Good Food is Everybody's Business
I wish by some miraculous turn of events, I could say “Abracadabra”… and poof… America would fall in love with vegetables as I did – decades ago. I resist owning how much of an anomaly I really am (because I LOVE VEGETABLES).
Kate and Ian are WWOOFing in the North East; their advice for others wanting to try it: “It’s likely you’ll also come out of it with a couple of good stories, some delicious recipes, a few great friends, and at least one place you’ll always remember.”
In a region that once supported 480 dairy farms and a rural agricultural landscape, now fragmented by 40 years of residential development, Nash Huber has pieced together 450 acres of rich farmland, almost all of it leased. Through the use of land trusts, restrictive zoning, conservation easements, and leasehold agreements, it has been protected from future development.
Liberia is one of Africa’s poorest nations steeped in a domestic food crisis. This is how one man aims to increase food safety and food security without raising the price.
We have a real problem now in Washington state; especially close to cities where bankers and real estate hacks are turning protected farm easements into horse ranches for the wealthy. There is nothing strong to protect valuable farm soils in critical service areas, to insure that the resource will be used to grow good food for local markets.
Burlington is not a very old city center and got its start in 1902 as a logging camp. Today the small town of 8,380, located in the Skagit River watershed north of Seattle, does count with a prosperous fruit and vegetable agricultural industry. Of course, the industry relies on mostly migrant families for farm labor. This is especially the case during harvest work and strawberry crops present an opportunity for workers to seize the current condition of ‘labor scarcity’ and high demand for skilled pickers during harvest time to organize for their workplace rights. And that is exactly what has happened in the State of Washington, and not in the Yakima or Wenatchee valleys but on the western side of the Cascades where peri-urban farming is increasingly big business.
Fruit farms in Washington have been in the spotlight for years, from employing children to unfair tiered wages. Sakuma berry pickers have walked off the job three times since July when this video was aired by King5 TV.
Make no mistake about it; good food does not require genetic engineering! Stumbling Goat Bistro’s Executive Chef Josh Theilen, Sous Chef Gunnar Erickson, and Pastry Chef Jens Melin proved it Monday night, September 16, at an intimate fund-raiser. All ingredients used were produced and harvested locally or regionally and, while most were organic, all were GMO-free!
