Guest Essay: How To Harvest Wild Onions

Now that spring is on the way, it's time to get out in our fields and forests and bring home some wild goodness. My friend, author Hank Shaw, is an authority on hunting, foraging and cooking all manner of wild things—his four books on those topics are considered definitive guides—and his post on harvesting wild onions is particularly pertinent to this season.

Ramps, wild onions, wild garlic. These are some of our best wild foods come springtime.

More than 100 species of wild alliums call North America home—allium being the genus covering both onions and garlic—but it is the Eastern ramp, Allium tricoccum, that has been all the rage among chefs in recent years. They’ve become so popular I even see chefs here in California using them with abandon; no native ramp grows within 2,000 miles of San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Ramps.

Locavore issues aside, perhaps the trendiest thing about ramps right now is to bemoan their overharvest.

Is this happening? Certainly, in some places. I’ve seen some startling before and after photos. But most professional foragers I know harvest the same patches of ramps every year — and some of these folks have been picking for 30+ years. They know, as well as any good farmer, that you don’t eat your seed corn. The sustainability of any bulb, corm, root or rhizome harvest all hinges on how you pick the plant.

Here’s how you do it.

First and foremost, you must find your onions. Ramps are showy onions with large, wide leaves. They’re pretty easy to spot, especially in Eastern woodlands, where they can literally carpet the forest floor for acres. Most wild onions are not so easily located, although one, the invasive three-cornered leek of California and Oregon, A. triquetrum, is almost as gaudy as the ramp.

Wild onions in situ.

There’s an onion for pretty much every environment, from deserts to forests to streamsides to lawns to high above the treeline in Alpine meadows. My favorite is the dusky onion, A. campanulatum, which is common in the mountains from California to British Columbia.

Onions, being bulb plants, send up grasslike shoots first. This can be as early as January in the Bay Area for the three-cornered leek, to mid-July for Alpine onions. Onions, in general, like to live in large troops: It’s weird to find just one onion.

A great many onions have a rosy blush to the base of their stems. But not all. Your nose is your best tool when trying to figure out if that grassy shoot you are looking at is an onion. Anything that looks like an onion that also smells like an onion is an onion. Lots of bulbs, some of them poisonous, can look like an onion, but none will also smell like one, too.

A patch of wild onions.

Once you’ve found your onions, look at the patch. Are there only a few onions there? Or does the patch have hundreds or even thousands of plants? If there are only a few, consider moving on. I like to pick patches with at least 100 plants, and preferably patches even larger than that. Regardless, follow these rules when you do decide to pick:

• Pick only the largest individuals. See the photo on the left above? There are a dozen little onions in that image, and only the largest one is worth picking.
• Stick and move. Pick that large one and move on. Look for another large one. By doing this, you will scatter your picking activity and leave the patch thinned, without large holes in it.
• Take only 10 to 20 percent of any given patch. And that 20 percent number is only really for private ground or ground you have a very good idea that no one else knows about. Think about it: If I collect 10 percent of an onion patch, then you come along and take 10 percent, then two other people come… well, we’ve screwed that patch, haven’t we?
• If you really need some wild onions, but the patch is pretty small, pick one large green leaf from each plant. That’s what I do with my Chinese garlic chives at home and they never appear to really notice it. It’s a good way to get that flavor you crave without digging up the whole plant.

Read the rest of Hank's post to get more suggestions on harvesting these wild bulbs, plus recipes for home use, including pickling!

Wild onion photos by Hank Shaw. Check out Hank's books here.

Guest Essay: Goats Rule

My friend Jeffrey Hannan has had many past lives. An author, playwright and digital user experience manager, he lived on a farm as a child and gravitated to goats as his familiars. Which is why, whenever he visits Portland, it's a requirement that we stop by at least one spot where they gather, even if only through a pasture fence. His most recent appearance in Oregon entailed a road trip to the wilds of Gales Creek for a chat with Lise Bueschen-Monahan and her 100-or-so goats at Fraga Farmstead Creamery.

Goats rule.

At least in my private hierarchy of the animal kingdom. How, then, to resist an invitation to visit Steve Monahan and Lise Bueschen-Monahan’s Fraga Farmstead Creamery? Not possible.

Lise Bueschen-Monahan.

Kathleen Bauer and I bundled up and donned our farm boots one chilly afternoon in January. We climbed into her truck and headed 30 minutes west, to where the fringe of suburbanization meets wide open farmland. A bit further, to the south, before the road wants to rise into the Tillamook forest, lies a farm with a pond, a red barn and dense stand of pines trees.

Here a herd of 100-plus female goats roams a shady evergreen forest, rubbing themselves and their horns against the trunks of trees. They come running as a pack when Lise strides into the large open field and calls out to them: “Goaties!”

Some of Fraga Farm's goats.

Goats are curious looking things. Like most quadrupeds (and some humans), they have a big midsection supported by four slender appendages. Their heads are triangular. Their eyes are equal parts mischief and interrogation. They’re also set a bit too far apart, leaving us mere humanoids struggling to match their gaze.

They think nothing of strolling up and swarming around you, rubbing their thick bodies against your legs or chewing on your shoelaces as you stand in place to learn the story of the farm.

Goats like—they will often insist upon—your affection. They love to be scratched. However, they can be fickle creatures. They’re all too quick to divest you of their attention when they discern that fresh hay has been laid in the barn.

The farm's red barn and oak trees.

Lise is the goatherd of the family. She is aided by Franklin, a tall, amiable intern who, upon completion of his master’s degree, aims to establish a goat dairy when he returns to his native Ghana.

Lise’s husband Steve is the cheese maker. Together they create a small collection of superb goat milk cheeses—traditional chevre, camembert, feta, and an aged raw milk cheese akin to cheddar—as well as some insanely delicious goat milk caramels.

