Eating Animals

How much do you know about the food that’s on your plate?

Natalie Portman is known for her acting but she is also a longtime animal and environmental activist.  She produced and narrated the documentary Eating Animals which explores the rise of "factory farming" in America. 

Nearly all of the meat, eggs, and dairy we eat comes from the industrial system known as “factory farming.” This system destroys our environment and harms public health, and never before has humankind caused more suffering. 

Based on the bestselling book by Jonathan Safran Foer, the film focuses on the farmers, whistleblowers, and innovators who are standing up, against all odds, to fight this system and provide a new way forward.

Eating Animals is the third book by the American novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2009. It was written in close collaboration with Farm Forward, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that implements innovative strategies to promote conscientious food choices, reduce farmed animal suffering, and advance sustainable agriculture.  Like the book, the documentary explores the realities of contemporary animal agriculture as it is related to the complexities of food ethics. The documentary hopes to get people thinking about the meat they eat in new ways. 

Tracing the history of food production in the United States, the film charts how farming has gone from local and sustainable to a corporate conglomerate that offers cheap eggs, meat, and dairy at a steep cost - the exploitation of animals; the risky use of antibiotics and hormones; and the pollution of our air, soil, and water. 

Through the farmers who have pushed backed against industrial agriculture with more humane practices, the film offers attainable, commonsense solutions to a growing crisis while making the case that ethical farming is not only an animal rights issue but one that affects every aspect of our lives.

This documentary is currently available on Hulu.

Natalie Portman on "CBS This Morning" to discuss Eating Animals 

Getting Out Into Our a Garden State Garden

Kids in the garden from the 2016 White House Garden

Has there been enough warm weather and green shoots to get you out in the garden?

April is a lot of clean up for me, along with turning over the soil, planting seeds, moving plants, adding new plants, and planning my vegetable garden.

Henry Rangkuti wrote me back when it was cold and said that he stumbled upon an article on the site about vegetable gardening. 

Henry passed along two recommended links: motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/10-best-garden-crops-for-beginners and on his own site gardeningjourney.com/vegetable-gardening-for-beginners/.

Of course, we love our Garden State and many people plant flowers and ornamentals. And we love our Jersey tomatoes and backyard vegetable gardens too.

I keep my own gardening calendar records every year where I record the appearances, blooms and harvest times. They do vary year to year, but most years I can see a pattern for that year. Perhaps it is a warm spring or mild winter and we are a week ahead of last year. I record frosts and freezes.

The Old Farmer's Almanac and other sites online will give you the aggregated planting calendar dates. You can check your local microclimate at almanac.com/gardening/planting-calendar/NJ - but don't be too surprised if we still get a snowstorm or freeze or frost that doesn't agree with years past. 

This month is a good time to be planting lettuce and other salad greens outside. It's the time to have our tomato seeds sprout inside, but we need to wait for May to move them into the garden.

We are the Garden State and not the farming state, but New Jersey is still home to more than 9,071 farms covering 715,057 acres of farmland. The state is among the leaders in many forms of agricultural production.  For example, New Jersey ranks: 5th in blueberry production, 3rd in cranberry production, 3rd in spinach, 3rd in bell peppers, 4th in peach production.  The state also produces an abundance of tomatoes, corn, apples, strawberries, potatoes, hay, soybeans and nursery stock.

New Jersey promotes its outstanding agricultural industry through its Jersey Fresh campaign. Jersey Fresh fruits and vegetables must pass a grading program to ensure they are the highest quality.

Cranberries and the Pine Barrens

The New Jersey Pinelands picked up the name the "Pine Barrens" because the European colonists found the acidic soil infertile for their crops. But that type of soil and the water-rich area is optimal for cranberries.

I visited the Pine Barrens many times with my wife and young sons, and we went to the annual Cranberry Festival twice. The festival in Chatsworth is still held in October and feels very much like an autumn harvest ritual. Of course, Thanksgiving is also a traditional time to serve cranberry relish with the turkey.

We learned a lot about cranberries and ate and drank a variety of cranberry products. Cranberry growing is a slow process and it takes several years for a cranberry bog to mature.

As they will tell you at the festival, it's not exactly like the image you might have of cranberry bogs from the Ocean Spray commercials. In those ads, two farmers in waders are standing in the bogs surrounded by floating berries.

Cranberries don't grow underwater but on vine runners in the sandy Pinelands soil. After a few cold nights in September, the berries turn red. Farmers flood the fields and ripe berries loosen and float to the surface with little encouragement, but the old "dry picking" method is also used.

Harvesters in waders corral floating cranberries into a mass.
    Photo by Jauhien Sasnou

Cranberries are used for processed foods, including juices. White cranberry juice comes from ones picked just before they turn red. Red or white, raw berries are very tart, not at all like their sweetly processed products.

