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slow moving food • boston

LOCAVORE

no.2

cityfresh

VOL. 1

MAY 2013

ALSO FEATURING growing your own herbs,the new clover foods,whats in season & more!

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“to plant agarden is tobelieve intomorrow”

MAY 2013 • VOL. 1 NO.02

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contents

10AN EXPERIMENT

IN BUILDINGBETTER FOODClover foods and

their location. 13EAT IT HEREBest FarmersMarkets aroundTown to get food!

27CIDER CITY

All the local cideries near and

around Boston.

22SMOOTHIES YOU,YOU & YOU TOOSmoothies madewith local ingredients,good for you!

slow moving food • boston

05COMPANIES CULTIVATING URBAN FARMING PRACTICESTaking a look at City Fresh Foods.

15LOCAL VS. OTHER

We weigh the pros and cons

of local versustransported.

35FRESH HERBHow to growyour own herbsvery easily.

43HOW TO’S

We teach youthe right way to

do what you love.

departmentsASK LOCAHERB OF THE MONTHFARMERS MARKETS

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TEAMWORK

The city fresh crew gathers.

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CITY FRESH FOOD TAKES ACTION WRITTEN BY Patricia Harris & David LyonPHOTOGRAPHS BY Cinthia Wellerby

URBANFARMING

GLYNN LLOYD, THE CEO OF Boston based city fresh foods catering com-pany, had an epiphany a couple of years back, “i

was standing in the kitchen at city fresh and realized that we were buying all this lettuce from California and paying a pretty good dollar for it,” he recalls. “Then I was driving up Harold Street [in Roxbury] and I just noticed vacant lot, vacant lot, vacant lot, vacant lot. I said, ‘We are going to get land and start growing food.’ ”

VEGGIN’ MAKING THE CITY INTO A GARDEN

companies cultivating

initiatives

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He was hardly the only one with that idea. Margaret Connors, a public-school wellness coordinator, was concerned that school meals had so little local food. She met Lloyd when City Fresh catered meals after her school’s kitchen broke down. They started tal king, and together they hatched a for-profit, urban-farming company dedicated to providing farm-to-ta-ble produce, creating jobs, and bringing vacant neigh-bourhood land back into productive use.

Now that it is entering its fourth growing sea-son, City Growers has partnered with the ever-famously local Massachusetts Department of Agricultural resources and the not-for-profit Urban Farming Institute of Boston to sponsor the first Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference at Roxbury Community College next Saturday. The conference will offer an update on city agriculture in the Bay State and lay out the opportunities and chal-lenges of growing food in the city.

Urban farming is hardly a new concept. Farms persisted inside city limits around the country well into the 20th century. (The orchards of Roxbury were famous for developing the Roxbury Russet apple and introducing what became known as the Bartlett pear to the United States.) More recently, intensive grow-ing on small plots — both in the ground and on roof-tops — has flourished in municipalities as diverse as Milwaukee, Detroit, New York, and San Francisco.

Hard figures about how much commercial agri-culture takes place in Boston are difficult to come by. Those involved locally say that this modern incarnation is in its infancy here, with most of

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the larger organized efforts in-volving nonprofit operations connected to hunger relief and social-service programs. But all agree that interest in self-sus-taining micro-farms that grow for the market is gaining traction.

During the 2012 growing season, City Growers cultivated four small plots in Dorchester and Roxbury. “That really proved our model,” says Connors. The company employed two full-time growers and a part-time grower, and got assistance from about 100 volunteers. “We grew on about 20,000 square feet, which is half an acre,” she says. “We generated $32,600 of sales on that half acre. All we need to do is get more land and we can scale that up.” City Growers estimates its break-even point at about three intensely farmed acres.