The quality of the product is not by accident. That’s why Kathleen and I were there: to uncover the method behind the magic.

Lise walking with her "goaties."

It was quiet time on the farm when we visited: a period of relatively little activity when milk production has waned and the busy-ness of kidding season has not yet begun. Kidding season lasts roughly from January through May. About 20 kids are born each year. Some of the does are kept as milkers; the rest of the kids are put up for adoption as pets.

In some industrial goat dairies, the moment kids are born they are taken from their mother and killed so that every drop of mother’s milk is reserved for commercial use. Not a drop, so to speak, is wasted. In contrast, when a kid is born at Fraga, both kid and mother are put in their own enclosure after birth to give them a chance to rest. The kids then nurse for about two months, at which point they are weaned and the mother’s remaining milk is used to make cheese.

This nurturing, natural method of raising goats leads to better cheese. Not to mention a healthy quality of life for the animal. It is fairly well documented that the commercial raising and slaughter of animals for meat and dairy is highly unnatural and traumatic. This trauma ultimately finds its way into the end product—be it meat, cheese, milk or butter.

Fraga Farm's chevre with honey.

“Everything is hormonal,” explains Lise. Birthing, feeding, weaning and milking all are driven by hormones, just as hormones drive interactions between human mothers and their children. When animals are dragged into slaughter or robbed of interaction with their parent or offspring from the moment they’re born, the animal’s normal hormonal processes are disrupted. Moreover, the cramped, unhealthy conditions in which many industrial food animals are raised adds a deeper degree of damage.

The natural, normal processes of grazing, birthing and weaning that take place at Fraga are antithetical to industrial methods. Fraga’s methods are emblematic of a larger food movement which strives to farm with the earth and its inhabitants instead of against it or in perceived domination of it.

The farm's camembert-style cheese.

The methods that small farmers like Lise and Stephen apply result in superior products with a higher cost of production. Unfortunately, the demand to keep retail prices as low as possible while maximizing profit means ethical trade-offs that holistic farmers are not willing to make.  As a result, small farmers face relentless competition from industrial farms and large retailers whose sole objective is to increase their own share of the consumer’s wallet.

When it comes to producing food or dairy, there is an uncomfortable symbiosis between man and animal: we are far more dependent upon them than they are on us. That said, a herd of animals—dairy goats, for instance—requires conscientious care if we’re going to right the current imbalance. These workers require and deserve our diligence and decency.

The same can be said of a bed of vegetables: by nurturing their growth through natural methods such as soil regeneration, which ensures a healthy mix of microbial magic, instead of creating land that’s been fertilized literally to death, the negative trends in industrial farming can be countered.

Farm intern Franklin intends to start a goat dairy in Ghana.

Whether those trends can be reversed is an entirely different argument. Even at a friendly sit-down at a wooden table in a farmhouse. After a tour of the farm and a lengthy visit with the herd in the barn, the three of us retreated to the farmhouse. Warmed by fresh coffee, farm-made cheese and bread, our degrees of optimism varied. What was agreed upon, though, is that many of us, when we buy food, have a choice: we can choose the cheaper industrial product or we can seek out humane and healthier alternatives.

This is the hard mission of Lise and countless other farmers in the bountiful Northwest: to create those options and stave off the inevitable demise wrought by big ag. It is also the work of Kathleen to provide exposure to these alternatives, to get people to understand where food comes from: to remember that we exist in a web of natural inter-relationships. If we are to eat well, and live well, we have to re-engage with the realities of our food supply.

With Lise and her goats, it's all about the love.

Food labeling, though, is an issue. (And a lengthy, head-spinning side topic.) What, after all, I wonder, is truly organic? What is “free-range”? These neat government labels, written by and for the benefit of commercial producers, do little to truly inform the public. They are guideposts that reveal nothing of the real methods of production behind them, but instead point us in directions we feel obliged to follow.

Are we being misled? This intentional ambiguity is a not just a crisis of conscience but a crisis of health: If the food we put in our mouths is grown in soil denuded of nutrients and nature’s complex, life-giving secrets, and if the animals we eat are abused in their service to us, what are we really putting into our bodies?

* * *

Sam (black), Marilyn (tan), and Jeff. La Mesa, CA, ca 1989.

Author's note: Sam and Marilyn hung out in the chicken enclosure, where they had a homemade house of wood where they slept at night, and a wooden picnic bench and table that they could hop around on. When I’d get home from work or school I’d let them out to run around the yard and climb the giant boulders on the property. Marilyn loved corn chips and a sip of white zinfandel, which perhaps, alas, contributed to her early demise.

Guest Essay: "Green" Your Farmers' Market Routine

The following essay by Jacqui Stork, assistant manager of the Hillsdale Farmers' Market, is full of helpful tips for making your farmers' market shopping more earth-friendly. (Hint: These tips also work for shopping at the grocery store!)

We farmers' market people tend to care a lot about the earth, and our impact on it. As such, we work hard to have a net positive impact in our actions and approach to food and always seek to pass that along to our customers. That being said, there are times when the drive for quality and convenience means that we use plastics or other disposable products. Because we want to balance our desire to be more green with the realities of running a public market, we thought we'd share six super simple ways you (the customer) can help green up the market every time you shop.

Reusable bags are the best!

Remember Your Market Bag(s)
This one is probably the lowest hanging fruit—most of us have a least one reusable bag hanging around at home. Keep it somewhere that you'll remember to bring it with you. If you forget, or just want to sport a new look, most markets have heavy-duty bags available at the information booth. They can hold a pretty hefty market haul and are machine washable. If you are doing an especially heavy shop, consider bringing a wagon (some markets provide wagons) to pack it in and out!