Only about 3 percent of the cranberry harvest is dry picked from pre-flooded fields in the old way and sold fresh in the produce section. Craisins, Ocean Spray's dried cranberries, were introduced in 1993.

New Jersey is the third-ranked cranberry producer in the U.S.., behind Wisconsin and Massachusetts. Out of the roughly 700 farms overall that grow cranberries for Ocean Spray, about 20 are in South Jersey and they produce between 500,000 and 600,000 barrels of cranberries a year.

Cranberries were eaten by American sailors in the colonial period to ward off scurvy. Today, Now many people eat and drink it for their antibacterial properties in fighting urinary tract infections.

5-year old berry picker, Browns Mills, New Jersey, 1910
Photo from the National Child Labor Committee Collection at the Library of Congress

Native peoples in NJ used cranberries as food, in their ceremonies, as a red dye and as medicine. Cranberries dried with deer meat made a kind of jerky called pemmican. a convenience food that could be kept for a long time. It is very likely that cranberries (fresh, as jelly or in pemmican) were part of that first Thanksgiving. 

Cranberries got their name from the early German and Dutch settlers who thought their blossoms resembled the neck and head of a crane, hence "crane berries."

Cranberry cultivation in New Jersey goes back to 1840 when the State Board of Agriculture report shows that John Webb established a cranberry bog in Ocean County near Cassville. His crop was sold to ship merchants who sold them to whalers. Cranberries were stored onboard in barrels of cold water for the sailors to get Vitamin C to ward off scurvy.

Cranberry grower Elizabeth Lee of New Egypt boil some damaged berries that would normally be discarded and liked the jelly that remained which she sold it as "Bog Sweet Cranberry Sauce."


http://www.pineypower.com/cranberries.htm

https://njdigitalhighway.org/lesson/garden_state/cranberry_industry

https://bestofnj.com/cranberry-season-in-new-jersey

NJ Land Conservation Rally 2013

NJ Land Conservation Rally

March 9, 2013

Connecting People with, Land, Nature and Each Other

One-day educational conference about preserving New Jersey’s open space and farmland

NJ Institute of Technology - Newark, New Jersey

Registration is open!

For morning workshop descriptions, click here >>

For Lightning Round and workshop descriptions, click here >>

For field trip descriptions, click here >>

For presenter biographies, click here >>

Farmers' Markets Continue in Winter

Not all, but many local farmers' markets continue through the autumn and winter.

A post at njconservation.org reminds us that although warm-weather crops are gone, some farmers' markets still offer cold-season vegetables, artisan cheeses, homemade pickles and preserves, wines, eggs from free-range chickens, baked goods, jellies and jams, locally-raised meats and poultry, and more.

Some winter markets are:

• The Paterson Farmers Market, on Railway Avenue along the old Erie Railroad line, is open 365 days a year. 
• Jersey City has two farmers markets that will remain open through December. The market by the Grove Street PATH station is open Mondays and Thursdays, while the one at the Hamilton Park gazebo is open Wednesdays. 
• The Hunterdon Land Trust Farmers Market, located at the Dvoor Farm at the Route 12 circle outside Flemington, is open on the third Sunday of the month from December through April. 
• The Stockton Market is open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays all year 'round.  
• The Rutgers Gardens Farm Market in New Brunswick will be open Fridays, Nov. 30, Dec. 14 and Dec. 21; the rest of the winter schedule is yet to be determined.  
• The Princeton Farmers Market will open in the local library on the second Thursday of the month through April.  
• The Englishtown Auction, an intriguing combination of farmer's market, craft fair and flea market, is open weekends all year 'round in Manalapan.  
• The Cowtown Farmers Market in Pilesgrove is open year 'round on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

A full list of New Jersey farmers markets is at the NJ Department of Agriculture's Jersey Fresh website at state.nj.us/jerseyfresh/searches/urban.htm.

Also check out Edible Jersey at www.ediblecommunities.com/jersey/farmers-markets/.

Farmers' Markets

Residents of NJ know that farms in our "Garden State" (we are not the "farm state") are an endangered species.

So, it's great to know that there are 71 listings on Local Harvest's website for NJ.

Farmers' markets are one of the oldest forms of direct marketing by small farmers. In the last decade they have become a favorite marketing method for many farmers throughout the United States, and a weekly ritual for many shoppers.
In a farmers' market, a group of farmers sell their products once or twice a week at a designated public place like a park or parking lot. Some farmers' markets have live entertainment. Shopping at a farmers' market is a great way to meet local farmers and get fresh, flavorful produce.

You can search on their site by state or zip code for ones in your area.