Meat Share Round Up

A friend recently asked me about meat shares, and I promised to put together a list of local meat shares for her (a week ago). Here they are - sorry about the delay, Laura!

• Chestnut Farms, Hardwick, MA - my own meat CSA, and we LOVE them! I pick up in Arlington Center on the first Tuesday of every month or the following Wednesday at the Arlington Farmers' Market, but you can also pick up in Natick, Waltham, or at their farm in Hardwick, MA. Cost of the meat depends on how much you buy: $80 for 10lb, $115 for 15lb., $150 for 20lb., $175 for 25lb. Shares include chicken, beef, pork, and lamb, with a promise of goat in the future. You can opt out of pork or lamb, if you wish. You can also order turkeys, and they frequently have eggs for sale at their pickup locations. Last I heard, they had a 6-month waiting list.
  
• Stillman's Farm, Lunenburg and New Braintree, MA - pickup locations in Jamaica Plain, Brookline, Cambridge, Quincy, and Lunenburg. They also offer chicken, beef, pork, lamb, and seasonal turkeys. Their pricing model gets cheaper the more you pay in advance and is otherwise comparable to Chestnut Farm. They do offer a 5lb quarter share for smaller households, and they give their shareholders a 20% discount when they buy additional meat at farmers' markets.
• Austin Brothers Valley Farm, Belchertown, MA - This relatively new meat CSA just got started in August, so they may actually have shares available. They've sold meat in the parking lot by Harvest Coop in Cambridge for years, and I've found the meat quality to be quite good. Pickup locations in Cambridge, Amherst, Belchertown, and Worcester. 5lb/month for $9/lb, 10/month for $8.25/lb, and 20lb/month for $7.75/lb. They offer only beef and pork.

Remember that there's also a fish share now available, too. Pick up in Harvard Square, Cambridge.

In researching this, I came across this (slightly out of date) list of local CSAs: http://fitfool.livejournal.com/143862.html.

Hmm, so few meat CSAs. Is this an opportunity for aspiring farmers?

Time to Order Winter Shares

A friend recently asked me for recommendations for winter shares. This interests me, too, because our CSA, Brookfield Farm, will not deliver its winter shares from Amherst. Here's what I came up with. Be aware that I'm biased towards CSAs that deliver to the Arlington/Cambridge/Somerville area.

1. Drumlin Farm - requires that you spend 10 hours working on the farm, which is kind of cool. No word on pickup location, but Lincoln isn't very far from Cambridge.
2. Enterprise Farm - has an autumn share that just started yesterday and a year-round share - pickup at Kick*ss Cupcakes in Davis Sq. Wed. 2-7. They also offer home delivery.
3. The Food Project - pickup in Lincoln for Nov. and Dec. only.
4. Heaven's Harvest Farm - Another fall share until just before Thanksgiving, pick up at Cambridge Harvest Coop.
5. Red Fire Farm - has a winter share and delivers to Cambridge and Somerville for a small fee. May be sold out.
6. Stone Soup Farm - has a Nov-Dec winter share, pickup at Democracy Center in Cambridge.
   

In the Media: Video of Butter-making in Maine

Boston.com today has a great article accompanied by a video on Kate's Homemade Butter, which really is made in the owner's home garage in Maine. You have to see it to believe it. I love Kate's Homemade Butter, but I almost never shop at Shaw's anymore, and thus never see it available. Perhaps I'll make a special effort for this award-winning butter.

Free Local Cheese Tasting on Thursday

Boston Localvores is sponsoring a local cheese tasting at the Growing Center in Somerville on Thursday from 6 to 9 pm. While the tasting is free, they encourage you to donate $3 to cover costs and perhaps bring some bread/crackers/jam to go with the cheese.

See http://bostonlocalvores.org/blog/ for more info.

The Great Locavore Meal

Today, I'm cooking an almost entirely locavore meal for 20-24 people. It's been a bit challenging, especially this time of year, but I think it's going to turn out great. Here's the prospective menu:

• Roast Pork Shoulder and Roast Chicken (didn't have enough of either to make the meal) - Chestnut Farm meat share
• Chevre-stuffed Mushrooms (vegetarian entree) - Shrooms from PA, Chevre from MA, kale from my own garden
• Maple-roasted root vegetables - most veggies from the Boston Organics Dogma Box, plus an overwintered onion from my garden, maple syrup from Lunenburg, MA, roasted garlic butter from Mendon, MA, and sea salt from Maine, plus dried herbs from my garden
• Tossed salad - all greens either from the Dogma Box or from Pete's Greens in VT.
• Homemade bread - probably Irish soda bread using flour from Littleton Mills, VT.
• Pumpkin pie - a combination of farmshare and farmers' market pumpkin I roasted and froze last October, cream from Shaw Farm in Dracut, MA, eggs from Pete & Jen's Backyard Birds, and honey from the Boston Honey Company
• Chocolate-covered strawberries - Strawberries from North Carolina, chocolate from Taza Chocolate in Somerville, MA

Shopping for this meal might sound like it was an ordeal, but it was actually surprisingly easy. All the meat came from our meatshare with Chestnut Farm. The bulk of the vegetables and the flour came from the Boston Organics Dogma Box. The pumpkin has been sitting in my freezer all winter, waiting to be used. The cream, butter, honey, and other ingredients came from the Dairy Bar, part of Kick*ss Cupcakes in Davis Square, which we go to at least once/week for Shaw Farm milk in glass bottles.