Decline the Plastic Bag
Along these same lines, you will likely be offered smaller plastic bags for produce at market stalls—you can always decline to take one. Just use your market tote as a carryall for the day's purchases. If you like to keep your items separated (or simply need to corral smaller items, like tomatoes) consider purchasing cotton or mesh produce bags.

Look for the recycling station.

Recycle the Right Way
One of the biggest challenges we face at the market is making sure that our recycling is "clean." We often find that things have been tossed into the recycling bins that we end up having to trash. The biggest culprits? Coffee cups, bottle caps, plastic straws and containers with food refuse on it. When these get mixed in with the recycling, our volunteers have to hand-sort and remove them (which is no fun at the end of a long day). If you aren't sure whether or not something is recyclable, ask before tossing it in.

Prioritize Plants
Eating a plant-based diet is one of the best things we can do for the environment. This doesn't have to mean eschewing meat and other animal products entirely—it can simply mean shifting your focus to prioritizing foods like vegetables, legumes and fruits. Stock up on fresh, seasonal items that fit this bill and use recipes that make these items the star.

A wagon can come in handy!

Rethink Scraps
A lot of the time we don't know what to do with those "extra" bits (like mushroom stems, corn cobs and onion peels). Try keeping a zip-top bag or airtight container in your freezer to fill with scraps for making stock. Once you get a full bag or two, dump the contents into a large soup pot and cover with about a quart of water. Add salt, pepper, bay leaves and any other aromatics you have on hand and let simmer for one to two hours to create a light broth to use in soups or other cooking projects.

Practice Durable Dining
If you plan on eating or drinking at the market, consider bringing (some) of your own dishes. While our hot food vendors can't fill your personal tupperware, you can use silverware you bring from home to eat your meal. (Anybody else love those camping sporks?) You can also bring your travel coffee mug to be filled at some coffee vendors' stands, and carry a reusable water bottle to hydrate at the info booth.

Small steps can make a big difference when we all practice—try some of the tips above to help us help the planet!

Photo of recycling station from Portland Farmers Market.

Guest Essay: Time to Zero in on the Farm Bill

This opinion piece from Congressman Earl Blumenauer, released on June 14, 2018, states that both the House and Senate versions of the Farm Bill—both have since passed their respective versions—maintain a deeply flawed status quo and weaken support for healthy food and sustainable farming. Blumenauer believes there is a better path forward. Please consider contacting your representatives in the Senate and the House regarding this issue.

Health care, climate change, economic development, and jobs are some of the major issues at the heart of current American politics. And there’s major legislation making its way through Congress right now that impacts all of these areas and every American who eats. Yet, most people know nothing about it.

Bigger isn't better.

The farm bill has flown under the radar for too long, with large agribusinesses and their lobbyists exercising an outsized influence on our nation’s food and farm policy while the rest of the country is left fighting for crumbs. That is, unless more people raise their voices.

As Congress works to reauthorize a new farm bill by September 30 [of 2018], it’s time for everyone to wake up and get involved.

Sadly, our current food and farm policies fail to meet the needs of the American people. We pay too much to the wrong people to grow the wrong food in the wrong places. The federal government spends an exorbitant amount of taxpayer dollars to help the wealthiest and most powerful agriculture operations get bigger and more profitable. Recent data shows that the bill’s high dollar farm subsidy programs paid the same 28,000 farmers $19 billion for 32 straight years.

Family farms mean business.

Meanwhile, small and medium-sized farmers and ranchers, the environment, and American families receive too little attention, too little concern, and too little help. This is unacceptable.

This Congress, unfortunately, only promises more of the same, and in some cases it has been working to make the situation worse.

In May, Republican leadership tried to force its farm bill through the House of Representatives. The legislation failed in a highly partisan, dramatic vote on the floor of the House. Several far-right Republicans, who want draconian changes to U.S. immigration policy, voted no. And every Democrat was unified in opposition to the bill’s blatant attack on those in need.

Everyone wins when everyone has access to good food.

The controversial bill drastically cuts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, enacts burdensome requirements for recipients, and forces them to attend an untested, unproven job-training program with strict penalties. While these cruel policies alone should be enough to defeat the House Republican farm bill, they are only the most obvious of many egregious provisions in the bill.

The House bill takes the “savings” from cutting programs benefiting the neediest Americans and puts much of it in the hands of corporate farms, helping them get even richer, all in the name of the farm “safety net.” But current farm subsidy programs are less of a safety net and more of a corporate welfare program. The House bill doubled down by creating new loopholes for those who don’t need more help. For example, a farmer’s nieces, nephews, or cousins who do not even live or work on the farm would become eligible for additional farm subsidies.

Sustainable farms benefit our health, our communities and our environment.

Rather than investing in family farmers who grow real and healthy foods, the legislation helps large operations grow six commodity crops—many of which we already have in excess and are made into unhealthy processed foods. The bill also shortchanges farmers’ markets and local food promotion programs. All of this together puts Americans at greater risk of health problems, such as diabetes and obesity. We are subsidizing a diet that is literally making Americans sick.

The House bill also threatens our environment by further removing incentives for farmers to protect sensitive land. It puts wildlife habitat and water quality at risk. Rather than offering meaningful reforms such as rewarding performance-based conservation, the bill instead proposes drastic cuts to urgently needed conservation programs while failing to do enough for sustainable farming practices.

One of the most outrageous provisions in the bill is the King amendment, which guts consumer, environmental, and animal welfare protections and allows any state with strong standards to be undercut by states with weaker protections. The Harvard Law School’s analysis of the provision should be deeply disturbing for those who want states to have the power to protect their residents.

