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Oxford Get-Together

I’m finally back home and have a few minutes to make a post about our Oxford get-together.

The day started off with some coffee and small talk.  Since the weather was so nice we moved outside to give the presentations in the botanic garden itself.  It was really a wonderful setting for the presentations.

Ben from Real Seeds kicked things off with a real eye opening presentation about the history and importance of seed saving.  In the picture you can see him making a timeline.

The recurring theme from Ben is that he wants everyone to save their own seeds.  If you need some seeds to start with, he’s quite happy you buy these from him if you want, but he would really prefer you saved your own seeds so it wasn’t necessary to buy any more.  At the moment business is good, and they don’t really want to expand or sell more seeds.  You can do much more to further the goals of the Real Seed Catalogue by saving your own seed than you can from buying more seeds from them.

Real Seeds has seed saving information on their website, released under a Creative Commons License.  You are welcome to copy and redistribute this information almost any way you want, as long as you don’t charge money for it.

After Ben’s presentation, I talked a bit about my garlic.

The last presentation was Simon (above), who discussed allotment culture and the importance of having a good shed.  His presentation included a mini-quiz game with prizes and a poem.  In all, very enjoyable!

After the presentations we had lunch.  Cat brought a wonderful home made apple pie (with apples from her neighbor), and many others brought samples of things from their gardens.  Ben brought some exploding cucumbers, which we dissected and learned how they worked.

After lunch was the seed exchange.  I had garlic to offer, and many others had self saved seeds.  Kate brought seeds from Wilson in Singapore, as well as from her own garden.  Thank you Wilson!  Ben had exploding cucumber seeds on offer.

We then spent a couple of hours walking around the gardens.  Among other things we saw a number of plants some of us have in our own gardens.  There was an impressive display of Andean tubers, including mashua and yacón.   There were a number of quinoa and amaranth varieties.  There were some heirloom tomatoes in the greenhouse.

Thanks goes out to everyone who took the time to come and make this a complete success!

A special thanks goes out to Ben who travelled from Wales to speak to us, and to Emma who helped with the setup and organization.

You can see posts others made by following the links below:

Daughter of the Soil
Veg Plotting
Spadework
Fluffius Muppetus
Soilman
Manor Stables Vegetable Plot
Hills and Plains Seedsavers
MustardPlaster

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Oxford: Final Update

For those of you coming to the Oxford meeting on 20 September, here is a little last minute information.

Important! Don’t pay the entrance fee at the Botanic Garden.  Just tell them you are there for the Food Growing Bloggers Get-Together.  The entrance fee is included in the price of our room, and I will collect 15 pounds from everyone later to cover our expenses.

There are a few spaces available if anyone still wants to come.  Please email me, leave a comment here or call my mobile number below.  After Thursday it’s safer to call, because I may not have regular access to the Internet as I’ll be traveling.

Tentative Schedule

9:30 – 10:30  Coffee and tea.  Please arrive at this time, and spend a little time chatting with everyone.

10:30 – 11:10  Ben from Real Seeds will give a presetation about seed saving in general and the seeds he sells.

11:15 – 11:30  I will talk a bit about the garlic I’m growing.

11:30 – 11:45  Simon will talk about allotment related things

11:45 – 12:30  Seed swap

12:30 – 1:30  Picnic (indoors if necessary)

1:30 –   5:30  Time to visit the Botanic Garden, or use our room for more coffee and tea.

Route information to the Botaic Garden is here.

My mobile telephone number is:  +31 6 4010 9417

For the picnic, be sure to bring everything you need to eat or drink with (plates, cups, etc).  It also might be handy if you bring something to sit on.  Please try not to bring excess trash, because we are responsible for disposing of our trash ourselves.  We can accommodate a reasonable amount of trash.  Remember to think about bringing things from your garden to share, but don’t worry if you don’t have anything along these lines to offer.

A simple kitchen is available for our use, but we have been asked not to prepare any food there because it is not licensed for catering.  If you need to rinse a few vegetables, need some hot water, or need to do a little washing up afterwards, these should be no problem.

A few people have not yet confirmed.  There is still space if you want to come, but please get in touch first to confirm, because it is still possible we could run out of spaces.  I would also appreciate hearing if you have decided not to come.

People with a * next to their name have confirmed.

Bifurcated Carrots (2)*
MustardPlaster (2)*
Spade Work (1)*
Daughter of the Soil (1)*
The plot thickens (1)*
Joanna’s Food (1)*
Growing Our Own (2)
A Blog Called Fuggles (2)
Veg Plotting (1)*
Soilman’s Allotment Blog (1)*
My Tiny Plot (1)
Manor Stables Veg Plot (2)*
Fluffius Muppetus (1)*
NomeGrown (1)
Hills and Plains (1)*
Speaker: Ben – Real Seeds (1)*

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Meat and Climate Change

I’ve written about this before, as have many other people.  This is something Michael Pollan has brought up in his books and articles.  Now it’s official.

