I had a great time at the NOFA-NY conference. NOFA stands for Northeast Organic Farming Association. The rare forecast for sun tempted me to skip the Friday session by Sally Fallon, but I am so glad I went. If you have not studied the book “Nourishing Traditions” I encourage you to. Warning though, she does not think vegetarian diets are the healthiest. Since I have her book, I was concerned that the day would be rehash, but I gained much more understanding and depth, and came away motivated. The main premise is that “traditional” diets of very healthy populations pre-1920 had much more Vitamin A and D and B12 among other things; that animal fats are not the culprit in heart disease; that animal fats are needed for much vitamin utilization. If that interests you here are two links to explore:
- some radio interviews with Sally Fallon
- The Weston Price Foundation. Dr. Price was a well-respected dentist who travelled the world studying diets of healthy cultures. Here is a link to their introductory tutorials.
I got good, solid information from a farmer who grows for 3 winter farmers markets. Most of his produce is grown during the summer and stored. He uses an old semi reefer box for his cooler. I am trying to figure out where I could put a 40 foot long truck box so it would have power and so I could back up to it with the tractor or market vehicle. His presentation (in overdrive speed) is on YouTube. It was a 2 hour presentation, now compressed into 10 minutes of slides, but you can pause on them. I need to fill in some gaps in my notes so will go through it.
Another farmer concentrates on teenage greens for the NYC restaurant market. They take the winter off. They are on a hillside, so grow in 25 foot wide beds with grass in between. The thing that stuck in my memory from Mark was that lettuces don’t like to be under row cover. I can second that – they get mildew. He uses lots of row covers, but not for lettuce. He also harvests at teenage size rather than baby and keeps the leaves attached to the stem when he harvests. Not only doe teenage leaves have more flavor and texture than baby size, but keeping the leaves attached to the stem prolongs shelf life. Harvesting and washing teenage size is much less labor intensive than baby leaves also. The CSA will be seeing some teenage lettuce this summer.
Other ones I went to were on tool sharpening, livestock management, and potato variety trials fto identify more good potatoes for organic production in New York
Since it was warmer when I got home than it had been in quite a while, I immediately went down to peek in on the bees. They are doing much better than I expected, since they went in with fewer honey stores and more bees than I would like. I made a little sugar syrup for them, and they were very busy when I went down this morning to see if they needed more. I walked through the kale to get to the bees, and there is some kale that was protected by snow. I thought I’d wait until mid day when it would be a little warmer – mistake.