Read the rest of the article posted on Civil Eats.

[Since Rep. Blumenauer wrote this, the deeply misguided House version described above passed on June 21, 2018, by a razor-thin margin of 213 to 211. The Senate version passed on June 28, 2018. Both houses of Congress need to vote on a final reconciled version by Sept. 30th. Please consider sharing your opinion on this critical legislation with your representatives in the Senate and the House.

Read Rep. Blumenauer's follow-up statement on the House and Senate-passed versions of the bill. For an explanation of the provisions of each version of the Farm Bill and what is required for passage, read the National Journal's excellent explainer.

Read my interview with Rep. Blumenauer on his solutions to the challenges facing Oregon and the nation's food system.

Posted with permission.

Guest Essay: Key Fisheries Act Under Attack

The Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), a bipartisan law created to regulate and protect fisheries, was enacted on April 13, 1976. New provisions were added in the 1996 and 2006 reauthorizations that added new provisions strengthening the MSA to address overfishing, rebuilding stocks and reducing bycatch, tough decisions that affected fishermen, fishing communities and many other components of the fishing industry and were critical to maintaining the overall sustainability of the resource. Lyf Gildersleeve, owner of Flying Fish Company in Portland, is a vocal advocate for sustainable national fisheries policy. Links to contact your Senators is at the end of this post.

I don’t want to leave my kids with less; I want to give my kids the same opportunities as I have to enjoy nature, fishing, and a healthy environment to live in. The earth is a precious place. All we have to do is protect it, and it will continue to provide endless, replenishable resources.

We thought we had seen it all this year when national monuments were taken away, trade wars were initiated, and science research funding was nearly cut. But now the House of Representatives has passed a potentially dangerous fisheries bill. This bill threatens our marine fish stocks and reduces accountability of the anglers, fishermen and businesses involved.

On July 11th, the House of Representatives narrowly passed HR 200 [a bill] introduced by Don Young (R-AK). This bill threatens the health and abundance of marine fish and seeks to amend and reauthorize our national fisheries management law, the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).

I was only a twinkle in my parents’ eyes when this national resource management law was adopted over 40 years ago with bipartisan support. It has been reauthorized with bipartisan support almost every 10 years since then. After the 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act amended the MSA, the law created a strong conservation foundation for fisheries management. HR 200—which has growing bipartisan opposition—compromises this foundation by gutting key conservation provisions. The bill proposes relaxing the requirements on setting science-based annual catch limits for some fisheries. These science-based mandates ensure we don’t take fish faster than they can reproduce and would allow fisheries managers to delay the rebuilding of overfished or depleted fish stocks instead of setting firm deadlines in rebuilding plans.

Our coastal communities depend on healthy oceans and abundant fish populations. Thriving and healthy fish stocks are the foundation of an everlasting population of our last wild-harvested resource. Since 2000, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has reported that 44 commercial and recreational fish stocks have been rebuilt to healthy population levels. The MSA has adopted new technology and fundamentally evolved over the last 40 years, including taking steps toward adopting ecosystem-based management. This approach manages the ecosystem as a whole instead of just managing single species, backing up the latest studies showing that the interactions between species are essential to maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems.

In order to support coastal communities, we need legislation and fisheries policy that is designed to help communities thrive. It’s not only important to have fish in the water, it’s also important to have a framework in place to help small local fishermen succeed, like affordable access to permits, fuel, bait and ice, not to mention a waterfront that has a winch or lift to offload the fish from the boat. These needs seem simple and straightforward, but many working waterfronts have none or only some of these components, making it difficult for a small boat fisherman to succeed.

I look forward to working with our Senators to ensure that MSA reauthorization builds upon the successes of the current law, evolves to adapt to current and future environmental conditions, and also incorporates new ideas and technology that will better help us manage our precious resource for our kids and grandkids to enjoy in their lifetimes.

Please consider contacting your Senators about this important reauthorization, and let them know why you're against HR200. In Oregon:
Contact Senator Jeff Merkley.
Contact Senator Ron Wyden.
Find other US Senators here.

Guest Essay: The Farm Bill and Hungry Oregonians: Why Care?

When I was in college I needed food stamps—now called SNAP—for a few months to fill a gap in my budget, a situation familiar to many of us who, in a rough patch in our lives, have needed some sort of assistance. The following essay by Jacqui Stork, assistant manager of the Hillsdale Farmers' Market, explains the program, its importance in the lives of our fellow Oregonians, and the part it has in the larger national debate over the Farm Bill. You'll find links for more information at the end.

Administered by the USDA, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest federal food assistance program, distributing roughly $637 million in benefits to its 42 million recipients in 2017. Using SNAP benefits is not uncommon: the federal government estimates that approximately 51% of Americans will participate in the program at some point during their lifetime.

Oregon has had higher proportion of individuals on SNAP than the U.S. average since 2000, and participation remains over 1.5 times higher than it was in 2006. This is partly explained by a still-lagging economy, but since the recession underemployment remains high and housing costs have skyrocketed. The high proportion also reflects a more positive trend: increased participation among eligible people. Historically, it has been difficult to apply for and receive SNAP benefits in Oregon, but that began to change in the late 1990s when lawmakers simplified the process and engaged in strategic outreach to increase participation and access. Now, nearly 100% of eligible Oregonians participate in the program. Last year nearly 15% of Oregon households received benefits.

Eligibility is based on monthly income, not long-term financial outlook or assets, which is important because many people cycle in and out of poverty or food-insecure status. A person's SNAP eligibility status and participation can therefore fluctuate over time. In fact, although millions of Americans rely on SNAP long-term for assistance and security, many utilize the program short-term to alleviate the effects of a financial crisis. Even a small monthly benefit can help provide financial freedom—food insecurity rates are nearly 30% lower among SNAP-participating households than they otherwise would be.

