other hand are a real nightmare. 9 months later we are still adjusting our family diet and have found an herbal remedy that has helped immensely with her aczema, at the recommendation of our acupuncturist. We still don’t get much sleep at night with the poor little girl, now 1yr, rolling around and itching at all hours; but things are greatly improved from the days when her skin literally bled day and night.

Instead of pursuing my working career at full steam I’ve opted to enroll in graduate school. Something I’ve always wanted but thought was a few years down the road, oh well. In hope that my wife could stay home with the kids we have been brainstorming ideas for extra income. A few have come and gone but one lingers nagging us on. Starting a small farm. After some research we have found that there is an abundance of help for people who wish to start farming. And get this, a lot of it is from the good ole USDA! WOW! Beginning farm loans! Business planning resources! Classes! Everywhere we look this is a positive for us, the planet, and profit. We are truly  amazed and are excitedly attempting to start a business plan. Tough with only a couple weary hours of production time available. We’ll get there.

So it seems this will be our contribution to County Fare. We will document as much of the process as possible and post it for the community as a resource. Hopefully it will be useful.

If anyone has relevant information please post it here. I’m currently looking for current accurate data regarding sales prices for berries and mushrooms (these are my lead crop contenders). I have a meeting with our local FSA person in a few days and hope to get some of this data for my region.

Sorry about the sloppy post and writing. What can you expect with an average of 4 hours of sleep for months. This ship will only get tighter as time goes on. I’m very much looking forward to it.

Dustin

The Future of Food: Muy Importante!

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 | Food Activism, Health, Minnesota, Organizations | No Comments

The Future of Food, a film by Deborah Coons Garcia and Lily Films, is an important look into the state of our current food supply. People sometimes ask me why I have taken the stand that locally produced agriculture is important. My replies are always shallow because I can’t sit down with them for the hours it takes to explain the depth of the issue. This film is an excellent resource for knowledge and does a great job of stringing together the pieces of the puzzle that are often hidden from us.

Visit the web site

Tags: film, food, future, Health

Ital recipes. rasta vegan natural food

Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | Food Writing, Health, Recipes | 1 Comment

I’ve heard of Ital cooking before. And after reading one of Natalia Rose’s book on raw food I’ve been introduced to a whole new cuisine. This is something I will follow up on soon.

“Ital is a term used by Rastas, derived from “vital”, which means a natural and healthy way of life. One aspect of Ital is the Ital food: because the body is a temple, you should not eat unpure food. Also you must take care of your body, cause it is Jah creation. Body is the Chapel. Ital is generally a vegan diet, even if some Rastas eat fish. Some prohibit salt, some not. In all cases, Ital prohibits pork, preservatives, chemical ingredients. Ingredients have to be the most natural possible.In Jamaica, Ital cooking is most often inspired from Indian and African cooking. But lot of recipes can be “Italized” if prepared only with vegetables and natural ingredients.”

- Ital Recipes

ital recipes. rasta vegan natural food

Tags: ital, raw, cooking, rasta

Tags: cooking, ital, rasta, raw

The War on Good Food

Monday, October 13th, 2008 | Health | No Comments

We were just introduced to a new website cholesterol and health that has some good readable articles on food and nutrition. The excerpt from one of their articles below outlines what some medical “professionals” would have you eat. Can you imagine only processed foods for a diet? Actually we ask that you don’t…it’s too horrible. Trust your neighbor.

“According to Brown and Goldstein, the next “battle” of the “Cholesterol Wars” will be fought over what age someone should be before they start cholesterol-lowering therapy. The ideal therapy, they say, is a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids.

That means the following: no butter, no eggs, no liver or other organ meats. A diet of dry plant foods, with small amounts of corn oil, soybean oil, and perhaps a few capsules of fish oil.

As you will learn on this site, this diet is not only bland and boring, but it is missing the most nutritious and health-promoting foods the earth has to offer! Not only that, but it is actually polyunsaturated fats, not saturated fats or cholesterol, that contribute to heart disease, cancer, liver damage, and aging.” — T. Colin Campbell, PhD

Cholesterol – You Can’t Live Without It!

