kitchenmage

Cooking classes in Skamokawa

photo: Kathleen Morgain

 

Would you like to learn to bake bread like those gorgeous loaves in the picture? If so, you are in luck. Kitty and Don Speranza, a pair of talented and passionate cooks who own The Inn at Crippen Creek Farm in Skamokawa, WA, are now offering cooking classes to the community as well as their overnight guests.

Before moving out to eventinierTown, Don and Kitty owned and operated Mangiamo! Catering and Italian Eatery in Portland, Oregon. Their bread is such a huge hit at the Two Island Farm Market on Puget Island in Cathlamet, WA during the summer months that they started a bread subscription service to keep their customers happy in the off-season. (Ahem, their bread is so good that I buy their focaccia all summer long instead of making my own.)

What I ate on my summer nonVacation ~ part 2

  Everywhere you look these days, there are lamentations of summer's demise. I know fall is coming, and darned quickly too - but it is still harvest time out there in the fields and the local farm market is still bursting with goodness. Some seasons are just starting - last week's CSA bag was heavy with the first of the Stockhouse's sweet, tender corn. Not the last, mind you, the first.

Besides, summer is eternal in the photo archives.

Herewith, I offer part two of What I ate while I was notBlogging this summer: the farmer's market edition.

What I ate on my summer nonVacation - part 1

All of this lovely food came from over in the next valley where a couple of my friends have spent the last six months toiling away from dusk to dawn, building an organic farm for a new bed and breakfast. How cool of a job is that?

While it is also really hard work, as Dubya might say, Sarah (yes, our lady of the Cookie Lavender) and Connor always seem to glow with the accomplishment of creating a thriving organic farm. And who can blame them, just look at this stuff!

I just know Alice would love these magical purple beans! What's not to love?

That iridescent purple that cloaks the mundane green bean is absolutely stunning. Yet by the time the bean is served, it has disappeared! It is a special treat just for the cooks, a tiny bit of backstage magic that makes it that much more fun to have a small person, like Alice, helping you in the kitchen and the garden.

Wahkiakum County’s 3rd Annual Ag Summit

Join local food enthusiasts and farmers on Saturday, May 5th to network and hear from agricultural and marketing experts, and learn to tap into expanding markets for organic and locally produced foods.

The event begins at 9:30 a.m. with keynote speaker Tim Crosby of 21 Acre Farm in Woodinville, Washington.  Crosby was recently featured in the Capital Press emphasizing the value of eating locally produced foods to food security and the economy. "When food is fresh, local and tied to farmers who are benefiting their communities, everyone comes out ahead," he explained.

 

Morning sessions will also include Gary Burkhalter, a Rosburg dairy farmer, speaking on his family farm’s transition to organic and selling through the Organic Valley cooperative.

A representative from the WSDA Organic program will speak in the afternoon on organic certification.  Afternoon sessions also include Mary Embleton, executive director of Cascade Harvest Coalition and Puget Sound Fresh.  She’ll speak on their promotion of Puget Sound farms with the Puget Sound Fresh brand.  Also, we’ll hear from Jennifer Johnson, Wahkiakum Chamber of Commerce director, on local efforts to create a regional brand for products grown in the Lower Columbia region.

Lunch is available for a small fee.  Call or e-mail Carrie at the WSU Wahkiakum County Extension office to RSVP: 795-3278 (cakennedy@wsu.edu)

Mark your calendar:
    Saturday, May 5th, 9:30 – 3:30
    River Street Meeting Room
    25 River Street, Cathlamet, WA

Hope to see you there!

(all food is from members of the Wahkiakum Food and Farm Network, photographed at the Two Islands Farm Market last summer - click on a photo to go to the flickr page for that picture and see which of the great farms or other food producers is responsible for a particular product...)

Join local food enthusiasts and farmers on Saturday, May 5th to network and hear from agricultural and marketing experts, and learn to tap into expanding markets for organic and locally produced foods.

The event begins at 9:30 a.m. with keynote speaker Tim Crosby of 21 Acre Farm in Woodinville, Washington.  Crosby was recently featured in the Capital Press emphasizing the value of eating locally produced foods to food security and the economy. "When food is fresh, local and tied to farmers who are benefiting their communities, everyone comes out ahead," he explained.

 

Morning sessions will also include Gary Burkhalter, a Rosburg dairy farmer, speaking on his family farm’s transition to organic and selling through the Organic Valley cooperative.

A representative from the WSDA Organic program will speak in the afternoon on organic certification.  Afternoon sessions also include Mary Embleton, executive director of Cascade Harvest Coalition and Puget Sound Fresh.  She’ll speak on their promotion of Puget Sound farms with the Puget Sound Fresh brand.  Also, we’ll hear from Jennifer Johnson, Wahkiakum Chamber of Commerce director, on local efforts to create a regional brand for products grown in the Lower Columbia region.

Lunch is available for a small fee.  Call or e-mail Carrie at the WSU Wahkiakum County Extension office to RSVP: 795-3278 (cakennedy@wsu.edu)

Mark your calendar:
    Saturday, May 5th, 9:30 – 3:30
    River Street Meeting Room
    25 River Street, Cathlamet, WA

Hope to see you there!

(all food is from members of the Wahkiakum Food and Farm Network, photographed at the Two Islands Farm Market last summer - click on a photo to go to the flickr page for that picture and see which of the great farms or other food producers is responsible for a particular product...)

Stockhouse's Farm CSA

It is perhaps a paradox that it is easier to find a farm offering CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) subscriptions in the city than out here in evenTinierTown. Odd though that may be, I spent last summer watching sadly as friends of mine in Seattle got weekly boxes of farm-fresh produce, brimming with marvelous, and sometimes new to them, produce while I had to make do with going to a chain grocery store for far too much of what we ate. Sure, I have friends who felt took pity on my gardenless self and gifted me with the occasional overflow from their own gardens, but it's just not the same as having a plot of raised beds and a CSA.

NAIS Informational meeting

(grok'd from the Gray's River Grange site)

There's been a bit of information floating around lately about the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), a new program of the USDA.From the USDA website:   

“As part of its ongoing efforts to safeguard U.S. animal health, USDA initiated the implementation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) in 2004. NAIS is a cooperative State-Federal-industry partnership to standardize and expand animal identification programs and practices to all livestock species and poultry. NAIS is being developed through the integration of three components—premises identification, animal identification, and animal tracking. The long-term goal of the NAIS is to provide animal health officials with the capability to identify all livestock and premises that have had direct contact with a disease of concern within 48 hours after discovery.”

It sounds good on paper, but it raises some significant red flags in my mind, seeming to place a huge logistical and financial burden on small farmers. Farmgirl has been talking to me about it in mail recently and she pointed me at NONAIS, a portal for all things NAIS (Yes, they have a position, but you could tell that from the name, right?)

Carrie Kennedy, our local WSU Extension Agent, will be hosting a meeting at the Grays River Grange on May 9th at 7:30 pm to talk about NAIS and answer questions that you may have about how it will impact you. The grange hall is at the west end of the hamlet of Grays River on SR 4. Hope to see you there.

Wahkiakum farmer's market meeting

This is for my local readers — all three of you. grin

There's a Farmer's Market meeting this Saturday March 11th at 10:30 am in the office of the Wahkiakum County Fairgrounds in Skamokawa. Please come down and help get the market going again this year. If you are interested but unable to attend, contact Carrie Kennedy at 360-795-3278 to share your thoughts about the proposed market.