Noteworthy: SUNNÚ: Who knew? (Hint: You!)

Teresa Camou is probably the earliest true activist of our own age my siblings and I ever met. She is a tiny, tiny woman, smaller even than our family peanut, Rivera, but she is fearless, and the heat of her passions for justice and empowerment and joy rocked our large loud family back on our heels when we met her in Vermont.

This astounding woman has been working with Bread and Puppet Theater since the late 90s, and she’s worked with farmers and children on the ground in Mexico, where she’s from, doing theatrical dramas with puppets, signage, movement, and whatever they could get their hands on to educate and raise awareness about GMOs and Monsanto, and the impact they could have on their life bread, which is corn.

She and her team, Aldo Hernández, Ariana Rico, and Gisela Zermeño, are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to finish their documentary about what’s been happening to rural life and farming in the face of the same urbanization and industrial agriculture pressures we’re pushing against here.  Their documentary explores the many faces of corn in Central Mexico, where corn originated, and shows what we stand to lose in the march towards generic.

I work everyday with food, and farmers, and eaters, and so her subject matter matters to me. We have a central question in America that we’re struggling with even if we have trouble speaking it. We have ALWAYS had a subsidized lunch, and we don’t see what  impacts that has extrapolated into our homes, our fundamental economics, and outside of our own borders.

Finally, to me, there is nothing more true, or right, than the people from a place and from a culture navigating their own narratives of that place and people. As the state that lumps everyone who’s not from Maine into being from Away, there’s an instinctive understanding of this here. Would we prefer a Mainer to tell our stories, rather than folks from Away, no matter how much we like them? Would we prefer those stories told with world class skill and the insiders perspective? If we could tell stories in both Maine-speak, and world speak without judgement about our education, intelligence, or class, wouldn’t we prefer that as well? I won’t speak for anyone else, but I would.

Every village in the world, whether in central Mexico, or a piece of US zip code has the challenge of educating their youth, knowing they may never see them again. Teresa is a phenomenally talented woman, intelligent, incisive, compassionate, and sharp. She’s gotten herself a world class education, but it hasn’t deterred her from the places and people she loves and is passionate about. If crowdfunding means that Teresa, Aldo, and Ari can use their talents to live and work in the places they want, to be social justice artists with rural partners, then we have a mechanism to help them to help redress ‘brain drain’.

I’ll be supporting this because it’s a project about a matter that matters, being done by people who should. I’m too Yankee to really feel comfortable talking about other people’s money, but check out their site here. At the very least, marvel at their soil, and the very idea of dry farming, which is matter of course for others, but not much in practice in Maine…

Enjoy,
Leah

 

Marada’s Dispatches: Asparagus, Fiddleheads, Ramps, Braising Mix…

Ramp-aging goodness…

Folks, there isn’t much that is as exciting as a tidal wave of curly fiddlehead fronds and smooth ramp leaves coming at you from all directions…500# one night, 300# in another couple…one year I heard a single Boston distributor was sitting on 6000# of Maine fiddleheads.   While we believe in moderation, there is a certain hording instinct that kicks in with the availability of wild gathered crops – they’re fleeting, they’re subject to the weather, the water levels, the thieving of other pickers (oh, yes) and the swift unfurling, leaf browning, and inevitable onward motions of the season towards tomatoes and other, bolder, crops.  Eat them now, these shy, but honest, spring stars…

Marada

PS. A friend of our family’s is creating a documentary of the heritage and culture of corn production in her region of Mexico…check out the kickstarter campaign HERE.

Marada’s Dispatches: Fiddleheads, ramps, rhubarb, and other teasers from Crown O’Maine

To reassure those who love our rambling style emails, they are not gone for good.  I’d like to spiff up the look of this one, too, in a couple weeks.

What needs rambling this week are the wonderful items that are typically a shoe-in for the second week of May – Fiddleheads, Ramps, Rhubarb, Spring Dug Sunchokes, Nettles – all have been promised to us next week, but I’ve grown a bit gun-shy over the years about listing items we can’t guarantee (not that that always stops me, and there’s plenty of ‘unexpected’ to keep things exciting).

Fiddleheads to me kick off the fresh produce season…and with it the Gone-With-the-Dawn Sale Sheets we publish mid-week to keep late arrivals moving.  Please keep your eyes open for these spring treats early next week as we firm up the volumes coming in.

