Orion Magazine Audio Slide Show of the Lexicon of Sustainability

In this beautiful audio slide show, photographer Douglas Gayeton explains the back story regarding the series of images and words now known as the Lexicon of Sustainability. As Gayeton discusses what we talk about when we talk about sustainability, he also elaborates on the relationship between image and quotes in the larger storytelling process and encourages all of us to think more deeply about how we employ language as we conceptualize the future.  As noted on the Lexicon homepage, “Words are the building blocks for new ideas.”   If you’re unfamiliar with Gayeton’s work, check out this great article from the Art of the Rural.  

This slide show is a companion piece to an article, which will appear in the May/June issue of Orion Magazine.

Orion Magazine Audio Slide Show: Lexicon of Sustainability from Orion Magazine on Vimeo.

The Seed and the Story for April 4: Tatum, Wild Foods, and Medicine in Our Backyards

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

Last week Billy Joe Tatum of Melbourne, Arkansas, a master of Ozark wild foods, passed away at the age of eighty. She researched and wrote extensively about wild foods, appeared on national television programs like the Tonight Show, and cooked for famous artists and politicians at her home she referred to as “Wildflower.”  Tatum first began learning about wild foods from members of the Izard County community where her husband took a job as a country doctor. In the rural community surrounding Melbourne, the tradition of foraging for edible and medicinal plants was alive and well. Over the years she began to learn from her husband’s patients how to locate and use these healing resources and incorporate them into creative dishes she concocted such as “Dandelion Bud Omelets” “Watercress Soup,” or “Apple Spearmint Salad.”  Much of this information can be found in her book, Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook:  An Illustrated Guide to 70 Wild Plants and Over 350 Irresistible Ways to Eat Them.

A few weekends ago I attended the first in a series of events entitled “Wild Plant Walk and Edible Foraging Series.” Led by members of Elevate Arkansas, an urban wellness center located in Little Rock, the walk took place in Allsop Park where we foraged for abundant springtime plants such as dandelion, clover, plantain grass, henbit, and greenbrier.  Elevate director Jeff Dempsey carried Tatum’s book along with us throughout the walk, turning to it several times and mentioning it as the best source for identifying and eating wild plants in Arkansas.  Thanks to Tatum’s diligent research, and her time spent learning from elders of the rural community, these traditions are alive and applicable, even in the big city.

Tatum traveled the world in search of wild plants, and in interviews and articles she frequently mentioned that you don’t have to hike deep into the woods to find an abundance of edible options.  Dandelion, for example, may be considered a weed, but they’re loaded with nutrients, have healing properties that lend to their reputation as a cure-all, and, better yet, they’re surprisingly tasty.  You can use them to make tea, mix the greens into a salad, or throw a bunch of the stems into some batter and fry up a tasty fritter.  On our walk we also sampled blooms from a redbud tree, which are in bloom throughout the state.  The buds are tasty on their own, but some people like to make them into a sweet jelly, which solidifies into the most beautiful deep shade of red.  My favorite plant we sampled that day was wood sorrel, a wild version of the plant I mentioned in last week’s column. This wild version is wonderfully tart, tastes much like a raspberry, and is absolutely loaded with vitamin C.

Foraging for wild plants is a learned skill, and you must be sure you’re correctly identifying the plant before you eat it.  It’s a tradition well-worth learning, and I’m thankful the kind folks at Elevate Arkansas are bringing this skill to an urban area.  We owe much gratitude to the late Billy Joe Tatum for her pioneering work and for reminding us that sometimes the best medicine is growing in our own backyard.   Do you forage for wild foods either in the woods or in your neighborhood?  Have you ever heard your elders tell of healing plants or remember using them as a child?  I’d love to hear about it.  To see images from the Wild Plant Walk and to hear the radio piece go here.

The next walk will be taking place this coming Saturday, April 7.  Visit Elevate Arkansas for information.

