Sweet Local Farm

We’ve definitely done our share of urban foraging over the years. At our apartment in Brighton, we used to include the Dandelion Greens and Lamb’s Quarter from our yard into our meals.

It’s nice to see this foraging tactic getting some mainstream publicity in Boston.

To us, this guy seems totally normal. But to others who are used to consuming only packaged food items, I’m guessing this guy seems a bit bonkers. A read through a few of the comments quickly confirmed that assumption.

1goodman wrote:
“This is done by a pure nut-job. Do not attempt this in real life.”

pdBerg wrote:
“They had one other ingredient to dinner: nut-jobs!”

There’s still a long ways to go before many who consider themselves ‘totally normal’ adopt more localized eating habits. Imagine if half the population switched from eating store bought items to foraging like David Craft. This can and should be a reality, but first everybody would have to let down their guards and realize this type of food consumption was originally how the human species survived…long before there was transportation and refrigeration.

Among the Benefits: no fossil fuels used in transporting and preserving these foods, no dollars spent, a renewable resource, healthier eating, connecting yourself to your natural environment

Hats off to you Mr. Craft!

What to do with all these cucumbers?

Make pickles! We followed a recipe from ReadyMade Magazine:

Ready Made Magazine’s FRESH-PACK PICKLES
1 Clean Pint Jar
1and1/2 C. Vegetables or Fruit, cut into slices or chunks
1 C. Vinegar
1/2 C. Sugar
1and1/2 Tsp. Kosher Salt
Herbs (about 2 Tbsp. chopped) and Spices (about 1 Tbsp.)

1. Place your chosen fruit, vegetables, herbs, and spices, in the jar.
2. Cover and shake gently to mix. Uncover.
3. In a small saucepan, bring vinegar, sugar, and salt to a boil. Boil one minute, then pour over the raw ingredients. Cover loosely with lid; allow to cool.
4. Cover tightly with lid and refrigerate for up to a week.

The pickles are SO good. We are getting rave reviews from friends and handing out jars to family.

We made spears and stackers:

Luke pouring the vinegar:

We pickled wax beans too and added some dijon mustard to the jar on the right:

Every other day we are picking huge amounts of red tomatoes.

A huge Black Krim:

One of my favorite ways of preserving the fruit is by making heirloom tomato catsup. I first learned you could make home made catsup on an episode of Jamie at Home. (more…)

A few years ago a photographer wandered into the restaurant where I work and asked to take my picture for a project he was doing. That photo ended up in Boston Magazine as the Mass Ave Project.

Jared Leeds, the photographer, got in touch with me about his new project. He is shooting bands in their rehearsal spaces, which is a pretty cool concept. I’ve had rehearsal spaces all over Boston, but never one as beautiful as our barn. Luke and I set up shop in there for impromptu concerts and jam sessions and Jared and his lovely assistant Iwona stopped by to take a few shots. I’ll post them here for you when they are ready.

Here are some behind the scenes shots.

Look at all the gear:

Luke, Me, and Chicks:

We tried to lure the chicks with food:

Iwona assisting:

What are we looking at?

Luke loves to photograph his drums:

The goats are growing up strong with a delicious diet of hay, grain, and saplings to chew on.

Here is Rosemary eating her grain:

Check out the see-saw Luke made for them:

They love to play and eat:

More see-saw fun:

SO cute:

The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the future, which had its UK premiere in London on March 15th 2009 and is now being shown in countries around the world.

Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, Brassed Off) stars as a man living alone in the devasted world of 2055, looking back at “archive” footage from 2007 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

I heard about this film from Linda Buzzell’s column on the Huffington Post.

Seems very interesting, and I agree with her that it could be a ‘far hipper’ version of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

Check out the trailer:

The Age of Stupid Trailer Feb 2009 – SD from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

As entertaining as this film could be, the questions that Postlethwaite’s character, The Archivist, poses seem to have a realistic eeriness to them.

“We could have saved ourselves, but we didn’t. It’s amazing. What state of mind were we in, to face extinction and simply shrug it off?”

“We wouldn’t be the first life form to make itself extinct. But what would be unique about us is that we did it knowingly. What does that say about us?”

I can’t wait to see it.

For more information: www.ageofstupid.net

In the midst of yet another torrential downpour, I wanted to check out how my newest rain water collection barrel was working out. This set up collects rain water from 3 of the roof sections on our barn and brings it to within inches of where the goat yard is. Check out this video of the path the water takes before entering our goats’ thirsty pallets.

And for fun, check out this video of me feeding both the chickens and the goats during the same rain storm. It’s a long one, but worth the surprise ending.

Have you ever gone to see the Blue Man Group? I did…several years ago at this point. It was quite a memorable show and I was actually sitting in the front row.

Here is a video of me testing out a Blue Man Group trailer by projecting it onto our big red barn.

My company, Street Attack, was recruited to execute this huge scale light projection in Boston. The light projection was coupled with an event thrown by the Boston Phoenix at the Bleacher Bar. Lucky for me, I have this nice large canvass to test it out on before hitting the streets.

To see the actual campaign on Lansdowne St, check out this blog post: Street Attack blog

Luke and Tofu are studying from The Earth User’s Guide to Permaculture:

This book was written in Australia so some of the day to day situations don’t apply to us here in Massachusetts. For example, they have different animals and critters running around their yard and different tree species. But the concepts of storing water, preserving wild spaces, and creating workable, sustainable food producing zones are still applicable in our neck of the woods. Luke and I have really been inspired by this book in particular. It gives detailed plans and descriptive diagrams and sketches. Thanks for letting us borrow it Sarah!

In the garden we are harvesting peppers, tomatoes, string beans and cucumbers:

The perennial garden looks so pretty right now:

For almost 2 months now, we’ve been gradually building a greenhouse in our free time. Well, it’s actually more of a cold frame than a greenhouse. The final product will have no heat besides the sun, no ventilation besides the wind, and no power besides our hard working bodies.

Here’s a glimpse through the evolution so far.

We hope to finish it up by mid-Fall so we’ll be ready to enjoy some nice hearty-greens throughout the cold season.