We are a small group of folks who are interested in growing and keeping local produce of all kinds – animal and vegetable - and in sharing the technical expertise among our communities.
We are all too busy to spend a lot of time in meetings, but we are interested in coming together occasionally - over a pot luck dinner – to hear about gardening, fishing, cooking, preserving, marketing, and other topics of interest to our group. We will also try to insure that everyone in our community has high quality food grown locally.
We plan to start a Saturday morning open-air market to share the bounty of our harvests with one another. The market will be set up at Hedgerow on Ridge road from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. We’ll post the starting day as the time approaches.
This newsletter will inform you of these doings plus other events that might be of interest.
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We hope to find a way to have a community canning center or kitchen so that when all those tomatoes come ripe at one time we can preserve them for the winter in an efficient and safe way. We could also be able to make preserves and jellies in such a facility. Some of us are interested in smoking fish, others in making butter and cheese; some want to garden successfully with a devotion to respect for the earth.
We hope to build a year round food supply that is local and nourishing. We also know that within our small villages there is a great deal of knowledge of “how the ancestors used to do it”. We want to record that knowledge and insure it remains with us and with our children.
If you are interested in joining us, just send an email to lindahsmall@yahoo.com or a snail mail note to Linda Small, P.O. Box 227, Port Clyde, ME. 04855. You will then get the Newsletter, which we hope to publish once a month in the growing season. We welcome all submissions from you.
The Newsletter will also be available thru a link on the Hedgerow website: http://www.hedgerowdesign.com/homefood/ ∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼∼
If you have them salted away in your cellar, and don’t use them any longer, would you consider sharing them? We’ll come get them and put them back into productive life.
We will also be interested in having those St. George folks who are raising sheep, goats, rabbits, etc for their fleece and fibers join with us. All of us are seeking manure for gardens.
MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardening Association) is restarting a local chapter for Knox County and you may sign up for info and meetings schedules via their Yahoo group site: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midcoast_mofga
MOFGA’s Newsletter – once a season – is a mine of information about all matters – legislation, agriculture, gardening ideas, and preservation of the earth. Well worth the costs of joining MOFGA.
We encourage everyone to explore local markets which do their best to carry locally grown vegetables and fruits as well as jams, jellies, maple syrup etc. Not to mention fish and shellfish. Your support of these small enterprises is critical to their survival, and strengthens our community.
The next newsletter will feature information on our area Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm ventures and the new Community Supported Fishery in Port Clyde. If you might be starting a CSA, or thinking about it, please let us know.
Use a pound of dandelion root to gallon of water; boil it well and, when newmilk warm, add 1 pound of maple sugar, 1 ounce of ginger, 1 teaspoon of good vinegar and a little yeast. It is very good for digestion.
Pick a mess of 20 fiddleheads and keep them moist until an hour before dinner. Then scrape off the hairs and scales with a dull knife. In doing this, try to unroll their coils as well as you can without breaking them, since they, too, must be cleaned; chop off the course bottoms. Boil them whole for 30 minutes in salted water. They make a very pretty and welcome dish.
From Grandmother in The Kitchen: A Cook’s Tour of American Household Recipes from the Early 1800s to the Late 1890s, by Helen Lyon Adamson
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