The rest came primarily from Lionette's Market, a tiny Mecca of local foods located in the South End. My husband took our daughters there on Friday and found the greens, some fresh parsnips, and the sea salt from Maine. I also went by Pemberton Farms yesterday because they have interesting seasonal vegetables like fiddlehead ferns, and I was hoping that they'd have chanterelles. Sadly, it's still a little too early in the season for those, but I did find some nice new red potatoes from Chester, MA and the chevre. Pemberton does have a great selection of organic foods, but I do wish they'd label their local foods.

We're now going to make up a more formal menu, and my husband wants to make a spreadsheet of ingredients and distance in miles from home. I'll post these and a full report on the dinner tonight or tomorrow.

Becoming a Locavore Detective

Recently, I bought some bacon prominently labeled "Made in Vermont." But after I got it home and read the label more carefully, I saw the small print: "Made using pork from the U.S.A. and Canada." Which means that while it's possible the pork was raised in New England or nearby Quebec, it could just as easily have come from Florida, California, Vancouver, or Hawaii. And while I like supporting a local Vermont business, that food's just not local enough for me.

Why do I care? Well, there are lots of good reasons to eat local foods. You can read about a locavore diet more thoroughly in books like Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and draw your own conclusions. You can also read the reasoning of other Boston-area locavores at BostonLocalvores.org. Here are a few of my personal reasons:

1. Nutrition - Locally-produced food is more nutritious. This is particularly true of fruits and vegetables because they do not need to be picked well before they ripen in order to be shipped halfway around the world. Local foods can be picked when ripe and full of vital nutrients.
2. Environment - Food that does not have to be shipped far consumes less fossil fuel en route to my mouth. And local foods tend to be grown sustainably and even organically, which reduces chemical pollutants in our water and soil and, coincidentally, also makes the food more nutritious.
3. Economy - Buying locally keeps money within the local community and supports small farmers.
4. Biodiversity - Small farmers tend to grow diverse crops and unusual varieties of livestock. This promotes biodiversity and offers greater variety in my diet.
5. Taste - Quite simply, locally-produced food tastes much, much better. Last night, I had the most tender, delicious roasted chicken in my life, and it came from Chestnut Farm in Raynham, MA.
6. Ideology - I don't believe that I can take my food at face value any more. There is nothing more intimately tied to my health and well being. Food becomes me. The food I feed my daughters becomes them. We are literally what we eat. How food is grown affects what we drink. How food is transported affects how we breathe. To be a responsible consumer, to take real control of my health and my life, as well as the health and lives of my family, I want to know my food: where it comes from, how it is produced, and how it arrives on my plate.
   

But how can I tell if my food is truly local? And even if it is local, how can I tell if it's sustainably farmed? If it's a food product like bread or jam or bacon, how do I know its ingredients are local? If I eat at a restaurant that claims to use local ingredients, how many of those ingredients are local? And are they sustainable/organic/humane?

The simple answer: ask.

I intend to spend a little time every week getting to know my food. And as I investigate the origins of my meals, I'm going to report my findings here. Like a locavore detective, I intend to ask questions and visit the places where my food is produced to verify the answers. Here are some of the things I want to investigate:

1. Local farms - About once a month, perhaps more in the summer, I want to visit a local farm. Initially, these will probably be the farms where I have CSA shares (Brookfield Farm, Chestnut Farm), but I'll also visit farms that are easy to reach from Boston and farms that sell food at Boston-area farmers' markets. I was raised on a farm in New Mexico, so I actually know a fair amount about vegetable farming and raising cattle and goats. I will report back on the conditions I find.
2. Restaurants serving food made with local ingredients - More of these are springing up all around the Boston area. I'll visit restaurants like Henrietta's Table, Stone Hearth Pizza, and many others. Suggestions for restaurants to visit are welcome. I'll also call the owners and ask them exactly what was in the dishes I ordered and where they get their ingredients. That may lead me to more local farms.
3. Locally-produced foods - Like the "Vermont Bacon," I want to check out locally produced foods, like Taza Chocolate, Maria and Ricardo's Tortillas, and Littleton Grist Mill's flours and mixes.
4. Local organizations that support local foods - Boston Organics recently began offering a Dogma Box of all local produce. How local is it really? And how about the local offerings in area grocery stores like Whole Foods and specialty shops like the Dairy Bar?
5. Where to find odd local foods - It seems to me that, being right next to the ocean, it ought to be possible to find locally-produced sea salt, but dang if I can find it. How about local vinegar? Local kosher foods?
6. Producing your own local foods - I'm an avid gardener, and I act as the coordinator for a community garden. Inevitably, my gardening habit will leak into this blog, but I'm also hoping to investigate things like how to make my own cheese, can my own vegetables, make my own maple syrup, heck, even my own sea salt.
   

It's my intention to make this blog useful to folks in the Metro Boston area who are also struggling to attain a local, sustainable lifestyle. I hope that you'll contribute your findings, ideas, and requests for information. I'll do my best to answer all our questions.

Happy reading, happy eating!
Jenise Aminoff