More readings:

Here is a wonderful post about Tatum’s life by one of her friends, the blogger at Jim Long’s Garden.  

Friday Video: Truck Farm

From Truck Farm film.

This week’s video is a teaser from one of the films they showed last week at the Dig In Festival in Fayettveille, Arkansas.

Based in Brooklyn, this film chronicles the making of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in the back of a 1986 truck, an effort to supply healthy, locally grown food in urban centers.  The concept has grown and there are truck farms popping up all over the nation.

Follow the project online and watch portions of the film via truckfarm.com.   Check out the film teaser below.

Would something like this work in your hometown?  Maybe you already have a truck farm.  We’d love to hear about it!

Recorded Stories from the Russellville Seed Swap

2010 Seed Swap. Photo by author.

For the last few days we’ve been posting about the organization Conserving Arkansas Agricultural Heritage.  This week’s Seed and the Story column was an overview of the organization, and this week’s Friday Video, features a trailer from the Seed Swap documentary, produced by Zachariah McCannon, about the beginning of the swaps.

Last year I attended the Russellville Seed Swap and brought along my recording equipment.  Here’s a radio essay I produced for the Ozarks at Large program featuring a few voices form the swap including new growers and those who’ve been gardening for decades.

You can listen to the story by going to the KUAF page here. Better yet, listen to the entire Friday Ozarks at Large program here. The seed swap story begins around 23:00. Or you can listen here:

CAAH Seed Swap in Logan County, Arkansas by Boiled Down Juice
Featured music includes “Ship Out On The Sea” from the Be Good Tanyas and “The Farmer is the Man,” from Fiddlin John Carson.

And if you want to see more photos and read more from last year’s swap, here’s our post from last year.  Thanks for listening/reading!

Friday Video: Seed Swap Documentary

From Seed Swap Documentary

This week’s Seed and the Story column looked at the organization Conserving Arkansas’s Agricultural Heritage (CAAH) and the annual Seed Swaps currently taking place throughout the state.  This afternoon we will be posting a radio piece which will air on KUAF today  profiling voices from the swap last year in Russellville.

In keeping with this coversage of CAAH, today’s Friday Video is a trailer for the film, Seed Swap Documentary.  Produced by Zachariah McCannon, the film documents the early days of the CAAH organization and the work of anthropologist Dr. Brian Campbell as he organizes the first seed swap in Mountain View, Arkansas.   According to the film’s Facebook page:

This documentary film uses the development of a seed exchange and agricultural biodiversity conservation project in the Ozark Mountains as an ethnographic lens to explore the seed saving subculture of the region. 

To learn more about the film, follow the project on facebook here.

To read more and to keep up with screenings around the state, visit the film’s webpage.  It looks like there will be screenings coming up this March in Fayetteville, Hot Springs and Eureka Springs.

And don’t forget there will be a swap this Saturday in Russellville and one Sunday in Conway.  Go here for a full listing of swap dates and times. 

The Seed and the Story: CAAH and Arkansas Seed Swaps

2011 Russellville Seed Swap. Photo by author

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

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Beginning earlier this month the organization CAAH (Conserving Arkansas’ Agricultural Heritage) began their yearly series of Seed Swaps across the state.  With the motto “One for the cutworm, one for the crow, one to share and one to grow,” the organization seeks to preserve both the agricultural folkways of Arkansas and the seeds themselves, many of which have been in families for generations.

They operate a Seed Bank on campus at the University of Central Arkansas, studying and preserving the genetic diversity of regional seeds and host twelve statewide swaps, providing a space where community members can trade heirloom seeds and gardening knowledge, sharing the wealth with both fellow community members and the CAAH organization.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting project leader Dr. Brian Campbell and hear him speak about this project and his other work, and I attended the Russellville Swap last year.  Regardless if you’re a master gardener with decades of experience or a person who’s never put a thing in the ground but posses an interest in learning more about growing your own food, CAAH is an excellent resource.

