A couple of days at Gravity Hill

"Eaters must understand, how we eat determines how  the world is used"
- Barbara Kingsolver  from "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"
 (quoted on the G.H. website)

Garlic scapes

Garden beds, community building
and Jurassic Park tour vehicle

Lacinato kale

I just had the privilege of volunteering at Gravity Hill Farm, a certified organic market farm in Titusville, New Jersey. I tried to play it cool but yep, I was a little starstruck. Mainly because this is the first big-ish organic farm I have visited so just the quantities got me excited. When we went down to the bottom garden and started picking 70(!) bunches of rainbow chard I got a little emotional about the sea of greens. Three kinds of kale, the most abundant silverbeet I have ever laid eyes upon, florence fennel, chinese cabbage, kohl rhabi, collard greens...(breathe)... it was just  gorgeous.

And then there are the farmers. I was lucky to work beside three awesome women. Fern and Amy - kickass farm co-managers (who I now add to my list of role models) and Lauren who has grown up on farms and is now working part-time for Gravity Hill. Amy and Fern work so well together, have a lot of experience and knowledge and such good attitudes. One of my favourite moments was listening to the two sing the jurassic park theme while we drove around in the kawasaki, daydreaming about dressing up the alpacas in dinosaur costumes. And just generally getting a lot done on the farm and working as a team. There were definitely moments when the phrase "girl-power" ( a little embarrassingly) sprung to mind. 

Amongst other things, I was introduced to the transplanting implement (which enabled us to plant a heap of curcubits in a short amount of time), picked a bag of garlic scapes - really just a meditation on form - and helped to harvest beautiful purple and green kohl rhabi and corral an escaped bevy of animals. Best. Days. Ever.

Curcubit seedlings sprayed with kaolin clay
to deter hungry cucumber beetles

Transplanter implement

Oh, the greens!

Gravity Hill farm was established in 2005 by David Earling who was inspired to create a farm that was - like all farms 'back in the day' - organic and family run. You can read more about that on the website. The produce harvested from the farm is sold at four different markets - two days at the Stockton farmers market and two days at the farm itself. This, I love. Because it draws people out to see how their food is grown and it gets them together. 

A great component of the farm is the community building. It's where we ate lunch on stools around the expansive kitchen; it's where a big group of 'rug hookers' (their words, not mine) gathered to, well, hook and share food; it's where kids can learn about food and about animals. It is just a wonderful purpose built space for coming together to do cool things. 

Inside the community building

I hope to spend more time at Gravity Hill. The young energy of the place was invigorating, the people fantastic and the ethic of the place, at least to a newcomer, just, well, good. I am curious about the longer-term viability of the place (I'm sure it's not all sunshine and earthworms). But they do have some great things going on. Thanks for having me guys.

P.S. If you think Gravity Hill is a strange name then get educated - here

sandor and why making 'kraut is a political act

"...naked - standing here without a head of cabbage"

I heard about Sandor a couple of years ago when I learned about making sauerkraut. Some photocopied recipes were being passed around and many delicious and - admittedly – alien looking ferments were bubbling away in our sun room. Our share house at the time went through a real kraut craze around the same time one housemate, Alex, coined the phrase "fusion cuisine" to refer to what was really just combining everything we had left in the kitchen and calling it dinner. Since then though I haven't made or eaten much homemade fermented food - some beer here, pizza dough there but nothing regular. So I was ready to receive a pep talk from public educator and demystifier, 'fermentation revivalist', Sandor Katz.

And he delivered. This talk, as well as being an introduction to his new book "The Art of Fermentation" was also a Q and A sessions which ranged from "why is my yoghurt runny?" to "what's your opinion of mass-produced kombucha?". And this spectrum just about sums it up. As Sandor so eloquently put it - "we can't reclaim our food without also reclaiming fermentation”. The personal is political. That crockpot of vegetables in the kitchen matters not only because it delivers a whole bunch of beneficial bacteria to your gut but also because you made it. And you share it with your friends. And they swap their kefir, bread, whatever and so what is also being cultivated is community. 

Sandor described his first fermentation workshop and what really stood out for him was a persistent and generalised "fear of ageing food outside the refrigerator". His observation and concern about those fears led to Sandor becoming a public educator who seeks to demystify fermentation. This focus really comes through in his book (what little of it I have delved into - it's big!) with lots of encouraging words like "don't worry", "don't throw it out yet" etc. And, personally, I need the encouragement.

"Fermentation, like all food production, was taken out of households and instead happened in labs, controlled by 'experts' in the interest of 'safety' and 'hygiene.....but sauerkraut & yoghurt don't have clinical trials!" 

In his new book Sandor does not focus on exact recipes and directions but broad principles which can be used to confidently experiment with all kinds of ferments. 

- - -

"...fermentation is a way to make foods more stable and more valuable. Milk to cheese. Cabbage to sauerkraut. Grapes to wine...ferments are the classic value-added products... (and) fermentation is central to a lot of the food we put in our mouths" 

As Sandor was speaking I thought of all those times I had a huge harvest of something (usually broad beans) which I would need to preserve. Now you can bottle, dry or freeze beans but you can also ferment them - with perhaps more interesting (and surprising) results.

What really is clear is that these are vital skills (or perhaps a better word is "approaches") for growers, or those in the community of growers, who need to deal productively with a glut of food and carry over supplies into the leaner months.

I could write forever about this, and I'm sure I'll return to it as I seek out and sample ferments from this part of the world, but for now I'll leave you with this - it's Sandor describing some Indonesian tempeh and, perhaps, (I think) a kind of benchmark for a sustainable and ethical food system...

 "elaborate communities of organisms which self perpetuate very easily"

finding food in stockton with a forager who knows her stuff

 

After a sketchy first wild food foray Amy Manning kindly took us for a walk around her neighborhood and she really knows what to eat and what to avoid. We didn't go more than a couple of hundred metres from the house yet we found great varieties of edible plants. As well as showing us how to identify certain species (and how to beware of poisonous look-alikes) Amy gave us some simple ideas for uses - both culinary and medicinal . 

It was really inspiring to learn from someone who really does make everyday use of these abundant plants. 

My favourites on this walk were wild garlic, lambs quarters (or wild spinach) and mulberries. So delicious!

Thanks Amy.

 

Dan's deer huntin'

Another good news story in a sometimes depressing food universe. 

This is Dan. In the last year he hunted and dressed five deer and got a butcher to process them into many varieties of venison meat products - which have been feeding him, his parents and his friends for a while now.


Now not everyone has the resources to harvest a deer overpopulation in Pennsylvania, but Dan does and he did. He is getting closer to his meat than most of us will ever get and is learning a lot in the process.


Taking responsibility for his meat is not something Dan learned from generations of hunters in his family - rather he was inspired when a friend took him hunting on the West Coast. Awesome. Humans are incredibly adaptable creatures - we can learn new skills and ways of living if we have the will and the way.


There is a lot of wisdom out there and speaking with Dan just adds to my appreciation of and aspiration to become a generalist - to know something about a lot of things, especially those things that pertain to my sustenance and everyday existence.

In this vein check this out for a really excellent introduction on how to kill and prepare a whole pig.