Category archive for: Farming
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This is an image of my neighbour's field after he managed to scrape off every smidgeon of organic material. The word 'Dust Bowl' comes to mind. Same windy day, one field over, my little allotment is the picture of extra-crunchy soil health. Even though it's looking pretty bare compared to ... Read more
Posted on March 18, 2008 1:43
Local warming
Potager au feu. The lower bit of the Occitanian kitchen garden is clearly a chic-free zone. Burn marks indicate the size of the original fire. Yesterday in the lower garden I made an enormous fire. It was the first time in my life I was able to get it going in one go, normally it can take me th... Read more
Posted on March 5, 2008 12:14
Permaculture active
Leafy greens foraged from under the brush This year the Occitanian kitchen garden is very different than it was last year at the same time. The winter's thorough frost followed by a long wet spell has killed all 5 of my chokes and most of what I had been treating as perennial loose-leaf brassic... Read more
Posted on March 4, 2008 13:38
Homegrown
Sprouted sunflower seeds in the dead of winter Read more
Posted on February 15, 2008 20:43
The gentlemen farmers’ summer party
Dancing with wines, dahlia fetishist, celebrity hayseed, gentle farmer-man en silhouette All natural, all gentleman, slash Friesian agro-history adept, organic farmer-man Guus yuks it up with Lisette. Then gives us a reed-obscured all-natural history lesson moving Madeleine and Hans... Read more
Posted on August 27, 2007 19:21
Exhibition the Edible City
at the NAi-M closes
The Edible City exhibition at the NAi-M (the Netherlands Architecture Institute) has finally come to a close. Showing more than 40 architectural, design and urban planning projects, the exhibition was about food systems and the urban environment. There was a time when city-dwellers could more or... Read more
Posted on June 27, 2007 15:09
Bloom where you are planted
Planting edible flowers amongst sunflower seedlings House plants are so passé. And I've really had it with demure windowsill herb gardens. They're visually predictable and don't yield significant crop for my leafy green rich diet. Because I'm involved with projects that involve me recommending... Read more
Posted on April 23, 2007 15:07
Industrial yet green
Sunflower roots make a stab at world take-over There's something about the Montessori School poster-child in me that loves a good self-diagnosed field trip. I can never be too busy or have too many double-booked days to find time for some on-topic hookie, leaving the warm and productive nest th... Read more
Posted on January 17, 2007 15:31
Sprout Salon Tonight promises to be parfumistic
Culiblog covergirl Iva Supic loves her up some sprouts While in another part of the world a loved one mourns the loss of a loved one, pouring over every verse of the Quran en famille, here in the Polar Circle it rains, blows and pours and we narrowly avert a Sprout War. Now that the dust has... Read more
Posted on December 15, 2006 10:38
A sprouting lesson:
you’ve already got
what it takes
Counter-top sprouting installation chez culiblog When I remind my guests at the Grow Yer Own Dang Food micro-green cuisine concept restaurant that eating seasonal, local food is one of the most revolutionary actions that you can take against petrol consumption, right fists usually fly straight ... Read more
Posted on November 18, 2006 23:47
Grow yer own dang food
Radish and leek sprouts in the low-angled polar sun FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 3, Restaurant prototype to open Grow Yer Own Dang Food, micro-green cuisine A restaurant devoted to sprouted seeds and micro-greens could only be called a Sproutstaurant. And at a Sproutstaurant one eats,... Read more
Posted on October 29, 2006 15:47
One of the perks of permaculture
Purple basil seed heads bowing down to the ground, they may re-seed at any moment. Inondation! K'tje tells me that tout le monde has been suffering terribly with the flooding of the allotments down in Gawd's Own Country. My feeling is, since my garden is situated in a flood plain, it's reasonab... Read more
Posted on October 24, 2006 23:58
South Central Farmers
urban agriculture
North American style
Image courtesy of South Central Farmers Urban agriculture in North America is still only an occasional cultural novelty or, in the case of the recently bull-dozed South Central Farms, an inconvenience whose value goes unrecognized. Los Angeles once housed the largest concentration of vineyards ... Read more
Posted on October 17, 2006 16:22
Meat meeting tonight
Image of First Nations Sioux ladies drying meat used entirely without permission. That should read meat fight tonight! If you're interested in the meat industry and are currently in Amsterdam, you're not going to want to miss tonight's Cross-thinking about Sustainability - Rethinking the Global... Read more
Posted on October 5, 2006 13:37
Got confusion about the nature of natural food?