-Marada

May Day! May Day!

Happy May Day!

Today marks the beginning of weeks of constant thought about my mother. Why, you ask? Because not only is my wonderful mother’s birthday in May, and Mother’s Day (they’re often the same day), my mother also used to take us to leave posies of flowers on doorsteps in the dawn hours of May Days.

Back when we were wee, she used to drive us around Auburn to hang them on our teachers’ doorsteps, to express our appreciation for them. This was, of course, back in the days when the prospect of your students knowing where you lived wasn’t terrifying.

When we were really broke, or fresh flowers weren’t available, we’d make bouquets of paper flowers, sturdy construction paper tulips, and tissue paper daffodils of dubious morphology. If we were anywhere within driving distance of friends or loved ones, we’d leave them flowers too.

When we moved to Aroostook, May Day became a much colder occasion. May Day in the North arrives amidst patches of snow still left in the shady places in the woods, heat beating off last year’s field grasses, and cold, cold snowmelt in all the wet spots. In contrast, today I’m sitting in central Maine, looking out my window at a decent head of green grass on the lawn, and the sudden popping of the first dandelion tufts.

In the wide horizons of the County, I used to take myself out in the early hours of May 1st to go pick my mother a May Day bouquet. The first few years I would range over the entire front half of our land–through the trail we cut through the woods, over the farm road, along the beaver dam, near the outcrops of trees in the fields–in search of flowers in bloom.

It took me the first few years of roaming with my dog to realize that there would be no variety in her bouquet year to year. Like clockwork, I could not only tell you what the composition of her bouquet would be, but also where exactly the I would find each bloom. The only variation was if it was unseasonably warm, and I was unreasonably lucky, I might find colts’ foot in bloom on a specific sloping edge of a particular section of old beaver dam.

Just as my bouquet for my mother is an almanac point in my love and admiration for her, her acceptance of an unchanging, unshowy bouquet of wildflowers and greens is an almanac point for me in the boundless understanding a mother has of her children.

I now live far South of the farm, and my mother lives far to the South of me, but she still emails us on May Day, and I still have to get up real early if I want to beat my mother to call her before she calls me.

Spring daffy-down-dillys and last fall’s spicy oregano.

This morning I picked daffodils from the banks of the outlet stream below China Lake to bring to the office. I called my mother as I was filling up the voluptuous vase my friend Win made, and we talked in the morning sun with spring growth breaking out all over the bank, stretching in the sun. My mother approves of all things beautiful and unique, and I know she’d love this year’s bouquet if only my arms were long enough to get it to Maryland.

Happy May Day–I hope yours is beautiful and unique, and you think of your mother. Or you know, workers of the world uniting, which would still qualify.

-Leah

Marada’s Dispatches: Vitamin Sea is up for winning $50K – so vote! And spring dug parsnips are coming in strong!‏

Good morning,

Parsnip season is upon us – spring dug parsnips, that is…we have about 600# coming in Monday, so get ‘em now while supplies last!

An exciting development for one of our sea vegetable producers – a chance to win $50,000 in an entrepreneur’s showcase hosted by SLOW MONEY NATIONAL.

Here’s how you can check out all of the business enrolled:  ENTREPRENEUR OF THE YEAR AWARD NOMINEES .

Vitamin Sea is one of our two sea vegetable processors (Ocean Approved is the other).  Their business is one of only two listed that have impact on the marine environment – show folks across the country that sustainable business by-the-sea is a priority for Maine and the country by voting for them through this link:

VOTE FOR VITAMIN SEA !

If you vote through the nominee’s page you’ll be asked to allow a facebook app – I declined to use this avenue and Slow Money sent me the direct voting link above.  Vitamin Sea is pre-selected but you can drop the list down and chose anyone.  Voters are allowed to vote once per day and results are cumulative – loyalty can pay off in this $50,000 prize.  Vitamin Sea is the only company from Maine represented, but many of the projects are interesting models and ideas to explore.

As important as $50,000 cash prizes are the concepts behind Slow Money…be sure to check out SLOW MONEY MAINE for the impressive list of accomplishments happening here in Maine – Slow Money participants have invested over $4 million into local food enterprises in the past three years…

And while it’s definitely slow money compared to winning $50K, we thank you for your weekly orders – they’ve invested $3.8 million through product sales over the past 3 years – this year we’re shooting for $5 million total in COM sales since 2010!

