The built-in gardener at my house — I highly recommend locating one of your own — grows green beans of many colors and temperaments. He likes them all boiled quickly until crisp-tender with olive oil added at table, or sometimes he films them with butter browned in the cooking pan while the cooked beans drain briefly in a colander.

My own tastes in green beans are more catholic. (I’ve been waiting a long time to use that word in that way!) I like green beans cooked crisp-tender, tender-tender, soft, and all the way to mushy if the flavors are rich enough. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year I bought cranberry beans at the Seacoast Growers Association Tuesday farmers market in Hampton, New Hampshire. I had no idea what to do with them.

On August 6, the San Francisco Chronicle fixed all that. See “Seasonal Cook: Fresh from the Pod.”

I hope to find fresh shelling beans in a market in New England or Kentucky in the next few weeks. Even with my fumbling last year, the beans tasted warming and rich, and I knew I’d like to get to know them better.

Got a farm? Your children are going to want to farm it. That’s my prediction, based on the rising enthusiasm I sense all around for locally grown foods. And today the New York Times weighs in with “Supermarket Chains Narrow Their Sights,” describing the ways and means the big chains have begun using to buy and sell locally grown produce. Read the rest of this entry »

Three examples this week of faith-based work in support of sustainable food systems wake me up to how quickly faith congregations can change habits and help save the earth. (Some wonderful educational institutions are already leading toward sustainability, as are a few corporations. I’m less sure about government bodies.)

A beloved niece, entering the second of two years as president of her synagogue, tells me persuading the congregation to install and use composting systems is high on her agenda for this year.

Second, from someone dear to a beloved son, I learn about successful efforts to set up a CSA (farm subscription) at a synagogue in Chicago. A short story in a newsletter (PDF, 241K) from the synagogue tells about cooking with the good food from the farm, and includes an inspired recipe for cucumbers on page 2.

Third, while on vacation this week I read Matthew Sleeth’s Serve God Save the Planet, a polestar book for many of my beloved neighbors, members of a Christian-based faith community that takes on the world’s toughest issues, including homelessness, hunger, and saving our literal earth, air, and water.

When institutions lead, lots of people get exposed to new habits and new satisfactions quickly. In the words of the excellent Bill McKibben: Step it up!

I asked for eggs from a supermarket near our vacation cottage in Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts. The brand is Nature’s Promise (Trademark). The carton says, “Grade A. Naturally raised hens - no antibiotics, no synthetic hormones, and no synthetic pesticides.”

“Natures Promise (Trademark) products represent what nature intended — free from artificial ingredients to deliver true flavor, great taste and made with respect for the environment. Products you can trust for your family’s health and well being - naturally. That’s our promise to you.”

Like the eggs in the photo, these are a beautiful rich brown, evenly sized. They came encased in two layers of a fold-out clear plastic case bearing the information that it has been recycled once. And Please Recycle.

Here’s what also caught my eye: “We keep our birds under our wing, making sure they’re fed only natural grains.” That’s where the use of the word “natural” grated a bit too hard.

Chickens’ natural diets include a lot more than grain, and chickens’ natural habits are to roam around a bit, not stay “tucked under our wing,” except as chicks. Recently smart grass farmers have learned how to return chickens to their natural environment — pasture — and still give them places to get out of the weather, places to lay eggs and avoid predators.

The “chicken tractors” grass farmers invented now support the fine hens at my favorite certified organic farm, Elmwood Stock Farm in Scott County, Kentucky. Check out the photo - you’ll see chickens on grass with a small house handy, all enclosed in a sizable fence. The fence moves often, so the chickens get fresh pasture often. I’m no farmer, but I think the chicken tractors are a lot close to what nature intended than feeding hens completely on “natural” grains.

Last year on vacation we found farmers markets, farms, and vineyards all around us in the northeast tip of Massachusetts and nearby New Hampshire communities. We moved up from eating local corn and a few blueberries and tomatoes each summer to buying nearly all fruits and vegetables from local sources. Wonderful for us in both taste and nutrition — and also a small help to local farmers.

This summer we discovered that both Massachusetts and New Hampshire allow legal sales of real (fresh, unpasteurized) milk direct from dairy farms to customers. In situations like this, often each gallon produced already has an intended owner, but with two googling sessions and three emails, I connected to Cyndy Gray, owner of Just Dairy. Cyndy founded Just Dairy to deliver five participating farms’ milk to customer drop-off points in 14 cities and towns in eastern Massachusetts. Cyndy fixed me up with a three week standing order for three gallons of grass-based fresh milk, we worked out the arrangements for the first pick-up — and I have Robinson Farm yogurt underway in a makeshift incubator, right here at the beach, during vacation!

Much happiness. I surely did not want to have to give up my daily delicious low-temp home-cultured grass-fed antibiotic/hormone/chemical-free yogurt for three weeks. New systems like Cyndy’s delivery company are making for wider and more stable distribution of farmers’ wonderful foods to hungry and appreciative people like me.