Although Connors still envi-sions one day providing fresh food to Boston public schools, City Growers currently operates as a commercial wholesale grow-er. In 2012, the company sold to restaurants that ranged from Ha-ley House and Stone Hearth Pizza to Lumière and Henrietta’s Ta-ble. Their fresh products also ap-

peared in a few small grocery stores, includ-ing Foodie’s Ur-ban Market in the South End, Savenor’s on Beacon Hill and in Cambridge, American Prov-sions in South Boston, Sher-man Market in

Somerville, and City Feed and Supply in Jamaica Plain.

As part of a commitment to small local food producers, Da-vid Warner, co-owner of City Feed and Supply, has been a cus-tomer of City Growers from the

your ownGROW

SWEET BASIL

DILL WEED

LAVANDULA

ROSEMARY

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“The closer you can get to your food, the more you’re going to know about it and the more

nutritious, potentially, it’s going to be for you.”

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GREENHOUSE

Fresh strawberries

all around!

“the time isripe for urban

agriculture”

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early days. “I’m a big believer in fewer degrees of separation in the food pipeline. The closer you can get to your food, the more you’re going to know about it and the more nutritious, potentially, it’s going to be for you,” Warner says. He also sees urban farming as an amenity for city living. “To walk down a city street and see a good-sized plot of land being actively cultivated,” he says, “adds a visual benefit. You’re seeing human ac-tivity that has an aesthetic and a beauty to it, and that enriches all our lives.”

Like Lloyd and Connors, Warner will be participating in discussion panels at the Urban Farming Conference, which is generating a lot of enthusiasm around the region.

“The time is ripe for urban agriculture,” says Greg Watson, commissioner of the Massachu-setts Department of Agricultural Resources, another cosponsor of the conference. “The time is right to piggyback on the ‘buy lo-cal’ movement. I think people have made the real connection between locally grown fresh food, health, nutrition, and obesity prevention. If we can shorten the distance between where the food is grown and where it’s consumed, there will be multiple benefits.”

The recognition of environ-mental degradation within cities through the relocation of resourc-es to serve urban populations has inspired the implementation of different schemes of urban agri-culture across the developed and developing world. From historic models such as Machu Picchu to designs for new productive city farms, the idea of locating agri-culture in or around the city takes on many characteristics.

No one is suggesting turn-ing Boston Common into a farm, but there are a lot of smaller plots around. Estimates of the aggregate of small vacant plots vary widely, from 600 to a few thousand acres. Many are sim-ply pieces of land that have lain unused for decades. “Those vacant lots are mostly in Rox-bury, Dorchester, and Mattapan,” Connors points out. Not coinci-dentally, that is where they are concentrating their efforts.

The potential is staggering. “Take 10 percent of that,” says

Lloyd, “or even 5 percent. That would produce a checkerboard of small intensive farms where we can grow more of our food.” Linked into a single entity (such as City Growers) with coordinat-ed market operations and pooled resources, several quarter-acre micro-farms could have a signifi-cant impact.

Urban farming fits into a broader vision by Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s office that would ensure access to healthy, local, nutritious food at fair prices for all Bostonians. Encouraging food trucks, pushing for the develop-ment of a public market, and even supplying vouchers for low-in-come residents to use at farmers’ markets have been part of that vi-sion. Through the Mayor’s Office

of Food Initiatives, the city hopes to foster a broad spectrum of agri-cultural activity that ranges from rooftop growing to aquaponds to service companies for a new agri-cultural sector.

The economic stakes are surprising. At a City Hall agri-economic powwow in November, Trish Karter (founder of Dancing Deer Baking Co. and now of Light-Effect Farms, which proposes farming in rooftop greenhouses) estimated that the packaged salad greens market in Metro Boston is worth $100 million annually. A lot of growers would like a piece of that.

were among the founders of UFI and remain actively involved in the process.

Besides serving as an advocate for urban farms in policy discus-sions, UFI’s principal tasks are to incubate farms and incubate farmers. “For now we are look-ing to use city land,” says Dave Madan, a UFI founding board member and executive director of theMove, a Cambridge-based group that organizes educational farm volunteer workdays. He serves on UFI’s land-use com-mittee. “In the future we will be looking at options to actually ac-quire land or look at long-term leases.”

