Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
Ahmet of Agriculture Guide recently sent me an email to tell me about his new website/blog, and all I can say is it looks great! There are five posts to date, and they are about important issues facing farmers and consumers of agricultural products. I really don’t think there can be enough of this kind of information on the Internet. I’ve written about some of these things in the past, and it’s great to see someone else writing more.
There are even prizes for people who leave comments!
Spring must be in the air, several people have already asked me what the plans are for an Oxford get-together this year. Ben of The Real Seed Catalogue has repeatedly expressed interest in attending again, as have several others.
Tom Wagner, well known US potato breeder is planning a trip to Europe in October and said he would try to attend a meeting if it were held during his trip, but he otherwise has a very busy schedule and indicated this was uncertain.
Anyone else is welcome to attend depending on available spaces.
This will probably work in a similar way as last year. I will make a few posts like this with some ideas, and see what feedback I get. After a date is fixed, and I know how many places are available, I will ask everyone who intends to come let me know. If necessary I will keep a waiting list, but I expect to find a place for most everyone who wants to come. About a month before the date, I will ask everyone to confirm their attendance and give free places to people on the wait list. I expect we need at least 10-15 people to make it worth while to do this, but I think at least that many will come. My goal would be to keep costs about the same as last year, roughly 15 pounds per person.
Is anyone interested?
My preference would be to do it late August to early September, as this is a good time for most people to take a break from gardening and I sense we did it a little late in the gardening season last year. There is also a gardening get-together in France on September 20th, the same day we had the Oxford get-together last year, and while it’s not clear yet who wants to attend both meetings, it seems like a good idea to avoid a scheduling conflict. If Tom Wagner doesn’t end up being available, perhaps we should plan on then? Otherwise do it in October?
If anyone has other suggestions, we could try to do it in another UK city.
Does anyone have any suggestions for other speakers? Is anyone interested in giving a talk?
Everyone is welcome to attend!
Comments are open, and all feedback is welcome!
Here are links to people who attended last year, expressed interest this year or I hope might be interested:
Daughter of the Soil
Veg Plotting
Spadework
Fluffius Muppetus
Manor Stables Vegetable Plot
Hills and Plains Seedsavers
MustardPlaster
Joanna’s Food
The plot thickens
A Blog Called Fuggles
Ben – Real Seeds
This and That
Baklava Shed Coalition
Guardian Gardening Blog
Horticultural
Soilman’s Allotment Blog
Kitchen Garden in France
Tater-Mater
Observer Organic Allotment Blog
Frugilegus
Ken of Hudson Valley Seed Library recently left a comment here, and I’ve since had a brief email exchange with him. He has a nice arrangement for people living in the US Northeast (probably not where a lot of you reading this live), where you become a member then ‘check out’ seeds like a library book. The idea is you replace the seeds the following year with seeds from your own garden.
In particular Ken mentioned they are doing a lot of work with dehybridizing commercial F1 hybrids, and acclimating them to their local climate.
If you live in the US Northeast, consider becoming a member!
According to this post on the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, the EU seems to be preparing to rewrite the seed laws.
It’s important to emphasize this is not necessarily good news! Most EU states seem to be in favor of keeping the current system of registering varieties intact. You never know however, and maybe some good can come of this.
Steph and I went to the Amsterdam Pure Markt (website in Dutch) today. I have only recently ever heard of it, it’s all the way on the other side of the city from us and it’s only held once a month, so it’s not going to be a regular thing for us to do. A number of stands had home made looking sausages hanging up like this one:
The stated goals of the market organizers are:
There were several cheese stands, like this one that appeared to be selling cheese from their own farm.
Lots of food was available, mostly in the form of small inexpensive snacks. Some of the stands selling delicatessen products were happy to sell them on a paper plate with a plastic fork for no extra cost.
A local microbrewery was selling ‘samples’ of their beer for €1 per glass. Wine was also available per glass, together with many other non-alcoholic drinks. Most of the stands seemed to be offering free samples of their products.
This board is offering crepes, sweet on top and savory on the bottom. It says the savory ones are made with buckwheat flour.
While a lot of the products were very regional, there were also a number of farmers who came from farther away, like this Italian looking guy selling organic Sicilian olive oil for €10 per wine bottle full.
This market may be the only place you will ever see Dutch wine for sale, like this stand below:
This stand sold smoked garlic and related products:
This stand wasn’t clearly labelled, so I can’t say anything about it for sure, but it appeared to be one of a number of stands that were selling products that came from a single farm or farming cooperative. In this case what they were selling looked like it came from Spain:
This stand was selling home made mustard products (and by the looks of it pickles too):
For 2009 this market is only the last Sunday of each month, up to and including October, from 11:00-18:00 (11am to 6pm). It’s not a difficult walk from the Amstel train station in Amsterdam, but taking bus 15 for a few stops, or maybe a taxi, is probably a little easier. Tram 9 from Amsterdam Centraal Station is also a good choice. It’s just about in the dead center of Park Frankendael, and if you walk be sure to have a good map with you as the streets are a little complicated in that area. Try using Google Maps to search on ‘Pure Markt Amsterdam Netherlands’.
If you’re a tourist coming to Amsterdam, looking for local food products, I think it’s a great place to come. For some reason their website is not in English, in fact they don’t seem to be doing a lot of promotion at all, so it’s probably mostly unknown to most tourists. It wasn’t very crowded like our local food market can be, and the surrounding park can be a nice place to spend the rest of the day after a visit to the market.
