By Roberta Bailey The National Gardening Bureau deemed 1997 the “Year of the Mesclun” and from my vantage point in Palermo, they called it right. The cool spring and well-timed rains of summer created ideal conditions for growing salad greens. The year is not over yet: A bed of mesclun seeded in September could feed
By Eric Sideman, PH.D. Ever since humans began to cultivate food, nitrogen has been the most common limit to crop yields. Modern agriculture has answered this limit with synthetic production of nitrogen fertilizers, which has greatly increased global food production and has supported an astonishing growth in the world’s population. However, the environmental problems are
By Roberta Bailey Winter is upon us again.The days are short and the nights, long. Time to catch up on reading, knitting, sitting by the fire and reflecting. A time to rest, to peruse the seed catalogs, and dream about what we will do next year. But the seeds are dormant in their hulls, silent
By Jean English I use four guidelines for most of my food choices. First, I avoid foods that are high in saturated fats (animal fats), high in polyunsaturated fats (corn and other vegetable oils) or high in hydrogenated oils (aka trans-fatty acids: margarine and solid shortenings, for example). Second, I avoid foods with pesticide residues,
Quite a few years ago, a Slovakian friend served me a dish of little soft pieces of bread sticks, coated with a sauce of ground breadseed poppy, some honey, and probably a few other ingredients. I never had anything like it. It was unforgettably delicious. While we ate, he explained that Slovaks used poppyseeds as
Bowdoin College, October 1997 Every three minutes, another woman is diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. Every 12 minutes, another woman dies from breast cancer in the United States. These were some of the grim statistics presented by Andrea Martin, founder and president of the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund, at a conference
Set a narrow tray in the bottom of a basket, set four pots of herbs of different textures and/or colors on the tray, and you’ve got a great gift for the holidays. To make such a gift now, you’ll have to buy the herb plants or propagate them from some you’ve been growing indoors. If
Hemp Resources: Magazine and Web Site Wendy Kochenthal’s hemp vests, belts, bags and leashes were displayed at the Common Ground Country Fair. English photo. By Jean English Last winter, Wendy Kochenthal of Jackson, Maine, took a two-month trip to the West Coast, traveling from Seattle to Baja and back again. Along the way she found
By Jane Lamb Say what they will about the “two Maines,” there are really three, as a drive north on Interstate 95 clearly illustrates. Notwithstanding arguable differences between settled coast and rural upland, the definable southern third of the state ends a few miles north of Bangor, when it gives way suddenly to endless forest
By Roberta Bailey Time passes. Seasons change, and then, change again. You work hard toward one goal, and then, before you know it, that goal has passed and you’re reflecting on its moments of intensity while looking toward the next life event. Sometimes it’s all in perspective; most times it’s hard to grasp, seeming surreal.
