Farmers Markets Return

Next week marks the return of the farmers markets to Chicago and, as promised, I am highlighting those markets in the downtown area.
Today’s Chicago Tribune features the markets in the centerfold of the Good Eating section. But if you miss that section you can go to the City of Chicago’s Web site for a complete listing.

Here is a thumbnail sketch of the markets near you:
Tuesdays: Federal Plaza, Adams and Dearborn streets, 7a.m. – 3p.m.
Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., 10a.m. – 6p.m. (On Tuesdays admission to the museum is free. You can visit the museum after work or during your lunch hour and then do your shopping on your way back.)
Wednesdays: Lincoln Park, north of the parking lot at Clark and LaSalle, 7a.m. – 1:30 p.m. (This is Chicago’s Green City Market, the only all-organic market in the city that promotes organic farming and sustainable agriculture.)
Thursdays: Daley Plaza, Washington and Dearborn streets, 7 a.m. 3 p.m.
Saturdays: Lincoln Park, Lincoln Park High School parking lot, 7a.m. – 1p.m.
Green City Market, again, same location and time as Wednesday. (They sell organic meat here, as well.)

Many of the same farmers sell at some or all of these markets, enabling them to sell to a greater cross-section of consumers. This also gives us an opportunity to buy from them at one or another of the markets. If you miss one day, you’ll find them at another.

The markets will continue through October; the frequency of these markets allows you to buy fresh produce twice a week and fill your larder without having to set foot in the grocery store except to buy paper products (or junk food).

I suggest shopping early in the day. The Chicago sun, especially in the summer, can wilt the vegetables if they sit too long without refrigeration. Remember, this produce is picked the same morning, when it is fully ripe.
In future columns, I will visit the markets and report on what is available. I hope to include more farmer’s stories and recipes for cooking simple dishes.

My Farmers Market in San Francisco

Please write to me if you have any questions about the food, the markets or the farmers.
Stay healthy!

Organic Valley

Did you ever read the back of the cereal box when you were a kid?
Well, this morning I was reading the back of my organic milk carton and learned more about the folks at Organic Valley Farms. This co-operative represents hundreds of family farms across the United States and is extremely active in promoting partnerships between farmers and consumers.
You can join Farm Friends, an on-line community that supports family farms, and receive free coupons.
By taking Anna's farm tour, you can learn how to milk a cow.
The Organic Valley Web site features recipes from the women who farm the land, who carefully explain the benefits to your children from drinking organic milk and eating orgainc foods.

There is a link to a women's advocacy groupcalled M.O.O. (Mothers of Organic)that gives tips on when and what to plant in the garden and healthy meals to make for your family.
This summer, as you savor the fresh fruits, vegetables and dairy products that come from the farms on the outskirts of Chicago, I urge you to connect to the land by supporting our farmers.

Farmer Redux - Fundraising Event for Growing Home Farm

The annual fundraising event for Growing Home, the organic farm outside of Chicago that provides job training for homeless and low-income men and women, is being held tonight at the Garfield Park Conservatory, 300 N. Central Park Ave. One of the featured guests at tonight’s event will be journalist Harry Porterfield of ABC Channel 7.

Growing Home Farm is a social enterprise; "a certified organic agricultural business that produces and sells fresh produce at farmers markets and to restaurants throughout the Chicago area."

Look for more information on Growing Home in future postings on its history and commitment to educating low-income men and women by providing agricultural training and organizational responsibilities.

Disposal of Toxic Grape Stakes Funded

The federal government has stepped in and promised $450,000 to aid San Joaquin Valley farmers in properly disposing of tons of grape stakes treated with a toxic chemical, chromated copper arsenate. The chemical is used to treat the wooden stakes to prevent rotting from contact with soil and insects. According to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, there are at least 16.6 million treated stakes piled on farmland acreage in the Valley.

In recent years, farmers have suffered huge losses in the table grape and raisin industry with stiff competition from foreign growers. As urban sprawl has taken over Fresno County, farmers have pulled out their crops and sold the land to developers.

The EPA has not allowed farmers to burn the treated stakes because the smoke would release chemicals into the air that are highly toxic and leave a residue of ash. Health officials say the arsenate is associated with cancer and can attack the liver and kidneys.

