Posted in Agriculture, Coming Home to Eat, Family, General, Links, Local Food Alert, Sustainable Environments on Jan 9th, 2010
While the Chinese will be celebrating 2010 as the Year of the Tiger, we in America have historically had no tigers except those in zoos and circuses. But what we once have had many of—heirloom apples—are now in danger of becoming as rare as tigers are in Asia. Of some 15,000 to 16,000 apples varieties [...]
Posted in Agriculture, Coming Home to Eat, Family, General, Local Food Alert, Sustainable Environments on Jul 20th, 2009
This last week, I went out into the desert to find an old friend in her trailer-turned-artesanal kitchen. My friend is an Hispanic woman who lost her job after 9/11 in a borderlands community that lost thousands of more jobs during the mortgage fiasco two years ago and the more recent economic downturn. And yet, [...]
Posted in Agriculture, Coming Home to Eat, General, Links, Local Food Alert, Native Seeds / SEARCH, Sustainable Environments on Apr 13th, 2009
Taste Here What You Can’t Just Find Anywhere, And See
For millennia, the Santa Cruz River Valley has been a natural corridor for the seasonal migration of birds as well as other wildlife, and for the cultural diffusion and exchange of foodstuffs. It harbors the northernmost populations of wild peppers known as chiltepines, but the first [...]
Posted in Agriculture, Coming Home to Eat, Family, General, Links, Native Seeds / SEARCH, Sustainable Environments on Nov 26th, 2008
It is an ironic time to be celebrating Thanksgiving, a sharing of the bounty of American farms and ranches among family, friends and neighbors. Not only are our traditional foods a fading feast, but fewer Americans than ever before may be able to access them. This year, while a million Americans may be losing their [...]
Posted in Agriculture, Books, Coming Home to Eat, Earth Day, Family, General, Native Seeds / SEARCH, Poetry, Sustainable Environments, Vavilov on Oct 28th, 2008
When I arrived at the National Agricultural Library just outside Washington D.C. one noon this October, a white-haired man with a commanding presence stood at the security check, impeccably dressed in an elegant suit, while his translator explained to the guard that he would be the guest of honor for an event that afternoon.
When he [...]