This block print from Masanobu Fukuoka's 'One Straw Revolution' is used entirely without permission. This is what I'm re-reading right now and I'd like to share it. Here is a short quote from Masanobu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution. It should definitely be on the reading list for anyone interes... Read more
Posted on October 1, 2006 3:33
Got a cutting-edge food-related project?
A Delhi street kitchen doing booming business The deadline for the DOORS OF PERCEPTION 9 conference on “JUICE” (FOOD, FUEL, DESIGN) has been extended until September 30, 2006. If you think your project should be included in this event, please put your nose to the grindstone forthwith. Any q... Read more
Posted on September 18, 2006 15:23
Food causes gas, and by gas, I mean greenhouse gas
Greenhouse gas emissions linked to the production of a kg (roughly 2 pounds) of food. Meat refers to the "carcass equivalent", with bones but without processing, packaging, or transportation. Source IFEN 2004 for France Jean-Marc Jancovici, whose website on climate change with readable, chartfu... Read more
Posted on September 7, 2006 6:53
Grow yer own dang biomass inadvertently
Occitanian kitchen garden in May, as neat as you please Way back in January, and then again in March, and again in April and May, I had big plans for my kitchen garden. Big and neat. Knowing that I would have to return from Occitania to the Polar Circle for two months of gainful employment, I a... Read more
Posted on July 16, 2006 15:54
Let farmers be bygones
Let bygones be farmers? On the other side of my neighbourhood park there is a monument in honour of the 'lost farmer', farmers lost to change. The text on the back of the pedestal says, The Bygone Farmer by artist Henk Gomes commemorates the farmers that for thousands of years lived and worked in ... Read more
Posted on June 17, 2006 6:48
Grow yer own dang biomass inadvertently
Way back in January, and then again in March, and again in April and May, I had big plans for my kitchen garden. Big and neat. Knowing that I would have to return from Occitania to the Polar Circle for gainful employment, I alphabetized my seed beds and planted sticks for beans and gourds to cli... Read more
Posted on June 7, 2006 15:06
Irrigate, ice skate
Took the new irrigation system out for a spin and it looks like I have a hunquering for the Netherlands. The idea is that all manner of plant life will grow along the borders, if it would just stop freezing for one day. Vernacular architecture. Surely I have the ugliest shed in the gardens and ... Read more
Posted on February 28, 2006 23:56
Grow yer own dang food
(part 1)
Image of sprouting bread courtesy of Cygalle Shapiro Back in the eighties, as a student at the University California at Santa Cruz, I lived in a vegetarian commune with a bunch of hippies. As hippies, we produced our own sprouts, yoghurt and salsa fresca for the entire commune, approximately th... Read more
Posted on January 30, 2006 11:52
Rural design conference scheduled for September 2006
(above: Wheatfield, a large public work by Agnes Denes, image copyright Agnes Denes) Chapeau to John Thackara at the Doors of Perception blog who reports today about a rural design conference scheduled to take place September 4-7 2006 (somewhere) in the UK. Just have a look at what's being develop... Read more
Posted on January 21, 2006 11:47
Sort of public gardens
The urban garden is thriving in Istanbul. Walking around the Biennale's parallel programme locations in Karaköy, I spied some ad hoc agriculture in 'public' planters. These images show vegetables being grown amidst 'ornamental' city landscaping. Chapeau to the hacker-farmers growing squ... Read more
Posted on October 21, 2005 16:04
Fallen Fruit
Red apples on the left, yellow apples on the right. All of the apples were going to waste. As a fan of food foraging and fruit stealing, and as a woman who had never bought fruit except for bananas, mangos and the occasional avocado until she moved up North to the Polar Circle, I applaud the Fa... Read more
Posted on May 7, 2005 1:58
Brain Food
This terribly sad but well written book by Mark Kurlansky is a gripping history from the perspective of the cod. Kurlansky tells how fishing for this gadiform has deeply affected the wealth and development of many nations and technologies. I'm thinking the Flounder by Gunther Grass that I read bac... Read more
Posted on January 20, 2005 20:54