That being said, new research has indicated that, nationwide, the allowable benefit is inadequate for many families to sustain a healthful diet, and that increasing benefits could lead to improvements in health and economic vitality in the long term. Although the program is intended to be supplemental, SNAP benefits make up the bulk of many families' food budgets. The maximum allowable benefit falls well below the average cost of food (in Multnomah County it is $1.86 max benefit per meal versus $2.54 actual cost per meal), so people must still find ways to bridge that gap. Many depend on food pantries, like the one administered by Neighborhood House, or other food assistance programs to meet this need.

Benefits have been distributed using the Electronic Benefit Transfer, or EBT, card starting in the late 1990s, but SNAP and its benefits are still commonly referred to as "Food Stamps" thanks to a long history of paper vouchers redeemed for eligible food items. In Oregon, the EBT card is known as the "Oregon Trail" card. Many believe that this change has reduced stigma for participants because it allows retailers to use the same Point of Sale (POS) system as with debit or credit cards. In order for retailers to accept benefits, they must apply and become an approved site through the federal government. Additionally, retailers must use an approved POS device to run transactions. Over the past decade, there has been a push by the USDA to help farmers' markets become approved retailers by providing training resources and subsidization of these POS terminals. Today, the National Farmers' Market directory lists over 2,800 markets nationwide that accept SNAP benefits—up from 750 in 2008. This means more people are able to access the abundance of fresh, local products and that more money goes directly into the pockets of farmers and our local economies.

Funding for SNAP is allocated and approved through the omnibus Farm Bill, thus named because it consolidates the appropriation of funding for several programs and projects into a single package—a vote for one is a vote for all. Along with SNAP, the Farm Bill includes farm support policies (like subsidies, crop insurance, etc), international food aid, land use and many, many other things. In essence, this bill touches every part of our national food system and pairs the oft-conflicting missions of large federal agencies. After teaching a graduate-level course dedicated to the Farm Bill, Marion Nestle, a pioneer in food policy research, stated that "the bill not only lacked an overarching vision, but seemed designed to obfuscate how the programs actually worked."

Every five years Congress must re-authorize the Farm Bill, and our current bill is set to expire in September 2018. Each of the two previous bills faced many challenges on their way to passage: the 2008 bill was vetoed by President Bush and then expired nearly two years before another bill was passed in 2014, and we seem to be in the same boat in 2018.

So far, proposals for this year's bill seek to reshape SNAP, mostly by reducing its budget and reach. Earlier this year, the White House proposed a $26.9 million budget cut in addition to imposing new work requirements for eligibility. Perhaps the most shocking part of this White House plan was the suggestion that rather than providing financial benefits which allow people to shop for and choose their own food, the SNAP program should be based on food boxes doled out monthly. Unsurprisingly, the description of these proposed boxes did not include fresh produce—let alone local or organic options.

Last week the House voted on a bill that would impose strict work requirements while rolling back policies that allowed states some flexibility in providing waivers for these requirements. Additionally, while the bill doesn't reduce spending on SNAP, it does cut funding for benefits and nutrition education programs. An estimated 1.2 million people could lose their benefits under this proposal, and luckily it did not pass. Yet. A new vote has already been scheduled for next month (June). After that, the Senate will vote on a bill and the different versions must be reconciled before being sent to a White House that has shown little to no interest in providing support for the less fortunate.

All told, this process could extend well into 2019 and, given the hyper-partisan nature of our current democracy, this seems likely. Because the current bill expires in September, this means that programs could go without funding for a period of months (this happened during the delay of the 2014 Farm Bill).

To be sure, passage of a clean Farm Bill is imperative for issues far beyond SNAP. But, making it more difficult for millions of Americans to receive food assistance hurts families and communities by reducing access to nutritious and appropriate foods. There is still time to make sure that the final bill is one that supports our most vulnerable, rather than punishing them. Call your representatives in Congress to let them know where you stand before it is too late.

And, if you're interested, here is some additional reading on SNAP, the Farm Bill, and food assistance:

• Food Benefits in Oregon
• Hunger in Oregon
• How the Farm Bill Drove Me Insane
• What the Failure of the House Farm Bill Means for Food Advocates
• SNAP and Farmers' Markets

Guest Essay: What Does Real Change in Our Food System Look Like?

Lyf Gildersleeve, owner of Flying Fish Company, a sustainable seafood retailer in Providore Fine Foods, is a second-generation fishmonger and a vocal advocate for national fisheries policy. This is a guest post he wrote for the Marine Fish Conservation Network, a coalition of fishermen, conservationists, scientists and citizens around a mission to conserve and revitalize wild ocean fisheries.

Obesity, chronic heart disease, depression, cancer, diabetes, and malnourishment are all components of our failing food system. Worldwide, we produce enough calories of food to feed the entire planet, but due to economic inequality and unequal distribution of power there are billions of people who are starving.

Here in the United States we have a different problem: the food we are eating could be killing us.

Comparison of wild Atlantic salmon (left) and farmed (right). Note misshapen jaws of the farmed fish.

In land-based agriculture we often overuse artificial chemical fertilizers, growth-enhancing hormones, and antibiotics. In most open ocean fish farming we use artificial color in the feed to make the fish look like wild salmon, we overstock the pens so disease is commonplace, and the finished product is less nutritious than its wild counterpart. Additionally, we abuse the use of preservatives in order to cater to our industrialized distribution of the food. These examples and many more show the alarming discrepancies between how our food used to be produced and how it is produced today.

