Norse and Germanic communities hold Maypole celebrations where children dance around a symbolic world axis weaving bright ribbons in the joyful motion of youth.  In the Welsh border towns, get too close to the exuberant Morris dancers and you’ll end up with flour on your nose.  For centuries, maidens with flower-twined hair have been crowned May Queens – the Earth’s bride – a ritual gift honoring the regenerative power of life-giving forces around us.  In my home kitchen, we celebrate spring and new greening with rabbit and pea greens.  Adapted from a Cucina Italiana magazine recipe, my simple spring rabbit ragu over pea greens contrasts light fresh flavors with wonderful result.  A ragu is a simmered meat sauce, the term derived from the French “ragouter” (to taste) in this case combining with the holy triumvirate of celery, carrots and onion.

The key step here is to get a good browning caramelization on your rabbit chunks.  I was rescued from potential disaster in this regard by my friend Nemo Bolin, chef-owner of Cook & Brown Publick House in Providence (www.cookandbrown.com) who emphasized the importance of space between your meat.  This allows moisture to escape and gets a nice dry browning sear on your meat on medium-high heat without burning your oil.  The resulting caramelized proteins and sugars on the pan surface build up a “fond”, a classic French term for foundation of the sauce.  These magic brown bits are typically deglazed with stock, wine or brandy, scraped and reduced to make wonderful gravies with satisfying, deep flavor.  Crowd the pan and you build up steam, which pulls moisture, prevents caramelization and leaves you with bland, white boiled meat.  Not so great.

Bone out your dressed, pasture-raised, 3-pound rabbit into one-inch chunks.
Clean and finely dice 2 medium shallots, 2 medium carrots and 2 stalks of celery.
Put the rabbit carcass and leg bones with a medium onion (peeled and quartered), 2 stalks celery and 2 more carrots (rough chopped) in a roasting pan with salt, pepper and splash of olive oil in a 400 degree oven for an hour.  Turn occasionally with tongs adding a splash of white wine halfway through.
In a heavy, wide skillet or pot, heat 1/4 cup good olive oil and 2 T butter on medium-high heat.
Add 1 1/2 T finely chopped sage and stir to combine for 30 seconds.
Add rabbit chunks in batches, if necessary, maintaining your space, turning and browning all sides for 4-5 minutes or longer to get good caramelization.
Add celery, carrot and onion, stir to combine then add 1 cup of white wine and 1 cup of vegetable stock and 1/2 t sea salt.
Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, cook covered for 30 minutes.
Remove lid and simmer 20 more minutes or until rabbit is tender and liquid is reduced by 2/3.
Remove rabbit roasted veg from oven and mix into the ragu.  Serve over pea greens topped with fresh cracked pepper and shaved Pecorino.

Know this week’s FARM FACT and save 10% on Treaty Rock Farm grass-fed dry-aged beef at South Kingstown Farmers Market on Saturday May 21st.

What is the name for traditional Germanic May Day festivities marked by dancing and bonfires ??  Walpurgis Night.  May 1st represents an important holiday in the solar pagan agricultural calendar of pre-Christian northern Europe.  Along with November 1st (Samhain to those who follow the Old Ways), these “cross-quarters” fall midway between the equinox and the solstice, marking the beginning and end of the light and dark halves of the year and celebrating the duality of these forces in the Circle of Life.

Go out and dance in the garden..

Respecting the Protein, PMB

Happy Mothers Day to all the great women who have given us the love and support that makes us what we are today.  This week for our Farmers Market tasting we prepared a marinated & grilled London Broil, a family favorite that some people consider to be a tough & cheap cut of meat.  The term has no origin in England, rather coined by American restauranteurs attempting to elevate the perception of a lean & less costly cut of beef with European imagery.  Often taken from the top round (hind leg), the close-grained muscle benefits greatly from being stabbed (50-60 times per side) with forks and tenderized in an acid-based marinade bath for 2-3 hours before being grilled or broiled and sliced thinly across the grain.