They seek to raise awareness about the problems with crop monoculture, wherein regional heirloom seeds are replaced by hybrids, the seeds patented and owned by major corporations.  As growers shift to these seeds, the regional ones die out, taking with them genetic diversity, regional traditions and a hardiness to local conditions. Just take the example of tomatoes.  There are only few varieties sold in grocery stores but literally hundreds of different heirloom tomatoes you can grow at home, ranging from pink to green to yellow and each with their own unique taste.  Heirloom gardening opens up a whole new world of eating.

Last year when I attended the swap in Russellville there were several people who brought seeds to give away and an even larger group of folks who just wanted to meet other gardeners in the area, many of whom were starting their first plots.  I came home with some okra seed, daffodil bulbs, a hummingbird vine, and French melon seeds, all of which have done well. If you have seeds passed down in your community, donating some to CAAH is an excellent way to make sure they never die out.  But don’t feel like you have to have seeds to swap to attend the event. It’s for everyone, gardener or not.

The event in Russellville will take place on the 25^th of this month at All Saints Episcopal Church from 10:00-1:00.  If you miss the Russellville event, you can make it to the Conway swap on Sunday the 26th 1:30-3:00 at the Faulkner County Library.   You can check out the full list of swaps below.

You can read more about CAAH and learn what’s in their Seed Bank here: www.arkansasagro.wordpress.com.  If you want to read more about last year’s swap and see a few more photos, go here. If you have seeds that have been passed down to you, I’d really love to hear about them!  I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for spring.  What are you going to be growing?

Voices from the Root Cafe.

From the Root Cafe

You may recall a recent article for the Arkansas Times about the Root Cafe and their sustainable business model.

I also had the opportunity to visit with Root owners Jack and Corri Bristow Sundell about their inspiration for the cafe and just a few of the life events that led up to fulfilling this dream.

You can hear Jack and Corri tell more about their story via this radio piece which aired this past Monday on the Ozarks at Large program on KUAF 91.3 FM, Public Radio out of Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Visiting with Jack and Corri from The Root Cafe in Little Rock by Boiled Down Juice

To learn more about the Root visit their webpage or follow them on facebook or twitter. 

Continue reading »

Sustainability Means More Than Just Food: Article on the Root Cafe in Arkansas Times.

From the Arkansas Times. Photo by Brian Chilson.

I recently had the opportunity to visit with Root Cafe owners Jack and Corri Bristow Sundell about the origins of their local food cafe, their inspirations, and plans for the future.

A upcoming discussion with the Root owners will air during  Ozarks at Large‘s  series about local businesses in Arkansas and will  explore their thoughts on the importance of eating local, the inspiration behind the cafe, and their plans for the future.  I’ll be posting more about that soon.

I had the opportunity to write this piece for the  Arkansas Times, published yesterday, examining their sustainable business model and the four years of fundraising that led to opening their doors.   Here’s an expert from the article.  To read the whole thing visit Arkansas Times or follow the link below.  You can also pick up printed copies of the Times throughout central Arkansas.

We’d love to hear more about other sustainable business models in your area.  Leave a comment or send us an email!

From the Arkansas Times:

The Root of All Success:  Sustainability Means More than Just Food. 

After four years of planning, the Root Cafe opened in June of this year. The locavore-friendly South Main area restaurant is a great place to get a juicy all-beef burger made with Arkansas-raised beef or a melt-in-your mouth vegan doughnut. But when it comes to sustainability, owners Jack and Corri Bristow Sundell took the concept beyond what’s on the menu.

In addition to using small-scale, local suppliers — all of their meats are sourced locally, and a large percentage of their vegetables and cheeses are grown and produced in the region — they also took a sustainable approach to financing.

In 2007 they started small, raising awareness and money for the cafe long before they ever secured a location. “When we started looking into business research and writing a business plan,” Jack said, “we could see that, for a lot of small businesses, the money they have to repay in loans ends up being one of the things they can’t sustain.”

