Make your own apple cider vinegar! Nothing beats the healthfulness, taste, and culinary use of fresh, organic, homemade apple cider vinegar. It is super simple to make and costs pennies. The gg.org editors explore the whole spectrum of apple cider vinegar in this well-researched essay. Easy instructions included. Apple cider vinegar.
Root Cellaring is en vogue? You bet! It's not only for the back-to-the-land folk anymore. Perhaps some of the interest and excitement is due to the recent economic downturn, but I like to believe (perhaps wrongly) that most of it is driven by people simply wanting to eat un-treated, pesticide-free, locally-grown produce as long as possible into the winter months. Mike and Nancy Bubel's book Root Cellaring, Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables (Storey Publishing, 1991) is widely available and now quoted in newsletters, online, and at our local libraries. Valuable reading, since the process has some strong dos and don'ts...
YOU'LL NEVER LOOK AT DINNER THE SAME WAY AGAIN... In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Has been in theaters since June 12th and will be available later in the fall on DVD. Watch the trailer here.
NEWS! The Organic Trade Association reported in the beginning of May that 2008 organic food sales were up 15.8 percent to $22.9 billion, while non-food sales jumped 39.4 percent to $1.648 billion.
FIVE ESAY STEPS TO TAKING BACK YOUR TABLE. We invite you to join an ever-growing community of people across our country and the world who are taking back their tables! Just click here!
The Meatrix. WOW! If you have not yet seen these short animated flix, then you are in for a treat. There are three movies plus a trailer. They speak to raising our food animals in factory settings, using the popular movie franchise The Matrix.The link http://www.themeatrix.com/
Raised Beds - Learn all you need to know about raised garden beds.
I’d heard rumors of what might be growing in Sylvia Davatz’s greenhouse. Wheat from an alpine village. Greens throughout the winter. A tomato that lasts until December. Even peanuts! I wondered: What might be going on at Sylvia’s? Plants like these aren’t normally grown in Vermont. read more
Local Harvest
real food. real farmers. real community
The best organic food is what's grown closest to you. Use our website to find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies. Want to support this great web site? Shop in our catalog for things you can't find locally!
New Farm has inspired and informed farmers worldwide for more than 29 years – first in print and now online.
Eatwild.com is your source for safe, healthy, natural and nutritious grass-fed beef, lamb, goats, bison, poultry, pork, dairy and other wild edibles. This website provides:
- Comprehensive, accurate information about the benefits of raising animals on pasture.
- A direct link to local farms that sell all-natural, delicious, grass-fed products.
- A marketplace for farmers who raise their livestock on pasture from birth to market and who actively promote the welfare of their animals and the health of the land.
At EWG, our team of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers pores over government data, legal documents, scientific studies and our own laboratory tests to expose threats to your health and the environment, and to find solutions. Our research brings to light unsettling facts that you have a right to know.
THE LEOPOLD CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE at Iowa State Univeristy is one of the best Web sites I have visited over the years. It focuses on public policy, marketing, and ecology of sustainable agriculture and offers lots of free, interesting information and links to studies. You can visit them at http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/
THE ORGANIC CONSUMERS ORGANIZATION (OCA) is an online and grassroots non-profit public interest organization campaigning for health, justice, and sustainability. The OCA deals with crucial issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade, environmental sustainability and other key topics. They are the only organization in the US focused exclusively on promoting the views and interests of the nation's estimated 50 million organic and socially responsible consumers. Very much an "activist" organization. http://www.organicconsumers.org/
Real Food. What is it? How does it nourish our bodies, our communities, our dirt, and our farmers? How does it touch our souls? There are so many ways in which real food nourishes our lives. Have you ever stopped to think of how real food benefits you and those things important to you? This illustration might be a helpful way to start!
The media is WRONG to employ the phrase "Not Healthier" when comparing organic fruits and vegetables to conventional ones. Journalists have once again made a BIG mistake in defining the word "Healthier". Read our argument against the media's wrongful and unfactual comparison. Media is wrong!
Living a sustainable life
Historians report that when Victory Gardens were at their peak in the mid-1930s, four out of 10 vegetables were grown in backyards, church yards, parks, and community garden plots. That's 40% of our vegetables!
Living a sustainable life is much more than a popular and over-used phrase. It’s in our blood like the wildness is in the DNA of a coyote. We're convinced that at the core of our being we all have this primal urge to eat clean, fresh, real food grown with respect for our planet.
