The Local Food Report

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Every gardener’s been there. You go away for a day, peer under the leaves, and are alarmed to find that the small, reasonable little squashes from yesterday have doubled in size. But I hate to see zucchini go to waste. So after talking with David, I roamed the market, asking vendors and customers for their best zucchini ideas.

The bananas were a hit and he ended up building an entire banana industry — starting plantations in Jamaica and shipping the fruit to the United States.

I grew up in farm country, in Maine. Like most of us, I associate food with farms—big cultivated fields, animals grazing in pasture, aquaculture racks in the sea. But recently I’ve been thinking a lot more about wild foods. What would the world look like if more wild places filled our bellies?

Have you ever had a black raspberry? Until about ten years ago, I thought they were made up—a way to describe a commercial flavor, like a blue raspberry Jolly Rancher. I know, it’s a little embarrassing.

This week on the Local Food Report, black trumpet mushrooms.

My friend Drew Locke is a seventh-generation farmer in Truro. He’s always trying new things — partly because he’s curious and partly because even though he comes from a long line of farmers, a lot of intergenerational knowledge has been lost in recent decades and he’s focused on relearning the old ways.

All over eastern North America right now, chestnut breeders are pollinating tree flowers.

Our native forests are full of food. The understories are packed with blueberries and huckleberries and for thousands of years, local overstories have been full of nut trees: hickories and chestnuts and walnuts and oaks.