CSA Newsletter #14 – September 28, 2012

Contents of Share This Week

Announcements

• PLEASE keep returning your boxes.  Thank you for the outpouring of box returns these last few weeks.  We are catching up.  They are the most important thing you can return.  The other stuff egg cartons, and clean, clear plastic bags is secondary. If we ever have a box shortage, we will deliver your shares in brown reusable shopping bags that we would also need to get back.
• Remember that you are always welcome to visit socially and/or to volunteer. Give a call to schedule a time.  Thank you so much!
• All of our newsletters are archived on our website http://www.soulfirefarm.com/?cat=3
• Pasture raised, whole chickens for sale (around 5 lbs). We can deliver with you shares.  Order here.

Food Justice
There is an over-abundance of powerful work happening in the food justice world.  The few next weeks will have pieces on Food Justice and Mental Health, and the Myths of Industrial Agriculture by Vandana Shiva.  Stay tuned…  This week, there are some great links to grassroots groups all over the world.  If for some reason they don’t work I can send you the links.

CELEBRATE FOOD SOVEREIGNTY ON OCTOBER 10 IN NYC
from Maureen Landy Kelly at Growing Power in Milwaukee, WI

Hunger is not a matter of production, but a matter of justice and democracy. In celebration of those grassroots activists working for a more democratic food system, the fourth annual Food Sovereignty Prize champions the right of people to determine their own food and agriculture policies and the grassroots groups that defend it!

As an alternative to the World Food Prize, the Food Sovereignty Prize honors innovative organizations around the world that are fighting for the right to food for all and dignity for those who put food on our plates. The ceremony will highlight the work of the Korean Women’s Peasant Association, as well as the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement of Sri Lanka, the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan Region in Honduras and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers from the United States.

Join in honoring the 2012 Food Sovereignty Prize winners at an event hosted by WhyHunger and co-sponsored by the U.S Food Sovereignty Alliance, the Small Planet Fund, the Lawson Valentine Foundation and other organizations to be held on October 10 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York. This year’s ceremony will be officiated by UN Special Rapporteur to the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, with a special musical performance by Tom Morello: The Nightwatchman.

Tickets are free and the event is open to the public! Reservations must be made at www.foodsovereigntyprize.org.

Can’t attend? Join the conversation online at #FoodSovPrize.

Recipes

Simple Potato Leek Soup

Ingredients:

• 3 potatoes, diced
• water for boiling
• 3 leeks
• 1 cup seasonal vegetables, sliced
• 2 tbsp margarine or butter
• 1/2 cup vegetable or chicken broth
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
Boil the potatoes in water until cooked, about 15 minutes. Drain well.

In a large skillet, sautee the leeks and veggies in the margarine or butter until soft, about 6-8 minutes. Add the broth and the potatoes and cook for a few more minutes.

Transfer the mixture to a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.

Add salt and pepper to taste.

News on the Farm

We started our week last Saturday at the Healthy Harvest on the Hill festival.  Wow!  What a magical event.  A collaboration between Koinania Helth Clinic, Arbor Hill Neighborhood Association, Healthy Hearts on the Hill, and countless other community volunteers and activists.  Brought people together in the spirit of honoring our bodies as they deserve.  There was dancing in the street, capoeira, zumba, raffles with healthy prizes, food.  The organizers did a fantastic job with the thread of healthy through the whole event.  I knew it was good when a 10-year-old boy ran up to our table able winning the raffle, saying, “I just the raffle and I want my basket of vegetables.”

We were THE farmers there and were given a table front and center.  At a gathering that attracted hundreds of people.  We recently were approved to accept Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program checks (FMNP) which proved to be very popular.  (We are considering doing a few markets next year for this reason.)

Our table overflowed onto the ground with baskets filled to the brim with collards, kale, turnips, carrots, scallions, tomatoes, garlic, and onions.  We sold almost everything we brought and donated all the proceeds to Heathy Hearts on the Hill.

We brought some laying hens which attract quite the crowd and endless stories about people’s experience raising, and eating chickens, as well as old family stories about living rurally, or in another country.  Food is such a core cultural value across the world, it allows us to speak the same language.  We also brought (boiled) eggs for kids to weigh on our egg scale.  (We learned this lesson quickly at another festival that boiling the eggs makes the activity last the whole day.)

Our presence at the festival felt natural.  “This is where our farm is supposed to be,” we thought.  A thought further affirmed when Jonathon Jones, president of the Arbor Neighborhood Association asked us to come to a neighborhood meeting to talk about our farm, and his desire to organize a CSA drop-off location next year in the Arbor Hill Community.  An amazing day with amazing people and the spirit of change in the air.  Oh, and the rain for the day turned out to be beautiful blue sunny skies.  Proabably for the best considering we had no tent to shelter us.

But wait, there’s more…

This week was so full.  We nutured some sickness for a few days, but only a blip in this very productive week.  Here’s what we did:

• spread 48 yards of compost onto a half acre of pasture and sheet mulched one quarter of it.
• doubled our strawberry and asparagus plantings and thinned 40 feet of the exisiting strawberry beds
• moved the chicken brooder into the woods after removing 15 feet of one of our very big stone walls
• took down cucumber trellies
• moved the chickens into the new planting areas
• finalized an edible fruit and nut perennial design
• I even got up on the roof of the house and finally caulked our leaky chimney.
• and of course, what its all about, we harvested food all for you.

Also, one of you lucky people got a beautifully heart-shaped potato.  We almost could not part with it, but instead decided it could be something fun.  If it was you, you win!  Next week you get a free bouquet of flowers, or something nice.  All you have to do is let us know.

And finally, the foliage is changing daily and probably close to its peak here.  The forest looks like its on fire.  We watch it through the windows at breakfast and then come back at lunch to see something totally different.  Please feel free to set up a visit so you can take in this breathtaking time of year for yourself.

Many blessings and an abundant fall to you.