The communities in which we live depend on the infrastructure of the old food systems. Rather than keeping jobs in the USA, however, corporations are shipping products overseas to be processed by cheaper labor. This doesn’t come without additional price tags, including child labor, green house gas emissions, inferior food safety standards, loss of domestic jobs, increased trade deficits, and lower food quality. We need to wake up and realize this isn’t okay; big changes need to happen.

So-called "free range" chickens in a factory farm.

There is a reason why large multi-national corporations don’t want consumers to see behind the doors of their production and processing facilities. The industrial food production system is structured to maximize output, minimize input, and maximize profit. What is missing is the humane, logical, reasonable conditions in which we would want animals to be raised, the commitment to using our natural resources sustainably, using minimal additives in order to provide our bodies with maximum nutrition and healthy antioxidants to fight off illnesses.

Now how do we change that?

The answer is: one bite at a time. In the famous writing of the Tao Te Ching, Laozi stated, “The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.” This saying teaches that even the longest and most difficult ventures have a starting point; something which only begins with taking the first step. The same goes for the food system. We have to learn to be conscious consumers, choosing to support local fishermen and community supported fisheries like Tre-Fin Foods from Ilwaco, Washington, which catch, process and distribute their own albacore tuna directly to consumers and restaurants. This is how we become active citizens who stand up against our current unsustainable food system.

Money spent at farmers' markets goes directly to farmers, ranchers and fishermen.

Portland, Oregon, and the surrounding area is an amazing mecca of food culture, world-renowned chefs and restaurants, biodynamic farms, non-profit organizations fighting the good fight, and a consumer base that genuinely wants to do good for the environment and for their bodies. Portland has a burning desire to learn, grow, and do things differently than the status quo. We are hungry to learn and change; we just need the information. It’s in communities like this that real change happens. We have the opportunity to be leaders in our nation by leading by example.

Changing a massive food system takes a whole gamut of folks. It’s people like Jeremy Coon, who is investing in infrastructure in the fishing port of Garibaldi, Oregon, to make it easier for fishermen to offload their catch and sell direct to small buyers, instead of being forced to sell to the massive seafood processing and distribution companies, which have been alleged to price-set and manipulate the market for their own financial gains.

It’s non-profit organizations like Ecotrust, which is investing millions of dollars in a food hub that provides a platform for local farms and fishermen to store and distribute their products in the Portland metropolitan marketplace. Finally, it’s the consumers who choose to shop at the small local artisan store or marketplace or, better yet, their local farmers' market, where they get to talk with the producers and put more money in local farmers, ranchers and fishermen's pockets by going outside the mainstream food system channels.

That’s how we change a food system, one step (and dollar) at a time.

Disclaimer: Providore Fine Foods is an advertiser on Good Stuff NW.

Guest Essay: A Grain of Wheat

There's the old saw that the best way to teach kids to swim is to toss them into the deep end of the pool. While I may not agree with that theory (Hello…Red Cross swimming lessons???), the idea of learning by doing is a good one. So when my friend, hunter, forager and author Hank Shaw, found wheat growing in his yard, he decided to see what it took to grow, harvest, thresh, winnow and grind his own flour.

“I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” - John 12:24

How little we consider the grains that sustain us.

Tiny seeds that contain within them the power to change humanity, and by so doing render themselves almost invisible in their ubiquity. By the time The Gospel of John was written, somewhere around 70 AD, wheat, rice, barley, rye, millet, and, here in the Western Hemisphere, corn, had already dictated our existence for eight millennia.

Grain, or more accurately dependence on grain, is what separated farmers from foragers, Jacob from Esau. Grains underpin civilization: portable, easily renewable, nutritionally dense foods that can be grown in surplus and stored—or kept from those the holder deems unworthy.

Every culture that tamed a grain, although it could easily be argued that the grains tamed us, has held that grain sacred. In Japan, there is a saying that each grain of rice contains 88 souls, and to waste one is a sin. Similar proverbs exist all over the world.

So how did grain fall from sacred to commonplace? To become something tossed about without thought, wasted, even scorned?

I have been guilty of all of this. And chances are, so have you. I can distinctly remember times when I’ve thoughtlessly poured several cups of flour into a bowl to dust a piece or fish or schnitzel, then tossed the vast majority of it into the trash when I finished. It’s just flour, right?

Well, yes. But then, one day, I decided to make flour.

I started with acorn flour. Why? Well, I am a forager living in California. Here, the native people relied not on grain for their daily starch, but on flour made from acorns. California acorns have the decided advantage of being large — sometimes three inches long in the case of the Valley oak. And, again in the case of the Valley oak, these acorns can be low in tannins, and plentiful. Very plentiful. One old mother tree can drop a literal ton of acorns in a good year.

Making flour from acorns requires that you leach out the tannins first. You do this by shelling the acorns, breaking them up into small bits and soaking them in multiple changes of water. It is a lengthy, but not difficult process. (If you are interested, here are my directions for making acorn flour) When your acorns are no longer bitter, you must then dry them and grind once more to get flour.

When I did this, I became acutely aware of how much work this all was. How precious this flour truly is. I do my best not to waste a teaspoonful.

But acorns are not grains. Grains, by definition, are the seeds from grasses. They offer a distinct advantage in that they are annual. If my village is dependent on a grove of oak trees, many of which may be a century old, and you come and burn down my oaks, my village starves. But I can hide a sack of grain seeds in a hole. And when marauders have burned everything and left, I can replant, and, in a year, rebuild. From one seed comes many grains of wheat.

As it happens, I got a chance to see this first hand. No, marauders did not come to my house and burn down my oak trees. Rather, my yard became an impromptu wheat field.