The UN climate chief now says in order to help prevent climate change, you should eat less meat.

According to this report, the production cycle of meat accounts for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gasses, while the world’s transport systems only account for 13%.  Implied in these figures seems to be that since meat also has to be transported to your table, by the time it gets there it will generate even more greenhouse gasses.

Being vegetarian will probably have a bigger impact on the environment than not driving a car or having a very fuel efficient one.  It can even be more important than if you travel by airplane.

Of course many people have access to locally produced meats, possibly even grass fed, that use less or even virtually no energy in their manufacture.  Even this has to be put into a little perspective however.  While you should certainly favor local and sustainably produced meats to others, there aren’t enough of these meats to feed the world, so eating more than your fair share will make them unavailable for others.  This certainly also applies to seafood too.  Regardless of it’s source, unless you raise all of your own meat yourself in a carbon neutral way, it’s important everyone does their part and eats less meat in the long run.

It’s better to stick with in-season, locally grown and biologically diverse foods.  Meat should be considered an occasional treat, if you eat it at all.  It’s important for your health and for the environment too.

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Amsterdam Farmer’s Market

Local Market

I’ve been meaning to post some pictures of our local Saturday farmer’s market for some time now.  Last Saturday I took my camera along.  Honestly it’s mostly locals who shop at this market, and someone with a camera really stands out and kind of gets in the way, which is why I haven’t made this post earlier.  Above is a picture of the entrance.  Everything sold at this market is supposed to be organic, but much of it is not certified.  As far as I know, there is only one other organic market in the city, and mine is the only true farmers market as the other is simply run by independent market stand operators.

The horse was just dumb luck.  We don’t normally have horses at the market.  There are however a couple of horses that ride around the city giving rides and tours to tourists, and just as I picked up my camera one went past the market.  A photo moment!

This market has a Dutch language website here.  You might have some luck using Google language tools to translate it.

Local Market

Above is my favorite cheese stand.  They are a farm, and they do sell some of their own cheese.  Mostly what they have done is collect organic artesian cheeses from small farms around Europe, and sell them.  They are really expensive, but also have some very nice cheese.

Local Market

The honey guy (above) is usually there, selling honey and honey related products.

Local Market

There are only about 4 or 5 stands selling vegetables regularly, and this is one I like because it’s reasonably priced and of good quality.  This market is actually on the small side, when all is said and done.

Local Market

The most exotic stand there sells only mushrooms.  Besides being very expensive, I honestly haven’t found much use for them.  I like mushrooms, but I don’t really know how to cook most of these.

Besides these stands, others sell fruits and juices, grains, house plants, cheese, olives, breads and meats.  Almost all the food related stands have farms behind them, but often sell other products that aren’t their own.  There’s a stand that sells vegetarian goodies like handmade sushi, pate, sandwiches and so on.  On the back side there are stands selling things like clothes and household things.  There’s a woman who runs a Scottish baked goods stand, and there is a power foods stand where you can stock up on wheat grass juice and goji berries.  Other stands come and go, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few.

I guess what I don’t like are the many non farmer’s market aspects to this market.  Many stands sell things that aren’t their own, and these things often come from far away.  I saw oranges this week, and these must have come from the southern hemisphere.  I was hoping to get a picture of some the the large bunches of bananas that often adorn the market and must come from elsewhere, but there weren’t any this week.

You often see things like chestnut mushrooms, which all the food stands sell, all look exactly the same, cost about the same, and you know come from the same wholesaler.

While I sometimes appreciate being able to buy these things while I’m shopping at the market, and I have a lot of respect for the need for farms to work together because it’s pretty hard for one farm to provide enough variety year round to stock a single market stall by themselves, this really goes far beyond that.  This is really a local farmers market, integrated with large scale food wholesalers.  Also while I say local, many farms come from far away and are on the large side.

Also none of these farms offer Community Supported Agriculture subscriptions, at least via their market stalls.  What sort of a true small farm would not choose to offer a CSA?

In fact, as far as I know, true CSAs are not available in Amsterdam.  What we have here instead is the polar opposite, and it’s called a ‘Vegetable Subscription’.  It’s run by the country’s largest organic produce wholesaler and is simply a selection of their choosing of all the leftover products that goes unsold through other channels.  Real CSAs couldn’t compete with this on a price basis, and I think most Amsterdammers wouldn’t understand the difference, so it’s unlikely CSAs will take off here anytime soon.

What I just said about CSAs only applies to Amsterdam and probably most large Dutch cities.  In the outlying areas I think there are lots of CSAs available, but I’m not really sure.