It took about $30,000 to get the cafe up and running. They took out a $10,000 bank loan, but most of the money was raised prior to opening their doors. Assistance also came via landowner Anita Davis who finished out the interior of the 900-square-foot former Sweden Creme after the lease was signed “and built it to suit a lot of specifications,” Corri said.  

The pair adopted a micro-funding approach and hosted fundraising dinners at locations throughout town, generating interest in — and money for — the eventual storefront. Some of their most successful fund-raising efforts, Jack said, were the canning and food preservation workshops. “Initially we were thinking, well, this is something we’ll have to really get people interested in because no one does canning or food preservation anymore. But it turned out that, once we put the idea out there, there were more people interested than we could accommodate in the classes,” he said

More at http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/the-root-of-all-success/Content?oid=1944807

The Seed and the Story for Wednesday September 21st: Muscadines!

Earlier this week, we posted about our search for Muscadine-related stories, many of which wound up in this week’s column.  Thanks so much to those who contributed! The Seed and the Story column is published every other week in the central Arkansas Post Dispatch and Courier newspapers.  

In Little Rock there’s a local food buying organization called the Arkansas Sustainability Network where you can purchase weekly groceries straight from regional, small-scale farmers.  This past week, in addition to our regular eggs and veggies, I purchased some muscadines from Bluebird Hill Berry Farm out of Atkins.  Surprisingly tart with a sweet aftertaste, muscadines are a form of grape native to the  southeastern United States.  They’ve grown wild in this region for at least four hundred years, and since the 1970s they’ve also been grown as a cultivator, used to make juice and wine in Altus wineries such as Weiderkehr and Post.  

Like so many people in the area, my late grandmother, Mary Caroline Caldwell Martin, made jelly from the wild variety she and her family picked in the rocky soil of Harkey’s Valley.   “Musk-kee-dines,” she called them, and her jelly was purported to be some of the best around.  Muscadine picking is alive and well today, and many people continue to make their own jams or jellies, a sweet concoction that takes the edge off the sour taste.  Some of us like to eat them raw, a somewhat involved task that requires  biting through the tough outer skin to get to the sour insides, being careful to avoid biting into the bitter seeds.  Roughly forty percent of the muscadine is skin and seed, but if you’re a fan of their tart flavor, the end product is well worth all the effort.

My grandmother (and grandfather) the queen of muscadine jelly.

My good friend Samantha Dill, an ESL teacher in Danville Schools, said this past week their school-wide fresh fruit and veggie grant provided muscadines as an afterschool snack.  As they nibbled on the antioxidant-loaded fruit, she discussed the various ways people eat and prepare muscadines.  Some of the students, she reported, even saved their seeds to take home and grow.

Inspired by Samantha’s story, I began asking around to see what others had to say about this regional delicacy.  Joanna Corder recalled her mother’s muscadine vine in the backyard of her North Little Rock home that took over an entire clothesline.  Aileen Reed recalled a muscadine hunting trip in south Arkansas that resulted in a bad case of poison ivy.  Dennis Pockrus said that as a child he’d eat so many wild muscadines that his “lips would itch.”   And when it comes to muscadine picking advice, Denise Taylor suggested checking the low branches of trees, being careful to watch out for chiggers, of course.  It’s even been said that in the 1950s-1970s wild muscadine wine could be found at the Chickelah store.

Recent agricultural research reveals the muscadine (including the shell and the seed) to be loaded with nutrients.  Muscadine-derived supplements are popular online and muscadine growers near and far are researching ways to market these health benefits.  They’re typically harvested from August through October, so you’ve still got a little time to pick some wild ones or purchase some of the many varieties of cultivators from area growers.

We’d love to hear your muscadine stories!  Leave a comment here or send us an email via the contact page!  Thanks so much for reading!