More immediately, UFI has been recruiting about a dozen would-be urban farmers for a 28- to 30-week training program that begins with classroom sessions, followed by practical experience in the field. “The big vision,” says Lloyd, a UFI board member, “is that when they are done, each one gets a plot of land to grow on.” • For more information on City Farm Growers feel free to visit cityfarmgrowers.com

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nationalgrid

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LOCATION!

Once only a food van, now a resturant.

AN EXPERIMENT

BETTERIN BUILDING

FOOD

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BETTER CLOVER FOOD GETS IT RIGHT WRITTEN BY Sheryl Julian

FOOD

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LOCAL AND FRESH

Using only ingredients from as close to the location as possible.

EATIN’ AWAY

Overlooking the Clover resturant.

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E EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN TO clover food lab in Harvard Square, which opened in the fall, has a strong opinion about

it.Here are some: fascinating, fabulous, cold, like a real laboratory, and where’s the beef ? If the place is adamant about not being labeled veg-etarian, why is there soy bacon in my sandwich? Clover Food is a fast-food restaurant, almost always offering well made, high-quality food. The 80-seat place is cavernous, hard to warm up because it’s so spare, very brightly lighted, with a simple menu that hardly varies. There are white ChemTop tables, birch veneer stools, and large slabs of Maine red oak as ta-bles and counters. It has a pop-up quality, as if the crew is here temporarily, planning to relocate elsewhere. You enter Clover and see an electronic menu board with selections listed with wait time, say, “2.3 minutes,’’ updated often (as is the restaurant’s site and Twitter). Ayr Muir, who started the company and has shareholders now, is a graduate of MIT (Course 3, materials science and engineering). He also has a Harvard MBA and his resume includes a stint at McKinsey & Co., the management consult-ants. Muir works with Rolando Robledo, who has experience at The French Laundry and teach-ing at Johnson & Wales. Clover began as food trucks, located at MIT and South Station, where the menu was refined before it moved to bricks and mortar. In this first location, greeters enter your or-der on an iPod touch system and you get change from their money belts. And then, about two minutes later, like something out of a frat house, you hear someone bellow your name. In this high-tech environment, no one has figured out how to get you to the counter without a holler. Once there, you will see very good coffee made only three cups at a time with individual filters; fine tea leaves steeping in a little pot, one per customer; counter workers making sandwich-es in delicious, puffy, tender little whole-wheat pockets. A breakfast sandwich ($5) with sliced to-matoes and cheese has a Chip-In Farm egg whose yolk breaks at the first bite, spilling golden sauce into the pocket. It might be the best thing on the menu, until you dip into creamy Narragansett yogurt layered with beautiful granola and pear compote. Chickpea fritters, stuffed into a pocket ($5) with salad, pickles, and hummus is another gem. Egg and eggplant sandwich ($5) also contains hum-mus, nicely charred vegetables, and egg. One night

“ALWAYS OFFERING WELL MADEHIGH-QUALITY FOOD”

FRESHBasil-lemonade always on hand.

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what’s onthe menu?

Sustainable coffee from BoliviaGrown by coop members in a small village called Taipiplaya, at altitudes of up to 1800 meters. Generally speaking, growing at high altitudes is a desirable condition for Arabica beans.

Cheese from Grafton, VermontGrafton is a non-profit. They exist to sup-port small dairies in Southern VT. Their

“profits” go either to the Town of Grafton, VT, or to small dairy farms located around the state of Vermont.

THE LAB

Quirky, fresh ingredients make

for fun food combos.

