Maybe it was the beautiful strong plants from the Lexington Farmers Market, or the heat, or the nearly black compost my man put around them, but one of my four Brandywine plants produced a ripe fruit yesterday, June 26, the earliest ever in my garden.

I also “disappeared” the first two Sun Gold fruit - so delicious - and I expect about 10,000 more on my four Sun Gold plants, based on their blooms. Read the rest of this entry »

First thing this morning I stood at my old white porcelain kitchen sink, clearing out gunk stuck in the throat of my trusty wireless vacuum. Dirty linty flaky gross things tumbled into the sink.

Before noon the sink had handled a veritable honor roll of Kentucky sustainable agriculture products - with perfect aplomb, I thought. (As well as perfect plumming.)

I had, among other things:

• Skimmed the foam off chicken broth - into the sink, getting the last goodness out of our Elmwood Stock Farm pastured roast chicken’s bones
• Washed a Stonecross Farm pork loin roast and set it to cook slowly in the oven
• Cleaned Blue Moon shallots for the soup and dropped their shaggy skins and stems into the sink.
• Poured the overnight soaking water from Anasazi beans down the drain
• Scrubbed beets picked last night at Chris and Sandy Canon’s Meadowbloom Farm in Washington County
• Washed pots, utensils, and my hands too many times to count

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s someone else — David Gumpert, a prostate cancer survivor — writing about reasons we should pay more than we do for food that is good, clean, fair, and sustainably produced. His blog is called The Complete Patient. He is an advocate for raw milk, too, a food that is inspected and sold legally for human consumption in 28 states, according to www.realmilk.com (Kentucky is not one of those states.) David says he pays his milk producer $5 per gallon, although her asking price is $3.

Thank you, Ann Bell Stone, of Elmwood Stock Farm, for the link.

The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, with acclaimed former Owensboro mayor David Adkisson as its new leader, invites Kentuckians to help create A New Agenda for our state. In the fall the Chamber will publish a book of the 100 best ideas, and then work to winnow those to a small number, maybe 3-5, to share with Kentucky’s new governor.

The Kentucky Chamber had a really brief meeting here a few weeks ago to collect ideas for their New Agenda. I doubt if you made it. So how about completing an online form with your own great ideas? I hope you will think about local foods, sustainability, the health and environmental benefits of organic and local production, marketing, and processing - and all such good things.

To see what I submitted… Read the rest of this entry »