The Local Food Report

This past fall I bought fifty pounds of German Butterball potatoes. They’re a hearty, dense, and waxy-fleshed heirloom variety. They don’t get flaky or mealy when cooked. They’re like a Yukon Gold only better, I think, because they have a thick skin that is delicious.

Two years ago my family started keeping chickens. Since then, we’ve raised birds for eggs and for meat, and we’ve always gotten the baby chicks at our local farm store. But this season I started wondering, what would it take to get a hen to hatch a few fertilized eggs on her own?

For the past several years my family has been a part of a grain and bean CSA. I did a piece about it in this series in 2010. Every December we get one-hundred pounds of grain, like corn and oats, grown in New York and Massachusetts. We also get spelt, and I haven’t always known what to do with it, but the other day, my friend Ed Miller of Wellfleet, introduced me to his spelt bread. 

Gia Winsryg-Ulmer grew up between Martha's Vineyard and New York City. As a young American woman traveling the world, she met the man who would become her husband in his hometown of Essaouria, Morocco and then moved there in 2010. That’s where she learned how to cook Moroccan food side-by-side with her mother-in-law. 

Households in America account for 27 million tons of food waste a year. That's at an annual cost between $1,500 - $2,500 for an average family of four. Another one million tons a year of organic waste, like food scraps, also ends up in landfills.

According to WCAI’s science editor, Heather Goldstone, food waste is the single largest component of our trash and a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Like methane.

During the growing season, Sarah Smith spends most of her time taking care of other people’s gardens—it’s her job. She also has a young son at home, and between these demands, she likes to keep her home garden easy and fun. 

Seventh graders Simone Rein Bosworth and Tashiana Lynch are standing in Nauset Middle school’s 30 by 50 foot greenhouse, peering into a microscope...

This week Elspeth Hay learns about a simple backyard project that can help increase garden yields and attract native species of bees. 

We’ve been talking recently on the Local Food Report about honeybees—why we need them, what challenges they face, and what local beekeepers, farmers, and citizens are doing to safeguard them. But native insects that act as pollinators are also part of this conversation. This week, Elspeth learns about a simple backyard project that can help increase garden yields and attract different, native species of bees.

In Chinese Medicine, fresh ginger root has warming properties and helps aid in digestion. Ali Berlow talks with acupuncturist Fae Kontje-Gibbs of Vineyard Haven, about a couple of simple ways to use ginger in the kitchen, to slow down, sooth your belly and be warm.  

  Ginger is native to the tropics. But that doesn't mean we can't grow it on the Cape. Two years ago, Coonamessett Farm Manager Stan Ingram read an article about a farmer in Maine growing ginger, and this year he decided to try it. This week on the Local Food Report, Elspeth talks with Stan about the challenges of growing ginger in our cold climate. The finished crop tastes similar to mature ginger, but looks quite different. 

According to the US EPA, roughly a third of the trash we create is packaging, and most of that comes from food. A few years ago, Elspeth Hay started wondering why we use so much packaging to keep and transport our food. She learned about a woman named Bea Johnson in California whose family produces only a pint of trash a year, and got inspired to try to reduce the amount of packaging her own family was bringing home.

When Judeen Lloyd migrated to the U.S. from Jamaica ten years ago, she brought her mother's recipe for rum cake with her. Some day, it'll be passed on to her daughter. But until then, she'll be baking and sharing rum cakes for the holidays, and the recipe? That will remain a secret.

I’ve been thinking a lot the past few weeks about my grandmother. Biee as we called her, or Bobby Cary—was an excellent cook. She lived in Virginia, far away from my parents in Maine—and after my grandfather died in the nineties, she’d come to visit two or three times a year. She only flew on Wednesdays—the cheapest and according to her safest day to fly—and she always came for the month of December.

Twice a week the Edgartown Council on Aging serves a hot lunch. On Fridays, it’s a full entrée, hot and homemade and anyone can join in. This week on The Local Food Report, Ali Berlow visits with the many people who help make it all come together.

All beehives are full of activity. This week on the Local Food Report, Elspeth Hay talks with a beekeeper in Wellfleet who's taken the phrase "busy as a bee" to another level—with one of his hives collecting climate data for NASA.