The stakes will be transported to properly permitted landfills in Manteca and Tranquility and may take several years to complete the process. First priority will be given to those stakes that were pulled in 2000. More money will have to come from the government before all the stakes can safely be removed.

That's the trouble with chemicals - they just don't go away.

Daylight Savings: Bad for the Farmer – Good for the Golfer

Congress is meddling again with daylight-saving time and this does not bode well for the farmer. On Wednesday the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a proposal sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., that would add two more months of daylight-saving time. If adopted as part of the energy bill, the country would “spring forward” in March and “fall back” in November.

Supporters of the bill claim that the effect would not only reduce energy consumption but also lower crime, reduce traffic accidents and promote more economic activity. But there is little evidence to support these claims. Michael Downing, author of a new book, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, say that the energy claim is “overblown.” “It appears to save a little bit of electricity. And in April or October, it saves some home heating fuel in the Northeast,” he says. People may not turn on their lights as early in the evening, but they woul turn them on in the morning for a longer period of time.

Those who would be most effected by the change are farmers, schoolchildren and American workers who begin their workday at 8 a.m. of earlier. For farmers, especially dairy farmers, four or five hours of their workday would be in darkness. Dairy cows have no regard for the clock; farmers would be getting up to milk at 2 a.m. Schoolchildren and workers would be waiting for transportation in more many more weeks of darkness than they currently do.

Indiana State Rep. F. Dale Grubb has the right idea: “Why on earth don’t [they] worry about things like the federal deficit or Social Security?” Indiana is the maverick state that is split in the middle by two time zones and is in a never-ending debate about daylight-saving time.

So who supports adding more months of daylight-saving time? According to author Downing, the biggest lobbyists represent the barbeque makers and the golf courses!

Another Farm Expo

Organic cottonfield, ready for harvest

Beginning Sunday, another organic farm exposition will be held at McCormick Place through May 3. Billed as North America’s only all-organic event, the All Things Organic Conference and Trade Show will feature over 400 booths of organic products, educational seminars and special events. Many of the farmers and vendors mentioned in this blog will be exhibiting.

The keynote address of this four-day event will be given by Nina Rothschild Utne, CEO and chair of Utne magazine. The keynote speaker will be documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who recently won an Oscar for his film, Super Size Me. Both speakers have been advocates of organic foods and supporters of local farmers. Utne magazine has spoken out against genetically altered foods for some time.

The Return of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker

For birders like me, this week’s announcement of a confirmed sighting in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas of the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct for more than 60 years, was good news. It was good news not only for this rare woodpecker but also for the rest of us to see it is possible to reverse humankind’s destruction of the land and witness a positive outcome.

The ivory-billed woodpecker, campephilus principalis Linnaeus, is known as the Lord God bird because that was what people said when they saw it. With its bright white bill, crimson crest and distinctive black and white plumage, this 20-inch bird with a 30-inch wingspan must be a sight to see.

It is hard to believe that its habitat, the mature, swampy, riverine forests of the southeastern United States would have any appeal to developers. James Audubon, writing over 150 years ago, described the region this way:

Would that I could describe the extent of those deep morasses, overshadowed by millions of gigantic dark cypresses, spreading their sturdy moss-covered branches, as if to admonish intruding man to pause and reflect on the many difficulties which he must encounter, should he persist in venturing farther into their almost inaccessible recesses, extending for miles before him, where he should be interrupted by huge projecting branches, here and there the massive trunk of a fallen and decaying tree, and thousands of creeping and twining plants of numberless species.

In fact, it was the mature trees in those wetlands that were the attraction, cut down to make sewing machine cases, coffins and ammunition boxes in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

The ivorybill was first sighted a year ago but the sighting was kept under wraps to confirm its existence and to secure more land to protect its habitat. The Nature Conservancy has worked for the past 20 years to buy land in the area of the sighting and now owns 120,000 acres. Interior Secretary Gale Norton announced that the agency along with the /department of Agriculture would spend $10 million for research, habitat protection and law enforcement efforts to protect the bird. This is an example of private and government agencies collaborating in a single effort, although I am sure the present administration was eager to attach itself to such an admirable cause as saving this noble bird.

Although I will probably never see an ivorybill, I am content to know that this magnificent bird may be able to breed and continue to live in its native habitat.

Perhaps the American farmer will be saved from extinction as well.