Tags: health, nutrition,

Evidence keeps mounting against vegetable oils

Thursday, September 18th, 2008 | Food Activism, Health | No Comments

With all the conflicting information about nutrition available today how do we find what really is good for us? If we do some digging we can go back to studies done in the past that haven’t exactly gotten the attention they deserve. Natural News addresses the debate over oils and fats in their article “The Great Fat Debate – Why Virgin Coconut Oil Is Best” Give it a read. It’s much shorter than the Oiling of America article I cited in a previous post and does a good job of explaining some key concepts.

Natural News

Thanks to Tony one of County Fare’s new contributers for bringing this article to our attention.

Tags: fat, food, Health, nutrition, oils

Fresh and Natural Bloomington closes :-(

Monday, September 8th, 2008 | Food Activism, Health | 2 Comments

This entry was suppose to be about this wonderful grocer in our community. Instead we went to get a photo and pick up our CSA delivery and found our veggies sitting out on the picnic table in front and signs posted saying the store is closing… permanently. What a sad shock! The store has really become an important part of the natural foods community in the short time it was open. We are so sad to see it go as well as all the wonderful employees. They knew customer service! So knowledgeable and friendly.

I guess it’s time to start frequenting our other grocery haunts more often, Linden Hills CO-OP and Whole Foods to name a couple.

Tags: economy, foods, fresh, grocery, natural

The Oiling of America: What you should know about your food

Sunday, August 31st, 2008 | Health | No Comments

Below is an excerpt from an article by Mary G. Enig, Ph.D. and Sally Fallon. After reading this and other texts on oils in food my wife and I cut vegetable oils (polyunsaturated fatty acids) from corn, soybeans, and sunflower/safflower from our diet. The results amazed us. All of the excess weight that I have gained since deciding to quit work and stay home with our daughter has melted off.

I didn’t notice the difference right away, but after two month the signs were obvious. And now within 6 weeks of noticing the first changes in my body I am almost as lean as when I was still at work. And this happened without any other changes to our lifestyle.

Please take the time to follow the link below to the article, where you will find it in its entirety, on the Mount Rainier Clinic Yelm, Washington website .

“In 1954 a young researcher from Russia named David Kritchevsky published a paper describing the effects of feeding cholesterol to rabbits.1 Cholesterol added to vegetarian rabbit chow caused the formation of atheromas—plaques that block arteries and contribute to heart disease. Cholesterol is a heavy weight molecule—an alcohol or a sterol—found only in animal foods such as meat, fish, cheese, eggs and butter. In the same year, according to the American Oil Chemists Society, Kritchevsky published a paper describing the beneficial effects of polyunsaturated fatty acids for lowering cholesterol levels.2 Polyunsaturated fatty acids are the kind of fats found in large amounts in highly liquid vegetable oils made from corn, soybeans, safflower seeds and sunflower seeds. (Monounsaturated fatty acids are found in large amounts in olive oil, palm oil and lard; saturated fatty acids are found in large amounts in fats and oils that are solid at room temperature, such as butter, tallows and coconut oil.)

Scientists of the period were grappling with a new threat to public health—a steep rise in heart disease. While turn-of-the-century mortality statistics are unreliable, they consistently indicate that heart disease caused no more than ten percent of all deaths, considerably less than infectious diseases such as pneumonia and tuberculosis. By 1950, coronary heart disease, or CHD, was the leading source of mortality in the United States, causing more than 30% of all deaths. The greatest increase came under the rubric of myocardial infarction (MI)—a massive blood clot leading to obstruction of a coronary artery and consequent death to the heart muscle. MI was almost nonexistent in 1910 and caused no more than three thousand deaths per year in 1930. By 1960, there were at least 500,000 MI deaths per year in the US. What life-style changes had caused this increase?”

The Oiling of America

Tags: diet, disease, Health, nutrition, oil, prevention