The Local Food Report

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.

Mob grazing is a strategy Dan Athearn is working with to try to control what’s growing on this unique stretch of grassland. His family took over managing the land with a group of other local growers and cattle farmers in 2021.

When Debbie Athearn’s father bought the 25 acres that started Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown, times were different.

Almost fifty years ago, when Haraldur Sigurdsson first came to the University of Rhode Island from Iceland, he got interested in what makes some clam shells more purple than others.

My friend Nicole Cormier is a registered dietician and studying for a masters in herbalism. And when she told me she eats pine pollen — and that in fact, it’s one of her favorite things to forage, I had to tag along.

Many of our native bees — and a few other surprising insects — evolved with and rely on many native edible species.

Our local lobster fishery is divided into two areas — region one which is basically the Gulf of Maine, and region two on the backside of the Cape, and for several months, all the fishing stock available to our local fleet had moved to region two.