Muscadine related links:

Muscadine: Encyclopedia of Arkansas

Muscadine Grape,  California Rare Fruit Growers

Recipe from Muscadine Meringue Pie from The Communal Skillet (suggested  by Jen Erwin of Food Orleans)

Recommended muscadine varieties for home and garden, via U of A Division of Agriculture

Williams Muscadine Vineyard and Farm in Nesmith, South Carolina (more detailed post about this in the near future!)

What muscadine links are we missing?  Let us know!

The Seed and the Story for August 24, 2011: Recipes for Harvest

Originally published in the Post Dispatch August 24, 2011.

Muffins in the oven.

It’s one of my favorite food times of the year in Arkansas: peach season.  And you can always find the best varieties at locally-grown farmer’s market such as the one we have in Russellville.  Local peaches always taste better, and it strengthens our community and local economy to support local growers.  This week while I was buying peaches from a local farmer, I noticed off to the side of his stand, apart from the buckets of picturesque peaches, a large box of bruised ones for only a dollar a pound.  Looking rather beat-up but still quite tasty, I knew exactly what to do with them: make Moosewood muffins.

You’ve probably heard of the Moosewood Cookbook. In print since 1977, it contains wonderfully healthy, simple, whole food recipes.  I’m typically a wing-it kind of cook, but this trusty recipe is something I’ve used faithfully to keep countless overly-ripe pieces of fruit out of our compost bin.

There are multiple Moosewood Cookbooks. The muffin recipe comes from this one.

Wet Ingredients

6 tablespoons butter at room temp.                                                             1/2-3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups chopped fruit/nuts/chocolate chips/pumpkin/sweet potatoes/any other random thing you have on hand

Dry Ingredients

2 cups unbleached pastry flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon or other spice (if using)

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl, set aside.

Cream butter and sugar, add other wet ingredients.
Lightly mix wet and dry ingredients.  Spoon into muffin tins and bake 30-35 mins at 350.

It’s simple, fast, and extremely versatile.  I’ve tried it a million different ways and it’s never let me down.  It’s one of the few recipes I use frequently that hasn’t been handed down from a family member, and, chances are, if you invite me somewhere for dinner I’ll show up with some of these muffins.

Even before I came across those beat-up peaches at the market, I’d been thinking about how integral this recipe is to my cooking.  Last week I got an email from a dear friend and author of the blog Foodorleans.com.  A wonderful writer and an excellent cook, she’s been working on a series of pieces about food, sustainability, and reducing waste in her New Orleans kitchen.  She wrote to ask if I’d be willing to share some of my own ideas for, and experiences with, creating a more sustainable and reduced-waste kitchen. (Update: Here is the post she wrote about me.  Thanks, Jen!!) 

Alongside thoughts of farmer’s markets and backyard gardening, this recipe came to mind.  It’s my go-to solution to bring new life to old fruit, and it’s allowed me to make good use of all of Arkansas’s harvests, even when they initially appear to have seen better days.  Perhaps the best combination I’ve stumbled upon is sweet potato and Arkansas Black apple muffins, a perfect autumn taste, especially with a cup of whole milk from a small Arkansas dairy like Seven Doves Creamery.  The peach muffins, of course, tasted wonderful and summery with a glass of mint iced tea. I’m so very thankful I’m able to buy those peaches locally and meet the farmer face to face.

What’s your go-to recipe?  Was it passed down in your family or something you discovered elsewhere?  I’d love to hear about!  And be sure and check out my friend’s explorations of food and sustainability in her New Orleans kitchen.  Her pictures and recipes of crawfish etouffee, fried okra croutons, and blueberry lemon cake will make your stomach growl, and have you longing to be eating dinner somewhere in Louisiana.  Check them out at www.foodorleans.com.

Blueberry Lemon Cake of Great Happiness, from www.foodorleans.com

Perhaps you’d like to see a photo of the muffins.  That would have been a great idea on my part.  But I’m not much of a foodie (and apparently a bad folklorist/documentarian), and I must admit I forgot to take a photo of the muffins before my family devoured them.  So this photo of the leftover dirty dishes will have to do.