Archive for the 'farms and farming' Category
Giveaway! Eating for Beginners: An Education in the Pleasures of Food from Chefs, Farmers, and One Picky Kid
August 2nd, 2010by Caroline
I love food and cooking, love raising and feeding my kids, love to write. Sometimes, as in this blog, those interests intersect and I get to write about the food I feed my kids. Sometimes, almost even better, I get to read about someone else doing all of that. This is one of the [...]
Farm Morning
May 18th, 2010by Caroline
Henry James famously wrote that “summer afternoon” were the two most beautiful words in the English language, but to me, the words “farm breakfast” are equally sweet and evocative. They make me remember childhood Saturday mornings spent rereading Farmer Boy’s descriptions of maple sugar pancake stacks, or my mom’s stories of summer mornings [...]
Planting Potatoes
April 25th, 2010by Caroline
Last summer when we visited my parents, the boys experienced the treasure hunt of digging potatoes. This spring, to bring the process full circle (backwards!) they planted. Both boys have done a fair amount of seed planting, both at home and at school, and Eli’s recent picture demonstrates some understanding of the process:
But potatoes [...]
The 2A Farmer’s Market
April 18th, 2010by Caroline
The 2nd grade curriculum at my son’s school is built partly on the study of communities, so every month or so there is a field trip to a different part of the city, where the kids hear stories about the neighborhood and eat some snacks: fried chicken feet in Chinatown, tacos in the Mission, [...]
California out the window
February 25th, 2010by Caroline
Every Sunday morning, just two blocks from my house, our neighborhood farmer’s market lets me witness the seasonal cycles of California produce and other farm products. Valentine’s Day was the last day for satsumas, for instance, so I bought several pounds for our trip; the woman who sells me eggs explained she’d run out [...]
One City Garden
November 10th, 2009by Caroline
I grew up in a little town (it calls itself a village, and while I find the word a little precious, it fits) of big, pretty houses on smallish lawns. The yards weren’t fenced, and my neighborhood didn’t have sidewalks, which made it a pretty soft place for a kid to grow up running [...]
Pumpkin Time
October 22nd, 2009by Caroline
It happens every year, the clamor for pumpkin treats: pie, cupcakes, pancakes, muffins. Eli, particularly, adores all things pumpkin and thinks it’s quite reasonable to expect a pumpkin pie for dessert an hour after we return from the pumpkin patch. Well, maybe so, but not with the new pumpkins, certainly. In fact, you all [...]
Eating Beans
September 11th, 2009by Caroline
Until recently, we have usually used dried beans around here mostly in craft projects: sandwiched between a stapled pair of paper plates, they make excellent tambourines; Ben’s made a mancala game with a handful of dry beans and an egg carton; and of course the possibilities with construction paper, glue, and beans are pretty [...]
Digging Potatoes
September 4th, 2009by Caroline
My kids are having the typical city kid experience of farming: they visit farmer’s markets regularly; they have both visited local farms and gotten to plant and pick vegetables. But they are lucky in that every summer, we visit my parents and the boys get dirty in my dad’s big vegetable garden.
We like [...]
Really Urban Farming
July 15th, 2009by Lisa
Who needs a house, or even a yard, or even a few pots when you have a truck? This one parks in front of my friend’s home in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where they let him use their water.
He’s got lettuce, arugula, squash, basil, nasturtiums, tomatoes…all ready to go from truck to table…