Locally grown RosemaryRosmarinus officinalis, commonly known as rosemary, is a woody, perennial herb with fragrant, evergreen, needle-like leaves and white, pink, purple, or blue flowers, native to the Mediterranean region

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it has an unappealing dark circle around the yolk; at lunch another day, the yolk is a pretty yellow. Fries ($3) are lowered into their bath with fresh rosemary, which lends the shoestrings their nice fragrance. For some reason, soups don’t look appeal-ing, but taste fine. Pureed cauliflower one night is gray, squash isn’t the coral color I’m expecting, but robust beet is startlingly bright and tastes as good With all this well-made food, there are very annoyances. A sign that tells you where to put compostables and is written on blue painter’s tape. Same for tagging the restrooms. You are not allowed and cannot get salt unless you ask, and when

you do, the counter person wants to know what it’s for . It’s for my egg. If you watch the staff, you’ll see them tipping juice into a tiny cup from a big square container. Of course it splatters on the counter. Look at this as a true lab, in which the food is evolving. While it might not be to everyone’s taste, there will probably be something for everyone. Something well made and delicious. Muir seems to be tweeting in his sleep, fastidiously answering customers’ questions, even blogging about his review interview, so he’s definitely paying attention. There’s no detail too small. Beside “City water, filtered’’ it says 2 minutes on the board. Put it in pitchers on a counter. That would take zero. •

“A TRUE LAB,IN WHICH THE FOOD IS EVOLVING”

EATIN’ AWAY

Overlooking the Clover resturant.

Here we explore the most in-season fruits

and vegetables, so you can visit your local

famers market and get it straight from them!

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INFOGRAPHIC

potatoes

tom

atoes

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Per fruit. They are the only fruit with the seeds on the outside. It is a hybrid species that is cultivated worldwide for its fruit. The fruit is widely appreciated for its sweetness.

200seeds

*Fragaria ananassa

okra

cherries

eggplant

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Million years ago, they were first discovered. A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fun-gus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source.

90

Means radish in latin. The radish is an edible root vegetable of the Brassicaceae family that was domesticated in Europe, in pre-Ro-man times.

radix

*Raphanus sativus

*Amanitamuscaria

pe

pp

ers

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Made of water. The car-rot is a root vegetable, usually orange in col-our, though purple, red, white, and yellow varie-ties exist. It has a crisp texture when fresh.

87%

*Daucuscarota

collards

green peas

USING HERBS

1 shot bourbon2 sprigs rosemary3/4 cup apple cider

• Put the cider and 1 sprig of rosemary in a small saucepan.

• Heat until the cider starts to bubble around the edges.

• Take off heat, and cover tightly. Let sit for 10- 15 minutes.

• Remove the rosemary sprig, pour cider in glass along with bourbon. Garnish with rosemary sprig.

apple ciderrosemaryRECIPE

of theMONTH

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ASK LOCA

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WHAT DOES THE COLOR OF MY FOOD TELL ME ABOUT IT’S NUTRIENTS WITHIN?

DEAR LOCA,I have heard that the color of food can tell somewhat about what is inside it. I was curious if you could give me some inner insight as to what may be the deal with this? I want to be more aware of what I am putting in my body.

Sincerely,Chak Lidhull

ask loca!LOCAVORE

The bright colors of fruit are like a code signaling the nutrients contained inside, but you don’t need a complicated code breaker to figure out the health benefits that come from eating fruit. Just include plenty of colors in a wide array of choices to help prevent heart disease, lower cholesterol levels and reduce your risk of developing eye or bone problems.

Q.

A.

POWERFUL!Green fruits & veg have both lutien and indoles; which provide the human body with the strength to main-tain healthy vision and strong teeth.

ASK MEanything!

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EVERY MONTHreaders are encouragedto send in questions aboutfood and living local!

helloloca@locavore.com

*

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Typefaces /Azkindenz-Grotesk

Sentinel

Clarendon

Photography /Creative commons & other

All rights go to those responsible

Paper /Rolland Hitech50. 80 lb.

Design /Ali Nolin

Editors/Anna Clark

Additional thanks /Joe Thornton & Chik’n Little

Cover photo by /Creative commons

© Copyright 2013 Locavore

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slow moving food • boston

LOCAVORE

no.3

greenhouses

VOL. 1

ALSO FEATURING repurposed containers,make your own cider,go exploring & more!

MAY 2013