The definition of sustainability is different for each person. It is highly individualized.
For our greatgrandmother.org team, “sustainable living” serves as the over-arching philosophy of treading lightly today in anticipation of a beautiful tomorrow.
That means that we try to eat organically-grown foods whenever possible so as to not poison the soil and our bodies, prepare our own meals so we have control over our food, source products locally so we all own a piece of our future, sit around the table so that we may enjoy the art of eating and the social elements that are attached to it, and give back to the land instead of take from it.
It is simple on some levels, and complex on others. That’s why we offer our website to our friends.
King's Grant Farm, our 1769 farmstead, operates sustainably. Sustainability on King’s Grant Farm is defined as healthy, local, socially responsible, and simple living with minimal farm controls. We try hard to reduce soil erosion, increase biodiversity, build natural resistance to natural predators, and reduce harmful ecological impact. We do not use synthetic or otherwise harmful pesticides of any kind. We create a self-nourishing system where less human intervention yields better quality crops.
Why did we name the Web site "great grandmother"?
The premise of this Web site is found in Michael Pollan’s best seller In Defense of Food, wherein he counsels us to purchase only those types of food that our great grandmothers would recognize as real food. It has become abundantly clear that we cannot go wrong by going back to a time and place where our ancestors ate healthier foods, enjoyed more social time around the table, labored a little more outside, and lived each day with stronger connections to our family traditions and our communities.
Community Food Security De-mystified. The editors of greatgrandmother.org have prepared an easy-to-understand definition of a complex policy issue. Click here!
One of the best independent sites on the Web. Five easy ways to go organic, by Dr. Greene
Organic food can be expensive. But the question might be better asked, "Why are conventional foods so cheap?" If you consider that many, if not most, conventional foods are really not REAL food and manufactured in large factories using synthetic substances to prolong its shelf life, then you know why organic food is more expensive that conventional food.
If you have to limit what you spend on organic food, then your best bet is to spend it on peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, lettuce, imported grapes, and pears.
Why buy organic? This quick list hits all the right areas and answers consumer questions with easy-to-understand answers. http://www.nofanh.org/whybuy.html
Fruits and veggies that have fewer pesticides are relatively safer to eat when it comes to conventional foods. For those "safer" foods that are grown in the United States, you can try sweet potatoes, watermelon, eggplant, broccoli, kiwi, asaparagus, pineapples, avocado, and best of all, onions!
Humble cuts of beef have always been my choice, as a trained chef. I learned long ago in the restaurant industry to purchase less expensive cuts and prepare them in culturally-satisfying ways (the ways our great-grandparents did) and the outcome is more delicious than any Luxury Cut. Instead of tenderloin, purchase eye of round and save 60%. Instead of rib roast, buy top sirloin roast and season with salted rubs, saving 30%. Instead of rib-eye steaks, select a flank steak or skirt steak, marinate well, and grill to no more than medium rare...saving 40% along the way. And don't buy ground sirloin, but rather ground chuck, saving 25%. Have the butcher grind a chuck roast for you!
Plant it forward! In our New Hampshire-Vermont region, sometimes called the Upper Valley or the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Region (in NH), we are fortunate to have many, many home gardeners, PYO fruit farmers, medium-sized farmers who sell at the farmer's market, and even some larger ventures who raise both sustainable and organic food crops. PLANT IT FORWARD is a popular activity among neighbors where you ask to snip some shoots, take some slips, share some seeds or seedlings, or otherwise divide a root ball so you can transplant in your yard...and share a piece of nature's abundance without having to visit a nursery to purchase new plantlings.
gg.org's quick review of pesticides: The word pesticide conjurs up some pretty ugly thoughts for most folks. But pesticides in nature are as old as the Earth itself. Think microbial bacterium and natural flower extracts like Pyrethrum. Mother Nature has provided fantastic natural pesticides. But in today's industrial farming community, the word pesticide has a different meaning; that of synthetic chemical compounds not normally found in nature. These manufactured chemicals tend to possess high toxicity levels and hang around for years in the soil, on the vegetable, and on the commodity soy and corn that is fed to our poultry, swine, and bovines.
The editors are greatgrandmother. org are not alarmists, but we do pay close attention to the scientific research that points to the harmful impact these synthetic pesticides have on humans, animals, the air we breathe, and the dirt we plant in. We've prepared this list to help you map your way around residual pesticides in our food. Here's the link!
read more