This is particularly true for the walking-around portions of older pastured beef.  It takes us up to 28 months to bring a grazed animal to proper slaughter weight with a good amount of intra-muscular marbling fat.  The beef has wonderful flavor enhanced by hanging (dry-aging) 2 weeks and can be a real crowd-pleaser as long as it is not dried out.

Marinades can feature soy, garlic, olive oil, ginger, balsamic vinegar, Worcestershire, citrus, honey, paprika, peppers or some combination and create a welcome addition to your summer table.  Remember that the fats in grass-fed beef melt at 30% lower temperature due to their more soluble nature (the healthy unsaturated fats).  That moisture needs to be protected.  Cook to no more than medium, please !!  When the steak is ready remove it from the grill, allow to rest for about 5 minutes, then carve, cross grain, into strips.  Great on mashed potatoes or served over a salad.

While farm-raised, grass-fed beef costs more than industrial commodity feedlot beef, you can support local agriculture and make the healthy choice for your budget conscious-family by utilizing less expensive cuts of pastured meats, preparing them carefully and exercising portion control.

Our miso-ginger-pineapple marinade for the London Broil yesterday sought to strike a balance between salt in the soy products and sweet from the fruit and brown sugar.  The brown sugar can caramelize nicely as long as your flame is not so high that it chars it all to cinders.  For 3 London broil steaks (approx. 2.5 lbs. each) we used the following (amounts are approximate) and let it soak all day:

2 small cans pineapple juice
1 cup chopped fresh pineapple
1  cup brown sugar
1/4 cup chopped garlic
1/2 cup or more organic tamari sauce or soy sauce (careful – much saltier than tamari)
1/2 cup hoisin sauce
1 package miso soup mix dissolved in 2-3 cups water
1 cup fresh ginger, peeled and chopped medium
1-2 T sesame oil (careful – the nutty flavor can overpower)
1-2 cups vegetable oil
Sea salt and cracked black pepper

Grill on medium about 8 minutes per side until texture just starts to firm up or on high for shorter time.

This week’s FARM FACT saves you 10% on your purchase of Treaty Rock Farm 100% grass-fed & dry-aged beef at South Kingstown Farmers Market this coming Saturday May 14th.

The Farmer’s Almanac Gardening by the Moon Calender identifies this week as: “a good time to plant Corn, Cotton, Okra, Beans, Peppers, Eggplant & other above ground crops.  Plant Seedbeds And Flower Gardens”.  What is the name for the first full moon following the spring equinox ??  PASCHAL FULL MOON.

The terms derives from a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew “pesach” or Passover recalling the plague of Biblical lore visited upon the oppressive Egyptians who kept the Jews in bondage.  The Exodus story tells how the people of Moses were spared the death of their firstborn by smearing lamb’s blood on the doorpost.  The power to smite or spare was apparently not to be trifled with.  The variable date of this full moon explains why Easter is a movable holiday, reckoned to fall on the first Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon, anywhere from late March to late April.

Have a great week and get out in the garden !!  Thank you for supporting local agriculture.  Treaty Rock Farm is proud to bring you 100% grass-fed & dry-aged beef grown LOCALLY, NATURALLY & HUMANELY.  Let me know if you would like some FREE rabbit manure.

Respecting the Protein, PMB

Bees are the cornerstone of food production all around us and important measure of the health of our environment.  They pollinate flowers in their search for nectar that they digest and turn into the golden magic that sustains the hive through the winter and that people have loved for millenia.  It takes 12 bees their entire lives to make a teaspoon of honey.  100% of California’s almond crop requires the attention of bees.  80%-90% of apple blossoms are pollinated by bees.  Do you like squash or blueberries ??  Give a shout-out to the bees for your pies and ratatouille.  The worker bees are all female – the male drones have no purpose other than fertilizing the queen.

The process of honey production is described on the website of Ford’s Raw Honey Farm located in Middleville, NY in Herkimer County in the beautiful southern foothills of the Adirondacks.