Holly [Heyser, Hank's partner in crime] bands doves for the state fish and wildlife department. To do so, she is given bags of mixed grain to bait them into a live trap, so she can capture the doves, band them and let them go. Apparently doves vastly prefer safflower to wheat, because when the rains came in October this past year, it was wheat that began to grow in our yard. Lots of it.

I became determined to harvest this wheat. I had no idea what the yield might be, nor did I care. I wanted to see what it actually takes to harvest a grain of wheat.

In late spring I began with green wheat, called freekeh or farik in North Africa. You harvest it when the grain heads are fully grown, but the plant still holds moisture; typically when it begins to yellow.

Now if you’ve seen a wheat grain head in all its glory, it is a beautiful sight. You can see why gatherers all those millennia ago would want them. Large seeds (for a grass) that are, relatively speaking, easy to collect and remove.

I gathered a mess of green wheat and set the sheaves on a steel plate. To make farik, you then set them on fire briefly to burn away the little spikes on the grain heads, and to parch the seeds a bit. You then let all this dry in the sun for a day or two, which makes it far easier to thresh and winnow your wheat—literally separating the wheat from the chaff.

Read how Hank threshed his wheat. Read how Hank winnowed his wheat. And read one of the very practical reasons our ancestors may have ground their grains into flour.

Top photo by Holly Heyser; the rest by Hank Shaw.

Guest Essay: Tidepool

The ocean exerts a strong pull on me, calling me with memories of waves lashing the shore or whispering over the rocks along its edge. My friend, writer, author and forager Hank Shaw, recently wrote a meditation about his own relationship with the abundance of life along its edges.

For as long as I have been me, I have collected the detritus of the sea.

Shells of tiny whelks and oyster drills. The calcified husks of sand dollars or sea urchins. Jingle shells. Sea glass, each with an unknowable story of how it entered the ocean to be tossed about, burnished and softened over time. Mostly white, green or brown, a fleck of cobalt sea glass I found on a beach on Block Island decades ago remains one of my prized possessions, for reasons my conscious mind cannot fathom.

But these were merely what I put into my pockets. The real draw of the place where ocean meets land is its living edge: the tidepool.

Sometimes it is merely a depression in the beach that became a shallow lake. A lake teeming with sand fleas, minnows of indeterminate species, seaweeds and the always entertaining hermit crab. In New England and along the North Pacific, sand gives way to stone. Boulders and crags litter the littoral landscape like forgotten dice tossed there by unseen giants.

These stones trap pools of water, and by so doing serve as bulwarks for an array of wonder.

Seaweeds of endless variety. Crustaceans ranging from barely visible to alarmingly large. Lots of fish, some tempting. I once found a rubberlips perch big enough to eat, if only I could have caught him. Snails — turbans in the West, winkles in the East — dot every hard surface; to me they’re like money scattered on pavement. Mussels jostle for position on the ocean faces of the boulders, grudgingly making way for the bizarre (and delicious) gooseneck barnacles, which remind me of the 1950s saddle shoes my mom once had in her closet.

I move through this kaleidoscope as I always have: As a child.

Some of my earliest memories are of tidepools. The boom and hiss of waves large enough to kill. The minerality of the air, a saline bite that mingled briny life and the reeking, iodine rot of decaying kelp or crabs. Or, once, a large hunk of whale.

An inexorable descent into a coating sandiness that I knew even as a child would take all day — or a proper, indoor shower — to fully remedy. The step-sink-slip, the tightening calves and exfoliating rasp of the sand that are the price, and the gift, of walking long distances on a beach. And there is always that clammy chill hovering over the pools, even in high summer.

The game is always different in the pools, but there is always action.

Read the rest of this marvelous essay.

Photos at left and right by Hank Shaw.

Guest Essay: Spring, That In-Between Season

Sasha Davies is a cheesemonger, restaurateur and co-owner with her husband, Michael Claypool, of Cyril's at Clay Pigeon Winery. She's also a fine writer, having authored two books on cheese, The Guide to West Coast Cheese and the Cheesemakers Apprentice. Her newsletter for May struck a chord with me, as I hope it will with you.

Liminal: (adj.) Of or relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. Occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.

You have all experienced liminal time, the kind where you're somewhere between a Here and a There. This can be very much a matter of logistics, like being on an airplane, or slightly less well defined like the time between making a decision (to move, take a job, have a baby, take a trip, quit a job, commit to/end a relationship) and the first moment where it feels like that decision is manifesting in the world.

Liminal times can be tense (picture yourself straddling a fence) and uncertain—filled with anxiety about what's coming—they can also be times of great release and letting go, or leaning into a spot of blank space.

The liminal nature of May—the month—is something I feel every year here in Portland, and I can see it play out in our kitchen at Cyril's; I sense that the rules of Here (spring) and There (summer) are malleable. This feels somewhat liberating.

Part of this could be because I grew up in California, where May felt much more like the beginning of summer than the midst of spring. When I moved here eight years ago (in April) and didn't see the sun on a regular basis until July 5th, my idea of spring got entirely rearranged. The early warmth and sunshine this year has shattered my ideas about May yet again.

Personally, I find this time of year to be one of the more challenging of the seasonal transitions. While I do find the green shoots and kaleidescope of blossoms utterly delightful, there is a quickening up that I find myself resisting. In subtle ways I cling to the last bits of slowness left over from our winter habits.

There is an overarching theme of freedom we feel about summer, the season we're barreling toward, and yet in the kitchen—and in my life—sometimes I feel there is a certain pressure about it as well, an unspoken demand that one engages in that time of year with a particular vigor. This is precisely the kind of thing that makes me anxious—you know, because what if I'm tired and I feel like staying inside?

