By Roberta Bailey Seed saving is rapidly becoming a national craze, hot on the heels of football and baseball. Well, not quite, but it is gaining popularity. It’s making the newspapers, and when it gets its own section, I’m convinced that it will have a place before the sports section. I’ve stated it before but
By Roberta Bailey About 15 years ago, I wrote a column entitled “What is Tofu?” Tofu was just hitting the market shelf in individual, one-pound containers. Until then, it was only available at co-op storefronts or health food stores. You brought your own container and ladled out blocks of it from a 5-gallon bucket. If
Drawing by Toki Oshima By Roberta Bailey When we plant a seed, we create a direct link between our ancestral past and our potential future. The seed we plant has traveled around the world, from farmer to farmer, from native populations to traders and conquerors to royalty and eventually back to farmers. The carrot seed
Drawing by Toki Oshima By Roberta Bailey For the first time in almost, 20 years of preserving food, I had a surplus of canned green beans and tomato sauce. I had planned on putting up a little less food as my son, Isak, was leaving for college. I hadn’t planned on my daughter having swim
By Sue Smith-Heavenrich I spent 10 minutes one morning last summer watching the bees in my blooming asparagus – the bumblebees, honeybees and a number of smaller bees I couldn’t immediately identify. They were incredibly busy, moving from one flower to the next. In the squash and pumpkin blossoms, small bumblebees were vibrating, making quite
Rotations with winter and spring cereal grains have good possibilities in Maine, said Dr. Matt Liebman at a MOFGA-sponsored talk at the Maine Agricultural Trades Show in January. The keys to successful cereal production, he continued, are adequate weed control – especially paying attention to mechanical weed control – and adequate soil fertility. Regarding winter
By Jean English “I hope to see hemp used soon for more than one purpose on this campus,” joked Dean Jim Carignan of Bates College in his opening remarks at the April 4 Alternative Paper Conference. He added that the next millennium “will be owned not by the government, not buy business, but by NGOs
By Roberta Bailey Cider is an extraordinarily versatile beverage that can be enjoyed in its many forms, sweet, semi-sweet, dry, sparkling, still, apple brandy and apple jack, as well as in a staggering number of hot and mulled drinks. Recently, the United States has rediscovered this beverage that quenched the thirst of its founders. Interest
By Ellie MacDougall If parsley is the workhorse of the herb family, chervil is its refined, sophisticated cousin. A native of Europe and western Asia, and naturalized throughout North America, Anthriscus cerefolium is a member of the family Umbelliferae, as are carrots and parsley. It features lacy leaves that echo the shape of parsley but
By Roberta Bailey Close to 2 acres of the Common Ground Country Fair’s permanent site is being planted to an experimental orchard. Another quarter acre or so will be a tree nursery. Both sites will be test plots for soil amendments, cover crops, rootstocks, and new and old fruit cultivars, hardy and tender. A portion
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