“Honeybees use nectar to make honey. Nectar is almost 80% water with some complex sugars. In fact, if you have ever pulled a honeysuckle blossom out of its stem, nectar is the clear liquid that drops from the end of the blossom. In North America, bees get nectar from flowers like clovers, dandelions, berry bushes and fruit tree blossoms. They use their long, tubelike tongues like straws to suck the nectar out of the flowers and they store it in their “honey stomachs”. Bees actually have two stomachs, their honey stomach which they use like a nectar backpack and their regular stomach. The honey stomach holds almost 70 mg of nectar and when full, it weighs almost as much as the bee does. Honeybees must visit between 100 and 1500 flowers in order to fill their honeystomachs. The honeybees return to the hive and pass the nectar onto other worker bees. These bees suck the nectar from the honeybee’s stomach through their mouths. These “house bees” “chew” the nectar for about half an hour. During this time, enzymes are breaking the complex sugars in the nectar into simple sugars so that it is both more digestible for the bees and less likely to be attacked by bacteria while it is stored within the hive. The bees then spread the nectar throughout the honeycombs where water evaporates from it, making it a thicker syrup. The bees make the nectar dry even faster by fanning it with their wings. Once the honey is gooey enough, the bees seal off the cell of the honeycomb with a plug of wax. The honey is stored until it is eaten. In one year, a colony of bees eats between 120 and 200 pounds of honey.”

Honey never goes bad and has been found in the Egyptian pyramids that is still edible.  Many bee hives have recently been struggling with Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).  The phenomenon that has caused hive losses of 30%-70% in some areas (worst in 2006-2007) is not fully understood and may be attributed to a combination of pesticides, genetically modified crops, tracheal mites, a gut parasite and physical stress linked with increased effort required to find high-value nectar sources.  This “perfect storm” of environmental stresses seems to place the bees in an immune-compromised state with devastating results.  Our food production system is at risk and everyone should be aware of the severity of the problem.  For more information have a look at www.ars.usda.gov/is/br/ccd/

Maryann Frazier, who researches colony collapse disorder with the Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium, said the situation is discouraging. “Things do continue to be bad,” she said.  She said colony collapse disorder is just one of the many problems bees are up against.  The good news is that people have become more aware and concerned about our food supply and are calling for a more sustainable way to produce food, she said.  This includes supporting small beekeepers and organic farmers.

“It’s more evidence to support local and healthy food production,” she said.

This week’s FARM FACT saves you 10% on your beef purchase at Treaty Rock Farm booth at South Kingstown Farmers Market – What is the scientific name for the Common or Western Honey Bee – Apis mellifera

We have an interesting story on local beekeepers Michael and Michelle Cabral coming out this week on our new blog
www.rifarmsandfood.com Bee well !!

Respecting the Protein, PMB

Farmers all over southern New England are finding their way back to heritage breeds of livestock – varieties that were developed in particular regions due to their hardiness and multi-purpose functionality.  Many of the breeds thrive on native forage, display excellent mothering abilities and are central to food traditions that define the special “terroir” of a regional cuisine.

The decades following World War II witnessed the growth of interstate highways and a flight to the suburbs as our society abandoned agricultural production in favor of commercial and service industries.  Fewer people lived on the farm.  Animal husbandry changed from small, family-owned, multi-species operations to large production facilities built to an industrial model.  The livestock industry began to focus on just a few breeds that grew large quickly and tolerated containment at the expense of survivability and other valuable characteristics.  In doing so, they lost the robust genetic diversity of locally adapted breeds that grow more slowly but possess biological fitness and superior flavor.  The American Livestock Breed Conservancy (www.albc-usa.org) is a non-profit membership organization that seeks to reverse this trend by “Ensuring the future of agriculture through genetic conservation and the promotion of endangered breeds of livestock and poultry”.  The recent upswing in popularity of the local food movement has generated newfound interest in breeds that fell out of favor with the homogenization of culture and abandonment of historic agricultural traditions.