At Cyril's we are doing our best to embrace the liminal nature of now both in terms of what is available at the market and what our guests are interested in eating. The menu feels like a bit of a moving target but somehow this pop of early warmth in the weather has meant a larger overlap of the seasons in terms of ingredients. We only just said farewell to sweet potatoes and risotto and have now created our first salad with lettuce in a starring role.

Photos courtesy Cyril's at Clay Pigeon Winery.

Guest Essay: The Hands of a Gatherer

There is something essentially human about working with your hands, especially when you are gathering food to feed your family. My friend, journalist and author Hank Shaw, has made a career out of his passion for hunting, fishing and foraging, and in this essay he reflects on the reasons he chose this path and why he believes it's good for all of us to engage in. I encourage you to click through to read the entire piece.

My hands feel like they’ve been hit with a weed whacker. One finger is swollen, another scraped to hell. A burn here, a blister there. The tips are all tender, and I don’t know how many little puncture wounds I have that are in various stages of healing.

These are the hands of a gatherer, an angler, a hunter. A cook. They are my hands. This past week has been a maelstrom mashup of almost all that do in my odd little life, and my hands tell that story.

A burn from a catering job. Blisters from hammering away at a rocky shoreline with a steel bulb planter, looking for littlenecks. A nasty puncture wound from a rockfish spine. Another from an errant hook. A lattice of lacerations on the back of my hands – the price of picking blackberries. And with most of my fingerprints scraped off by hours of digging forearm deep into rocky sand in search of buried horseneck clams, it’d be a great time to commit a crime.

Hands, if you look closely, will often tell you how their owners put food on their table. Think of a fisherman’s calloused paws, or an artist’s delicate digits. People’s professions can be guessed at by the state of their hands. Mine are no different, only they tell this story more directly.

Lord knows I need not do this. I have been a writer by trade for more than two decades. I live in a suburb, surrounded by supermarkets. Were I to forsake them, I’d still have a farmer’s market available to me almost every day of the week, and friends who raise livestock far superior to any of the sad, factory-farmed meat you see wrapped in plastic. I choose to work for my food for a variety of reasons, but it’s in no small part because, well, we are hard-wired to do so. Every animal on earth does two things above all else: Reproduce, and eat. It’s what we do.

Yesterday I found myself standing above Tomales Bay, stopping to catch my breath. The hill I was climbing was steep, and I was carrying a bucket full of clams and seawater that weighed somewhere north of 35 pounds. Heart hammering against my ribs, I looked up, gasped for air — and understood why I do this: An oceanic breeze cooled my forehead, whisking away the beading sweat so it could meld itself into the mists that still hung in hollows of this coastal plain. I could smell the salt, but also the spicy perfume of a California summer, a mix dominated in this place by a native bay laurel and a seaside sagebush that I wish I could somehow wear as cologne.

Read the rest of Hank's essay and find out what we have in common with animals in the zoo. Top photo by Holly Heyser.

Guest Essay: Seeing

We've all watched the videos of people walking and texting, the ones where the texter falls into a fountain or splats into some wet cement. I see it around me when neighbors walk by, absorbed in their phones when they're walking their dogs or, worse, strolling with their children, missing the opportunity for connection. My friend, journalist, hunter, forager and author Hank Shaw, recently published an essay on this phenomenon, and has given me permission to post an excerpt. I encourage you to click through to read the entire piece.

I went for a walk today, and found myself surrounded by zombies.

One of the places where I wander around to read nature’s news also happens to be a spot that on any given sunny weekend is choked with walkers, runners and bikers. On those rare weekends when I venture out into this, I feel oddly out of place, like those people who stand still in Times Square while being photographed in time lapse: a rock in a raging torrent of humanity.

This is not to say that I sit motionless on a bench like some octogenarian feeding pigeons. I actually do end up walking five miles or so on a given day, but it can often take me several hours because, well, to read the signs of the natural world you must slow yourself down. Slowing down: A concept so alien to most modern Americans that they view it as a sign of weakness. On the contrary, an overly regimented life is one empty of wonder. And wonder is no weakness.

I honestly have no real way of gauging the inner lives of those earnest exercisers around me, but their exterior isn’t pretty. At best their eyes appear vacant, their minds focused on whatever it is they are listening to on their headphones. At worst they look like the damned in a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

As I walk through this bustle, noting the comings and goings of flowers and fruits and leaves, checking to see what schedule life seems to be taking this year, I am almost never noticed, even though I might be picking up pine nuts off the ground or collecting seeds or elderberries or mustard greens in full view of the good people of the path. I used to think everyone just thought I was a crazy homeless person and were consciously avoiding eye contact. That does still happen, but I’ve learned to recognize the difference between that and those who truly don’t register my existence.

This obliviousness fascinates me. Why, if you are so intent on whatever it is blaring itself into your skull, are you out in nature at all? Wouldn’t a treadmill suffice?

Of course it won’t. I was once a runner. A competitive one, even. So fast there was no possible way I could truly appreciate my surroundings. But I did, or at least I told myself I did. Nature exerts a sort of osmotic pressure on us all, seeping into those who lack nature within themselves even if ignored, much the way a salt brine works in meat. Even something as simple as sun on your head and a breeze in your face makes a world of difference.

Yet to me, a forager, they all still seem zombies. The difference is one of degree, I suppose, a sliding scale ending with the wild animals who live along this path. As intimate as I am with nature, my life does not depend on it the way a squirrel or goose or scrub jay’s does. For those of us who slow down and take the time to really look at their surroundings, we at least get to borrow that sight a wild thing possesses permanently — a sight the cyclist or runner can never attain (at least while they’re hurtling through nature rather than looking at it).

So what, exactly, did I see? (read the rest of the essay)

Photo of ithuriel's spear by Hank Shaw.