Cover Crops: A Living Blanket
It’s late September and my garden is literally humming. Whenever I go to harvest vegetables, I hear the pulsing drone of bees, flies and wasps amid buckwheat blossoms. To me, the flowers don’t look...
Category: Food
Bagging Use of Disposable Plastics
“Just because plastic is disposable doesn’t mean it goes away. After all, where is away? There is no away.” — Jeb Berrier in the documentary “Bag It” It’s easy these days to feel as...
Smell the Coffee!
With all due respect to poet William Carlos Williams, so much depends not on a “red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water” but on a steaming mug of coffee. There may be metaphoric value in...
Three Ways to Green Your Household
“It’s not easy being green,” Kermit the Frog bemoaned back in 1970. What was, for a Muppet, a whimsical play on words has become code for the challenge of trying to live with a...
An Apple Proposition
“Pick your way through these piles of colorful orbs… and you will get a sense of the many things an apple can be, the many roles it can play in our lives. If there...
Sustainability Certification or Simply Marketing?
Certifying farms for sustainability is an appealing idea. The bureaucrats in Augusta who hatched this plan for Maine undoubtedly envisioned nothing but positive outcomes. A state seal of approval for sound agricultural practices could...
Serving up Wonky Veggies
Who is not amused by a two-legged carrot or an eggplant with a ski-jump nose? Gardeners don’t expect perfection or uniformity, especially when growing organically. Yet supermarkets claim they can sell only flawless produce...
Land Trusts Fostering Food Resilience
Nourishing food should be critical staple in every Maine kitchen, but it is not. One in four Maine children struggles to get enough to eat. The number of Maine residents who cannot consistently afford...