The demand for Berkshire hogs has skyrocketed among chefs who know a good thing due to the unique marbling in their flesh.  Here in Rhode Island you can see a number of heritage breeds including Narragansett turkeys, Silver Fox rabbits, Red Devon cattle & Belted Galloway cattle.  The Belties at Windmist Farm in Jamestown stay outdoors all winter protected by their thick shaggy coats which they shed in the summer enabling them to tolerate warm climates better than most other cold-adapted cattle.  They are famous for their efficiency on rough forage, maternal ability, and high-quality beef.  The Red Devons at Watson Farm in Jamestown descend from the animals that walked off the sailing ship Charity in 1623 to provide milk, meat and muscle for the Plymouth Colony.  Red Devons pulled the prairie schooners down the Oregon Trail.  Today their grazing ­ability, easy birthing and fine-boned structure make them an excellent choice for grass‑based beef production.  For rabbit fanciers, the Silver Fox offers large size and gentle disposition in exchange for their small litters.  The breed dates back to the 1920′s when Walter Garland crossed a French silver meat rabbit (Champagne d’Argent) with a Checkered Giant with excellent results.  This immensely rewarding breed is known for excellent meat, superior mothering and spectacular pelts.  So the next time you place your dinner order, make it a classic.

This week’s FARM FACT explores the truth about Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) also called “mad cow disease”.  This is a fatal affliction in cattle caused by a mutated protein called a “prion” responsible creating sponge-like vacuoles (holes) in brain and nerve tissue resulting in an inability to stand followed by loss of brain function and death.  The condition can and has moved quickly and explosively through feedlot cattle populations that ingest protein supplements derived from recycled infected animal remains.  Cows, ruminants designed to process grass and forbs in their four stomachs, were eating other cows.  That’s normal, right ??

BSE is of particular concern because it has been shown to be transmissible to humans through consumption of infected meat (primarily nerve tissue) where it shows up as the mentally debilitating and potentially fatal Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.  80 people died of the disease during the British BSE outbreak in the mid 1980′s.

While the vector of the virus into the British cattle population is not known for sure (possibly slaughterhouse cross-contamination from similar disease found in sheep), BSE surely gained speed and spread rapidly due to the disgusting practice of adding cooked and ground meat and bone meal into the rations.  The feedlots needed to find a cheap source of protein to put weight on the animals since they didn’t like the idea of giving them the space and time to develop naturally using on-site forage.  Soy, a common feedlot protein source in US, is expensive in Britain because it doesn’t grow there and needs to be shipped.  Animal remains looked like a good option but heating things up gets expensive too so rendering temperatures were reduced as a cost-savings measure.  Here lay the problem since the prion remains viable up to very high temperatures.  Infected animal protein was being fed out and things got out of control in a hurry.

Well, nobody wanted to admit the scope of the problem and cause panic so it went on for a year or more and before it was over 179,000 cattle died of the disease and another 4.4 million were slaughtered as a precaution.  Estimates put the number of BSE-infected cattle that entered the human food chain at somewhere between 460,000 and 480,000.  Meat industry executives and agriculture ministers skated essentially clean, admonished with some finger shaking but laying most of the blame on bureaucratic procedure.  How does your farm-raised beef that eats only plants sound now ??

Rhode Island’s own Don Minto from Watson Farm was responsible for bringing a number of grass-fed Red Devons over here from England and is credited with preserving important genetic lines of this proud breed at a time when many herds were being killed.  We still feel the fallout from that nightmare due to the fact that the spine be removed from any cow or steer deemed to be over 30 months old (the incubation period for the BSE virus).  Even though our 100% grass-fed animals could never contract the disease we are required to meet the standard created for the feedlot animals that still represent the vast majority of beef in the market today.

In the United States and Canada, the ground-up remains of cattle and other ruminants, or animals that chew a cud, were banned as ingredients for cattle supplements in 1997. But the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, twice criticized U.S. enforcement of the ban as lax up until 2001.

