Green Tips

Have you ever eaten pasture-fed meat? It is available here in the Hudson Valley. The following comes from an article in the Detroit Free Press about pasture-based farms, which specialize in grass-fed animals that have not been injected with drugs or hormones, have not been kept in restricted spaces, and haven't been fattened up with grains they ordinarily would not eat.

According to David Conner, research specialist at Michigan State University's Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies, “studies show that pasture-based farms have a higher profit per animal, and that the farmers are generally happier, most likely because they don't have as many conflicts with their neighbors over smell and other issues.”

His research revealed that 80% of Michiganders believe pasture-raised meats are healthier, but that most mistakenly believe they are getting them already, probably because of unclear [sic no] labeling. More than 90% also said that given the opportunity, they'd be very or somewhat likely to purchase pasture-raised milk and beef and would pay an average 41% more per pound.

Those who have made the switch say they started because they were trying to be healthier, but kept going because they like the taste.

Help Make Our Community Green

The Woodstock Farm Festival is committed to helping our community minimize its environmental impact. Since this is the final day of the Woodstock Farm Festival for this season, you may want to stock up on some of the great items you have been buying over the past 18 weeks.

• Learn how to preserve the harvest from our knowledgeable presenters.
• Clear out the old food in your freezer that you know you will never eat and make room for some of this year’s crop, bread and other appropriate foods.
• Go to the Golden Notebook or the Woodstock Library for some good books on freezing, canning, drying, and other food preservation techniques.
• Google “food preservation” for lots of good advice, tips and techniques.

Food for the Future

As an introduction to food preservation, this is gleaned from Wikopedia.

Food preservation is the process of treating and handling food to preserve its edibility and nutrition value. The main objective is to stop or greatly slow down spoilage to prevent foodborne illness. While maintaining or creating nutritional content, texture and taste are important, this is sometimes culturally dependent, as what qualifies as food fit for humans in one culture may not qualify in another culture.

Preservation usually involves preventing the growth of bacteria and other microorganisms, as well as retarding the oxidation of fat that causes food to become rancid. It also includes processes to inhibit natural aging and discoloration.

Common home methods of preservation include drying, freezing, vacuum-packing and canning. Other methods that not only help preserve food, but also add flavor, include pickling, salting, smoking, preserving in syrup or alcohol, and curing. Another old time approach that deserves a revival is “burying,” or creating a root cellar.

To learn more about these methods and start you thinking about possibilities for your kitchen, read the entire Wikopedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_preservation or get yourself some good books.

Did You Know...?

More of the average grocery bill pays for food packaging than goes to the farmers who produce the food?

Help Make Our Community Green

The Woodstock Farm Festival is committed to helping our community minimize its environmental impact. You can help by reducing lunch waste:

• If you bring lunch to work or school, use a reusable bag or lunchbox to transport it.
• If you bring lunch to work or school or purchase carry-out meals, bring nonbreakable plates, your own reusable utensils and a cloth napkin to eat with.
• Bring your own water bottle or a thermos with your preferred hot or cold drink.
• If your school or workplace uses throw away dishes and plasticware, encourage them to buy compostable cornstarch, potato starch or bagasse sugarcane alternatives.

Did You Know...?

New York state boasts the first winery in the U.S. to produce and market organic wines. Four Chimneys, in Himrod, NY, has been making organic wine for 15 years and is still one of the few East Coast organic wineries.

Help Make Our Community Green

The Woodstock Farm Festival is committed to helping our community minimize its environmental impact. The next time you entertain or plan a romantic evening…think (local) bread, wine, cheese ,…and as the seasons progress, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, grapes, crisp apples and pears, and then it’s time for pumpkin pie.

Green Tips

As summer comes to a close and the school year starts, finding time to sit down to family meals becomes more complicated. While fresh produce is still plentiful, prepare some of your favorite dishes and freeze them for the future.

Did You Know...?

The average American eats 72 commercially prepared frozen meals a year.

Help Make Our Community Green

The Woodstock Farm Festival is committed to helping our community minimize its environmental impact. You can help by purchasing food with the planet in mind.
Tossed Food: Like Leaving the Tap Running: Tremendous quantities of food are discarded in processing, transport, supermarkets. and people's kitchens. This wasted food is also wasted water. In the U.S., as much as 30 percent of food, worth 48.3 billion dollars, is thrown away every year. That's like leaving the tap running and pouring 40 trillion litres of water into the garbage can – enough water to meet the household needs of 500 million people. (Excerpted from “Saving Water: From Field to Fork - Curbing Losses and Wastage in the Food Chain”)

Help Make Our Community Green

Here are some updates from recent events:
Solar Cooking: The Golden Notebook will be carrying an assortment of books related to solar cooking. Stop in and see what they have
Beekeeping: Grai St. Clair Rice, of Honeybee Lives has compiled a list of plants and their seasons to help provide pollen and nectar sources for bees over the entire growing year. For a complete list go to http://www.honeybeelives.org/ and click on HoneybeeLives Plant List.

