Good Food is Everybody's Business
Farming north of the 48th parallel means short growing seasons and long winters. Raising meat animals rather than produce in the North means having products available for delivery almost year round. Yet when your nearest big market is 250 miles away, making winter deliveries can be hazardous.
In 2011 we visited more than 40 good food producers and providers in 30 cities across four states and British Columbia. We petted cows and goats in dairy barns, waded ankle deep in shellfish beds and waist deep in grain fields, trotted down rows of vegetables and fruit, and walked numerous orchards, large and small. We had to brush the flour out of our hair each time we left a grain mill. Here are some of the wonderful folks we met along the way.
Quick! What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “dairy cows?” Probably black and white cows in a grassy field in front of a red barn, right? That’s the image that every confinement dairy operation would like you to imagine, but very few cows are raised that way. Rick Adamski, Full Circle Farm, Seymour Wisconsin, is a grazer. No, he doesn’t eat grass; he milks about 90 cows that do.
Last week, we heard Heidi’s story of the beginning of Wise Choice Farm; this week we celebrate the farm’s first anniversary.
Heidi Norman Wise and her husband John moved from Minneapolis to a small farm in rural Wisconsin to live their dream. Sometimes it’s better NOT to know what is coming…
Dairy farming has made a full circle on the land where you’ll find Fresh Breeze Organic Dairy; five generations of Dutch farmers have made their living here, just south of the U.S./Canadian border. Farming methods have changed over the last hundred years, yet Shawn Langley’s great grandfather would surely have been comfortable on the farm today.
Snuggled up against the Canadian border in northern Washington, you’ll find Fresh Breeze Organic Dairy, where Shawn and Clairssa Langley are carrying on the family tradition. Shawn is the fifth generation of his family on the farm.
The Danish Parliament, the “Folketinget,” has voted by a large majority to introduce a tax on saturated fat, putting meat and dairy products in the same category as cigarettes and alcohol. The tax is to be imposed on meat, meat products, oils and processed foods containing saturated fats, and dairy products.