The United States had its own case of BSE in Washington State in 2003, credited to animal-based feed supplement in Alberta, Canada given to young dairy calves separated from their mother at two weeks of age and raised on manufactured feed so as to keep her milk in production rather than waste it on sustaining a young animal. These are the choices that livestock industry people make, decisions that would never be made by a farm owner raising his or her animals with respect and dignity.  Now it’s your turn to choose.  By the way,  heated and ground chicken feathers and broiler litter (soiled wood shavings or chopped sugar cane bedding from chicken confinement growing operations) is still a legal component of protein supplement for cattle feed.  While it is true that natural pasture consumed by cattle contains insects, feces, and other matter in small amounts, the poultry industry by-products fed to cattle contain a vastly higher concentration of fecal waste, if that’s what you like.

Save 10% off your Treaty Rock Farm purchase of 100% grass-fed & dry-aged beef raised LOCALLY, NATURALLY & HUMANELY this coming Saturday 4/9/11 at South Kingstown Farmers Market by telling me what BSE stands for.

Respecting the Protein, PMB

I hope you are all well and thinking about preparing your gardens as spring finally makes its appearace here in southern New England.  I have lots of rabbit manure and wet hay stripped out of winter hutches available to you FREE if you want to arrange for pick-up at South Kingstown Farmers Market on Saturdays.  No doubt many of you will be tilling up an acre or more of ground for your food cultivation.  I have more modest ambitions looking out over a 30′ x 60′ plot of beautiful tilled black earth amended with rotted hay and rabbit manure.  This week’s farm fact relates to traditional forms of measurement of agricultural land.

How large is an acre and why is it that size ??

An acres measures 43,560 square feet, historically considered to be the amount of land that a man with an ox could plow in a day.  This area converts to one furlong (660 feet) in length by one chain (66 feet) in width.  The length resulted from the typically long strips of land worked by tenant farmers during medieval times.  Narrow strips of land resulted in more equitable distribution of soil types to a large number of people working small holdings.  This long and narrow orientation also gave the greatest number of people access to their food production in proximity to their mean hovels.  The furh lang refers to the long furrow in fields of this nature (it’s hard to turn an ox around if you’ve never done it) and the chain derives from a surveying tool of more recent origin, generally credited to clergyman Edmund Gunter who standardized land measurements for legal and commercial purposes around 1620.  So there you have it.

Answer the FARM FACT this Saturday 4/2 at our booth at South Kingstown Farmers Market to save 10% on your purchase of 100% grass-fed & dry aged beef raised
LOCALLY, NATURALLY & HUMANELY.

Respecting the Protein,

PMB

Congratulations !!  You are participating one of the most successful experiments in the reclamation and preservation of local foodstream in our nation today.  The Rhode Island Agricultural Partnership is composed of a group of dedicated professionals with a single goal – planning and executing the future vision for healthy productive farmland and coastal waters in the face of growth, development and economic pressure.

Members of the Steering Committee include farmers, nurserymen, representatives of state agencies & agricultural land trusts and advocates for ag industry support and educational organizations.  The group has retained the American Farmland Trust to guide the development of a Five-Year Strategic Plan for Rhode Island’s Agriculture.  The news is exciting but points to a need keep productive land in productivity, reclaim forest land where appropriate and build connectivity and information flow between farmers, governmental regulating bodies and funding sources such as NRCS (National Resource Conservation Service) that can cost-share in the development of sustainable farming methods.

There are also really exciting things happening with local commercial fishery – the brand new “Trace and Trust” program allows commercial fishermen to pool their permits and take turns fishing local areas at sustainable levels, direct marketing amazing fresh local product to a collaborative of chefs who in turn make the commitment to support them.  The lots of fish are tagged with some sort of chip or bar code that can be remotely monitored to confirm that a known product came from a known location.  Sounds like voodoo to me but 4 or 5 chefs I know are chattering like schoolgirls with excitement for the program.  Just this past weekend the first deliveries came into Providence restaurants – Atlantic cod, skate wings, yellowtail flounder and herring.  Get yer napkin on !!

