Entries tagged with 'farms'
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Note: Meet Your Farmers is a weekly series where we profile the farmers that mean so much to serious eaters everywhere. This week we catch up with Nancy Prebilich, a California farmer who's also earned her MFA in International Theater and Performance Studies. [Photographs: Gleason Ranch] Name: Nancy Prebilich Farm: Gleason Ranch in Sonoma County, California. How many acres? 98 acres Your crew: Mother, father, sister, eleven year-old nephews, and five year-old niece. Hours: 24/7. I wish this was an overstatement, but it truly isn't. Every day we live and breath the ranch. We sleep in the barns at night if a sow is having trouble birthing, we leave a holiday dinner early to make sure everyone is watered and...
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Critic Turned Cook follows former Seattle Post-Intelligencer food critic Leslie Kelly on her journey away from the keyboard and into the kitchen. Take it away, Leslie! All right chefs, cooks and hardcore food fans: Raise your wing if you've ever plucked a freshly butchered chicken. Does the thought make your skin crawl? I honestly didn't know if I could do it, but I somehow managed to step up during an intense culinary program at the Quillisascut Farm School of the Domestic Arts, a little slice of utopia about six hours east of Seattle in Rice, Washington. Loads of people give the local/sustainable talk, but few make it their life mission as have Rick and Lora Lea Misterly, makers of incredible...
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The Farm of Tomorrow, an animated short directed by famed animator Tex Avery, shares 1954's predictions of the future of farming—mostly involving strange crossbreeding pairs. Has the future delivered chickens crossbred with centipedes (for more drumsticks), cows crossbred with beavers (for built-in fly swatters), or ducks crossbred with bananas (for ease of skin peeling)? Not yet. Those geneticists better get crackin'. Watch the video after the jump....
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Flat-screen TVs and waterbeds are two of the comforts enjoyed by Kirk Christie's dairy cows on his farm in Iowa. The idea behind the frills is that cows will make more milk if they feel more comfortable—"Christie estimates his cows' milk production has increased 10 percent since he installed the waterbeds." Watching TV helps the cows get used to different kinds of voices, which prevents them from getting as nervous when they have to hear the different voice of people who visit the barn. Christie isn't the only farmer using this method to increase his milk production—the idea to use waterbeds on dairy farms originated in Europe more than a decade ago. Related Happy Cows Are Tastier Cows How to...
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Move over, Berkshire pork: a new heritage pork is set to take center stage. The Mangalitsa, a breed of furry pigs raised in Central Europe recognized for their high-lard quality, are now available for the first time in the States at Seattle's U-District Farmers Market thanks to Wooly Pigs, the only importer and producer of these pigs. Considered one of Europe's best-tasting pigs, these gigantic hairy beasts have twice the marbling than that of your average pork, and it's also more unsaturated, giving it a lighter taste and allows it to melt at lower temperatures (you can even whip Mangalitsa lard like cream!). The popularity of fatty pork doesn't seem to be dying out anytime soon, and the introduction of...
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Editor's note: This entry marks the debut of our partnership with the good folks of Edible Communities, the publishers of the various Edible magazines available in select U.S. locations. They'll be checking in from time to time with updates from around the Edible world. Today, Brian Halweil of Edible East End, based on the eastern reaches of Long Island, New York. With just a few days left in the year, an important deadline looms for locavores on the South Fork of Long Island. On December 31, the Halsey Farm Stand on Deerfield Road in Water Mill, New York, the last source of fresh produce as the mercury drops, shuts its doors and stops offering self-serve veggies. Shoppers in search of...
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In my heart I would like to be a locavore purist, eating food grown or raised within a 500-mile radius of my house. When I read about Broadway East, a restaurant opening this fall in New York City that is going to serve three locavore squares a day, I applauded. I believe in local food, slow food, and every other kind of "food" movement that supports local farmers and sustainable agriculture. I pledge allegiance to Alice Waters every day. But what's a localist to do when the cherries taste better from Washington, 3,000 miles away from where this local yokel calls home?...
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