As always, get your orders in on time please,

Marada

Marada’s Dispatches: Recommend your favorite summer camp, check out the greens pricing, and if you’re lucky, snag a few sweet potatoes…

In the month of April, we start making our pre-season plans…do we lease a third truck this year, how many supply trips do we make to each region, and where do we send the bounty coming from our Maine farms?  We’ve learned over the years that we can’t sell green beans in July – not only because they are coming out everyone’s ears, but also because the summer is no time to be finding new customers to utilize surplus product.   We start that work in April.

Last season we worked with a handful of great summer camps.  Some, like Chewonki, and the Maine Fiddle Camp, are long-term fabulous customers.  Others, like Skowhegan Art School, Camp Manitou and Pine Island Summer Camp, have been steadily increasing their volumes from 2011 to 2012 and into 2013.  It’s always fun working with camps because they feed kids.  Hungry kids.  Kids who are generally enough out of their element that they are pretty willing to try new foods. We’d like to do more of this.  Do you have a summer camp you’d like to see using local?  Send us an email and we’ll do our best to get Maine food at their picnic tables.

Also, as spring (hopefully) comes along, we’ve lowered our greens pricing to reflect the greater availability out there.  If you’ve been holding off, keep your eye on the greens price.  ‘Summer’ greens pricing won’t kick in until June, but this week you get a small break on Sunset Farm’s high quality greens.

Last, and I hardly dare mention them without the caveat that they are LIMITED in availability…we have 4-6 25# bags of sweet potatoes from Crystal Spring Farm.  We’ve asked a lot of growers to plant them for 2013, so this listing, while low volume, is a good chance to try them out.  I’m thrilled they’ve held up well enough for us to offer them in April.

As always, get your orders in on time please, and thanks.

Marada

Marada’s Dispatches: Did you hear about the guy who won Farmer of the Year? He was outstanding in his field…

Growing up, we were surprisingly bad at pranks. You would think that five rambunctious kids would make for good prank wars, but no, we were terrible at it. As frequent practitioners of sibling warfare, I think we were all too paranoid to be good targets. You have to have at least one gullible family member to really get things going. We tried the water-and-other-household-objects-balanced-on-doorways, and the throwing-fake-spiders-and-snakes-at-anyone-who-might-jump. Nothing doing. We’re too tall, as a family, and too unimpressed for scare tactics. For smart kids, we were super-dumb at pranks. The only thing our sister Rivera and I actually mastered was short-sheeting, which we had read about in an L.M. Montgomery book.

The solitary shining moment of April Fools came when our brothers were in 5th grade. Being twins, they switched classes, and managed to pass undetected by their teachers, although most of their classmates knew the difference. This would have entered into the annals of family history as a great victory were it not for the failed math test. One brother was affronted that their teacher didn’t think it strange that he had failed, and the other brother didn’t think it was a big deal–everyone knows all bets are off on April Fools Day. Together they went to go explain it to Mrs. Pooler, and suggested that they could retake the test as themselves. Mrs. Pooler was having none of it, and told them if they were that convincing, she certainly had no way of knowing who did what, so they’d just have to like it or lump.

Our mother barely contained her mirth.

You have now been warned that pranks are not our forte. We excel at horribly good puns (“It was a falafel joke, but I’m not even sorrel.”)  That said, Marada wants me to warn everyone: “NONE OF THE INCLUDED INFORMATION IS BECAUSE OF APRIL FOOLS. WE WILL NOT OFFER REFUNDS ON PRANK ORDERS. HAHA.”

Joking aside, there were two items of note we want to share.

First, Green Bee Soda, one of our newest vendors, is in the running for Gorham Savings Bank’s Launchpad Competition. If they win, they get $30,000 dollars to make MORE delicious, delicious soda. If you like their soda, or you like their style, vote for them as a business with energy and direction and direct relationships with Maine producers here.

And second, this past weekend there was a collaborative meeting of buying club coordinators up in Bangor to compare notes and share knowledge and techniques intrinsic to the work of coordinating local food orders. In case we don’t say it enough, we’re constantly impressed and awed by the amount of work these coordinators put in, and what a huge tangible impact that work has on our work. Creating a community of practice goes a long ways towards supporting each other in that work. Check out the News coverage here.

Round up your orders, check out those links, throw us your best (or worst) food and farming puns, and we promise to laugh, cheer, or groan accordingly.

Leah