I have enclosed the overview summary of the RIAP 5-Year Plan,  This week’s FARM FACT that will save you 10% on your Treaty Rock Farm purchase of 100% grass-fed and dry-aged beef raised LOCALLY, NATURALLY & HUMANELY at the South Kingstown Farmers Market next Saturday 3/26 is highlighted below and speaks to the bright spot of the local food scene in our otherwise dismal economic picture.  While the total value of our little state’s agricultural production is much lower than in big states like Pennsylvania or Kansas, the relative impact seen through our small lens is incredible and should not be underestimated.  Everything in our state is local and our work creates great healthy food that keeps your neighbors working.  The individuals producing and niche-marketing the right thing to the right people are doing great.  Thank you for enabling me to be one of those individuals.

Background

Three decades ago, many government officials and people in Rhode Island considered agriculture a dying sector. In recent years, however, we have seen a significant
agricultural upturn in Rhode Island. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that from 2002 to 2007, the total number of farms in Rhode Island grew from 858 to 1,219, an
increase of 42 percent, 10 times higher than the 4 percent increase nationwide. The market value of agricultural production climbed from $55.5 million to $65.9 million.
Income generated from agritourism activity increased from $23,000 in 2002 to $689,000 in 2007. In a time of bad economic news, Rhode Island agriculture offers good news.

The public demand for local food and increased concerns about food security have created a new environment that helps local farmers, but it doesn’t fully explain why
Rhode Island agriculture is faring better than agriculture in other New England states. We believe that the growth can be attributed in large part to the entrepreneurial efforts of
Rhode Island farmers to maximize their profits by retailing directly to consumers via farm stands, farmers’ markets and Community Supported Agriculture and to the recent
formation of commodity cooperatives and associations, such as the Rhode Island Dairy Cooperative and the Rhode Island Raised Livestock Association, which have enabled
member farms to increase both their marketing and distribution capacity and their negotiating strength with processors and distributors. The growth is also due to various
private, nonprofit organizations that have come forward, with encouragement from the Rhode Island Division of Agriculture, to connect farmers with consumers and to
complement the work of state and Federal agencies.

Keep up the good work.  Your farmer and the land thanks you.

Respecting the Protein,

PMB

Several years ago I made a friend through Cub Scouts whose son was in Pack 3 Hope Valley with my boy Colin.  Chatting on one of our hikes while the kids were scrambling around boulders Scott shared with me his passion for making hot sauce and BBQ rubs.  Would I like to maybe try some ??  Would I ??  Does the neighbor’s bird-feeder hunting cat need to taste a hot lead sandwich ??

Actually I’m building a prototype that will enable me to cut the wood accurately (complicated angle cuts for the A-frames) and create scaled plans.  The kids will build the pen from the pieces after school without having to operate power saw and will really take ownership of the project.  I’m planning to donate the prototype to the farm camp program at URI’s W. Alton Jones Educational Campus in West Greenwich, RI.  The summer program at Woodvale Farm is outstanding and offers excellent opportunities for kids to experience hands-on environmental and agricultural learning with a highly skilled and supportive staff of counselors.

This week’s message revolves around the upcoming South Kingstown Farmers Market recipe contest to be held Saturday March 19th at the market in Peacedale Mill Complex from 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM.  Entries in appetizer, entree, side dish and dessert categories.  All entries must use 3 items from SK Wintertime Farmers Market vendors.  Bring dish and recipe with you on March 19th.  You need to sign up for entry by March 12th either at the market or at www.southkingstownfarmersmarket.org

Guest judges are Frank Terranova of Johnson & Wales University and WJAR and chef Brandon Read of Celestial Cafe in Exeter, RI.  Prizes will be awarded and I will further sweeten the pot by offering a FREE 2-pound sirloin steak to anyone who wins one of the categories using Treaty Rock Farm 100% grass-fed and dry-aged beef and making sure everyone knows you used our product in your winning entry.

This week’s FARM FACT is the last line to the poem.  If you can say it at my Farmers Market booth on Saturday you will automatically receive 10% off your purchase:

The docile Red Devon beef cattle have been bred over the centuries for “smallness of bone (good dress-out percentage), wide through the hips (easy birthing) and thick through the heart (excellent rib-eye surface area).  Most Devon men were taught a rhyme as boys about the Devon cow:

Broad in her ribs and long in her rump;
Straight flat back with never a hump.
Fine in her bone and silky of skin,
She’s a grazier without and a butcher within.