Help Make Our Community Green

The Woodstock Farm Festival is committed to helping our community. You can participate by volunteering at some of our important community organizations. Here are a few suggestions:

• The Woodstock Farm Festival (of course!)
• Meals on Wheels
• Daily Bread Soup Kitchen
• Friends of the Woodstock Library
• The Woodstock Film Festival (starts Oct 1, volunteers apply now)
• The Woodstock Time Bank (you can help this organization and also join and get credit for hours you volunteer helping others)
• Family of Woodstock (training required)
• The Woodstock Fire Dept. (training required)
• The Woodstock Rescue Squad (training required)

Did You Know...?

The World Health Organization reports that in 23 countries, 10% of deaths are due to just two environmental risk factors: unsafe water, including poor sanitation and hygiene, and indoor air pollution due to solid fuel used for cooking. Cooking with the sun provides a life-saving solution.

Cooking by the “Natural Cycle of Light”

Solar cooking is the simplest, safest, most convenient way to cook food without consuming fuels or heating up the kitchen. Many people have become solar cooks for these reasons.

But for millions of people all over the world who struggle to find enough fuel to cook their food or to pasteurize drinking water, solar cookers can be a life-saver. This easy-to-use and inexpensive device can purify water or cook an entire meal. In war-torn African nations, where women and children are vulnerable to attacks when out foraging for fuel, solar cookers are making a huge difference.

Solar cooking activist Annie Landsfield makes a compelling case: “I am most concerned about helping in countries for whom danger, shortages of fire wood, and huge availability of solar energy work together to make the solar cooker a wonderful option. They remove the risk of rape that comes with fuel gathering and children can attend school instead of spending their days looking for sticks!”

Moreover, with solar cooking, women don’t have to stand at a cook stove stirring and have become less subservient as a result. There is also the issue of preserving scant resources. So many places have been denuded and suffer from soil erosion and crop failures because of extensive foraging for cooking fuel.

While cooking with the sun in the northeast might seem unnecessary, or even impossible, all you really need is a few hours of light to create many dishes.

Another local solar activist is artist Mary Frank. “Since the discovery of fire,” she says, “people have cooked with wood or other combustible stuff. People don't think this will work.” But not only has Mary proven it does work – in her own back yard and on a Manhattan window ledge – she sees other advantages. For example, “you can wander away from the cooker as much as you like because the food doesn't burn, and it remains very, very juicy!”

If you want to get out of the kitchen and still enjoy a home cooked meal, solar cooking may be the answer.

Help Make Our Community Green

The Woodstock Farm Festival is committed to helping our community minimize its overall environmental impact. You can make a difference by purchasing local honey.

• Buying local honey supports the efforts of local bee keepers to save the honey bee
• Buying local assures that your honey is not imported from a country that uses chemicals we don’t approve of in the U.S.
• Buying local is your way to guarantee that the honey is fresh, has not been heat treated or pasteurized, and is indeed “raw.”
• Buying local raw honey, with traces of pollen from local vegetation, is said by some to help allergies for those who live where the same vegetation grows.

Green Tips

All raw honey granulates over time. Granulated honey is perfectly safe to eat and makes a delicious spread. If you want to turn it liquid again, set it in a bath of hot water (keep it less than 140o), until it clears. Note, the reason that supermarket honey doesn’t granulate is that it is heated above 140o, which destroys some of its nutrients and healing qualities.

Did You Know…?

Honey is an excellent antibiotic salve. It has longed been used on minor cuts and burns, and today even the medical establishment acknowledges its use in treating wounds.

And Did You Know…?

Bees produce more than honey. They collect pollen and propolis (a sticky substance secreted by some plants) to make wax. Beekeepers use these to make candles, balms, tinctures, soaps, and skin creams. Bees are also pollinators, which is essential for over 130 agricultural products, including the apples grown in our area. Some people use bee venom to treat such things as arthritis and other chronic pain.

Help Make Our Community Green

The Woodstock Farm Festival is committed to helping our community minimize its overall environmental impact. You can make a difference by supporting family farms.

• Visit local pick-your-own farms (http://www.pickyourown.org/nyse.htm)
• Shop at the Farmers’ Market.
• Stop and shop at farm stands.
• Give your food dollars to stores that buy from local growers and producers. Here in Woodstock this includes Sunfrost Farms, Woodstock Meats, Sunflower Natural Foods, and Gallos.

Green Tips:

“Let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.” – Daniel Webster