Savoring Kentucky » Tools

The Flowering

Rona — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:49:17 +0000

Add to the abundance of edibles already appearing this spring a generous flowering of events about food, food systems, farming and agriculture of the sort intended to sustain Kentuckians from now on.

Two food summits will take place soon in neighboring cities. These may be the first Kentucky food summits. Certainly the idea of a food summit is new to me, and promising.

Community Farm Alliance invites us to “Everybody Eats!” From the Ground Up: First Annual Louisville Food Summit this Saturday, April 11 —- well, perhaps not. Their event is sold out. Good for them!

Berea College kicks off its April 16-17 Food Summit with the irrepressible, inimitable Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm leading a convocation and speaking at a local foods dinner. Meet Joel in 97 seconds here, or spend eight minutes with him here as talks about forgiveness as a farming principle. Several of the Food Summit events are open to the public.

Next week in Lexington, the Gaines Center for the Humanities at the University of Kentucky brings Will Allen to a public forum at the Central Library, 140 East Main Street, Monday night, April 13, 6:00 PM. Allen founded Growing Power in Milwaukee, and received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 2008.

I am eager for a different type of event that takes place this Saturday, April 11: the first day outdoors in 2009 for the Lexington Farmers Market. This year the outdoor Market moves to a new location on the west side of the old Fayette County Courthouse along Cheapside Park, between Main and Short Streets, and along Short as well. Opening day outside means a lot more growers come to the Market. They will bring with them new green things to eat (green garlic for sure, thanks to Blue Moon) and other tasty bits I can hardly imagine!

Aspara-gusto! May’s Lick Festival, May 17, 2008

Rona — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:22:40 +0000

This monster asparagus grew in our bed downtown in Lexington and, emboldened by its 2007 manure, threatened to eat the neighborhood. Never fear, though! Mild-tempered, well-mannered asparagus — plus much fun — can be yours in May’s Lick, Kentucky on May 17, at the annual Asparagus Festival (always the third Saturday in May.)

I must confess that this delicious-sounding festival promises some kinds of fun I, at least, am not used to having. I will cite just one — the Asparagus Bed Race! I’m not promising an Asparagus Bed Race this year, but I’m saying it appears there have been bed races in the past. So I’m hopeful about that, along with the parade, the Taste of Asparagus, and other events that the organizers have in mind for all of us this year

See how the wonderful Jennifer Gleason, founder of Sunflower Sundries, described a recent festival. The tiny town of May’s Lick has to have a lot of energetic people to produce the big array of events each year, all celebrating the completely locally grown and indescribably good A-list vegetable, asparagus.

I am learning to use a new tool called Twine. I mean, I’m trying to learn. The idea is to find new ways to tie things and people together, if that’s what we want. I am hoping to use my local food twine to make it easy for people to post and find information on events relating to local food in Kentucky.

I clean the refrigerator

Rona — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:10:23 +0000

Sometimes a thing has to be done. If I am going to have plenty of room for gallons of milk from my friends and for my friends, I need a refrigerator with some “give” to it. Our “new” refrigerator has been wiped out a few times in the five years it has lived on Campsie place, but this was its first sincere, all out, over-the-top, nothing held back SCRUBBING. I took it apart and found stuff I didn’t want to find. And then I cleaned it all up, threw away a lot of food, and put it back together.

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That sinking feeling

Rona — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:02:04 +0000

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

I grew up in a house that had cold running water, no hot, for my first 13 years. Later I lived for two years without running water – that was in the Philippines – and I lived one dry year with a cistern. I’m used to Moments of Gratitude playing in my head and heart when I turn on the hot water and liquid falls from the tap.

I had never considered how wonderful a sink is, though. It takes it all in, contains and drains, and cleans right up afterward.

My kitchen is old and funky. “Bohemian” might be the polite term. We did a tiny redo a few years ago, and the sink had to come out to accommodate some new lower cabinets. While it was out I looked half-heartedly at replacements. They all seemed heartless and sterile compared to our heavy, wide, shallow, single, chipped, white porcelain beauty. We put it back in where it belongs.

Long may it drain.