Have a great week.  Respecting the Protein,

PMB

I’ve been buried in the RI Spring Flower and Garden Show at the Convention Center in Providence for the last 8 days.  Various landscape companies and non-profit groups install a series of horticultural stage sets and walk-through gardens that tell a story or speak to a garden design theme in a meaningful way (you hope).

The theme this year was “Gardens With Heart” sponsored by the American Heart Association.  The design / build company where I apply my (meager) landscape architectural skills when I’m not selling incredible 100% grass-fed beef for Treaty Rock Farm installed a modern family farmstead garden scene with woodland path, rustic rough-sawn pine plank pavilion set on collected native cedar posts, fieldstone hearth, veggie garden, fruit trees, berry patch, compost heap and small-scale livestock in pasture pens to illustrate grass-fed husbandry programs.  I have enclosed our design statement below.

Our intent was to give the public an opportunity to consider the local food and local agriculture topics that have recently become a mainstream discussion.  As gas and food prices soar in the face of a Libyan civil war, we see that the notion of recapturing our foodstream from large petroleum-driven processors and agrobusiness is no longer the domain of tipi-dwelling hippies.  Whole food produced naturally and produced here circles back to the oldest and the best model, requiring fewer energy inputs and supporting local farm families.  These families steward their land, maintain quality of our watersheds and preserve productive rural open space that enhances our quality of life.  Many food producers in our area have small landholdings and focus on multiple species and revenue streams to access end-market dollars with high-value produce and desirable local protein raised with respect.  Livestock producers often find dual use for their expensive machinery by layering on construction and excavation work.  These small-scale operators work hard and find value in heritage varieties of plants and hardy animal breeds that thrive in our climate and make do on their own.  My pasture-raised Silver Fox rabbits are a perfect example, giving us outstanding meat quality, hardiness, abundant milk & superior mothering at the expense of litter size.  Rhode Island’s meat farmers are enjoying a renaissance of people seeking out the good stuff at Farmers Markets and select retail locations that support local agriculture.  Thank you for being one of those people.

I feel personally privileged to be participating in the local food scene and able to bring 100% grass-fed dry-aged Treaty Rock beef to the market – raised LOCALLY, NATURALLY & HUMANELY.  My landscape company was pleased and honored to be awarded the Roger Swain Award for Horticultural Excellence at the Flower Show this year.  Roger is a well known horticultural writer and science editor who holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University and hosted “The Victory Garden” on PBS for over 20 years.  The award is given in the memory of his late wife to gardens that carry her spirit and continue his message.

The Hearth Is The Heart

A fire in the hearth enabled humans to settle the temperate latitudes and remains a home’s beating heart today. Enter the dynamic productive landscape of a modern homestead where organic resources and nutrients are utilized and recycled, enhancing our lives and other lives around us.  Woodland soils derive fertility through the action of fungi and soil microbes.  Choose organic gardening methods – reject synthetic fertilizers that pollute our waters and pesticides that kill the “workers beneath our feet”.  Garden as a family – put the “culture” back in agriculture. Kitchen gardens and home cooking provide healthy choices while strengthening social bonds and linking generations.  Fruit trees and a berry patch expand the land’s annual bounty.  Vegetable scraps and coffee grounds are composted in our MOBILE  ORGANIC RESOURCE PROCESSING HUB (MORPH).  Leafy trimmings feed the worms, chickens & rabbits.  The worms give us valuable “castings” to enrich our raised beds.  The laying hens and meat rabbits, moved daily onto new grass in their “pasture pens”, distribute their manure and enjoy an outstanding quality of life before we accept their ultimate gift.  The hearth’s native fieldstone reflects heat back toward the rustic pine plank garden pavilion where we share a meal and contemplate the land we steward for our children.

Respecting the Protein,
PMB