Editor’s note: As more people are cooking and eating a home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Warren County is sharing recipes that are easy to make and can be made with locally sourced ingredients.
This recipe for beef stew comes courtesy of the West Virginia University Extension Service’s Dining with Diabetes series.
The Mobile Farmers Market returns for the 2020 season with community-based stops in Franklin and Clinton counties.
A program of the Joint Council for Economic Opportunity JCEO and the North Country Health Heart Network, the mobile market provides access to fresh fruit and vegetables, baked goods, and a salad bar. The market debuted in 2018 and has since expanded its stops and offerings. In light of COVID-19, this year, the mobile market will be following strict social distancing and health guidelines.
Warmer weather means grilling time! Instead of sticking to traditional grilling foods like burgers or hot dogs, why not consider grilling one of my personal favorite foods, pizza.
This fantastic dish can be modified to suit a variety of dietary needs and preferences, and can be easily adjusted to be a healthy food choice. Cheese can be substituted with vegan cheese or left off entirely for vegans, vegetables and fruit can be used as toppings, and some traditionally unhealthy topping choices, such as pepperoni or sausage, can be swapped for healthier options such as turkey pepperoni or venison sausage. Even more appealing, though, is the taste. Nothing truly compares to the smoky and savory flavors that combine in a good grilled pizza.
When Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the executive order in March that shut down state commerce, Katie and Brandon Donahue, owners of Donahue’s Livestock Farm in North Bangor, had 30 sizable orders of top-shelf, hormone- and antibiotic-free beef and pork in the cooler destined for North Country restaurants.
Within minutes of the shutdown order, Donahue’s phone began blowing up with cancellations. Restaurants were either shutting down altogether or going to a pickup/delivery model that relied less on the more expensive, hence more profitable, cuts. By the end of the day, 27 of the 30 restaurants had called to cancel.
“I was panicking,” Donahue said. “I have 700 cows out in the field that still have to eat, and they don’t care about the coronavirus.”
One thing is sure: all of us have learned that the world can change overnight. So far, supply chains within the global food system have not been totally disrupted. Hopefully they won’t be. But food resiliency means a community has farms growing food on the soil surrounding community members. If supply chains break, your neighboring farms are growing food nearby. But in order for community farms to survive, they can’t be a last resort. Community members have to see the value in knowing that security is there, every day, and support it… or farms don’t survive.
Many people have been thinking about food differently during this unprecedented pandemic. Going out to get food means something different than it did mere weeks ago. We’re wondering where our food came from and how many people touched it before us. Or we don’t want to go out to get it at all…
So, like magic, local farm and food businesses in the Adirondacks have responded rapidly in innovative ways to feed the community. Local farmers’ markets, farmstands, cooked meal deliveries, and other local food vendors are noticing amazing support from the community. Adirondack Harvest wanted to understand more about the relationship of local food to the community during this unusual time. Here’s what you told us!
Dandelions: Landscape Weed or Beneficial Backyard Herb?
Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) are probably the most recognized of all broadleaf ‘weeds’. Many people consider them a curse; a plant that can establish quickly, by seed, in a well-kept lawn and become extremely difficult to eradicate. Homeowners and groundskeepers spend tremendous amounts of time and enormous amounts of money annually, persistently trying to exterminate the tenacious, opportunistic, perennial wildflowers, which will re-grow vegetatively, if the taproot is not entirely removed, often even after being treated with herbicides.
Others value dandelions as one of the least-recognized of all multi-purpose herbs. They view them as nutritious, free food that can be easily added to most-anyone’s diet. They delight in collecting dandelion greens to add to soups or salads, and/or take pleasure in picking the flower heads (and digging roots) for a pot of tea or a crock of dandelion wine. I have a friend who remembers when, as a boy, he was paid a penny apiece for dandelion heads (blossoms), by an enthusiastic wine-making neighbor.
In the Adirondacks we are fortunate to have a growing number of small local farms to supply us with fresh, safe, and healthy food.
It is more important then ever during the COVID-19 crises to support the growing number of small farms that rely on the community to remain viable.
If you wish to join the Adirondack Council’s Essex Farm Institute in continuing to help local farmers, below are some suggestions of how you can give your support:
As the world is in the midst of a pandemic from the COVID-19 virus, maple trees that dot the landscape across the northeast continued to flow this spring like nothing had changed in the world. Despite the interruption to daily life for most Americans, sugar-makers continued to collect sap from their maple trees and boil it down into nature’s sweet treat – maple syrup. For sugar-makers, long days and nights of boiling and collecting sap are required. As a result, little time is left for socialization so life has not changed as drastically for sugar-makers as it has for others. Coronavirus or not, this was the time we had to collect the sap to make syrup. Maple is an agriculture practice and part of our food system so sugar-makers are deemed essential. Many who enjoy maple syrup would agree that maple syrup production is an essential job.
The sugar-making season and the weeks thereafter are an extremely important selling period for local producers. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic has seriously impacted, and may continue to impact, sales into and perhaps beyond the spring and summer seasons.
Many local maple syrup-producing farm-families take part in Maple Weekend, an annual event championed by the New York State Maple Producers Association (NYSMPA) and supported by Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Cornell Maple Program. Maple Weekend provides opportunities for interested individuals and families across the state to visit one or more of the state’s family-run maple sugaring operations to see, first-hand, how sugar maple trees are tapped and sap is collected and boiled into pure, delicious maple syrup.
Adirondack Harvest has added a COVID-19 resources page to its website, to make it easier to people to support area farms and businesses and continue to source locally produced foods. The page can be found here.
Here are a few highlights:
Delivery and pick-up options for local food and groceries.
Many regional CSA’s will begin soon. When you participate in a CSA, you will pay for a season’s worth of fresh food for a farmer, who will then coordinate pick-up or delivery to you weekly. To find a CSA near you, click here.
Farmstores are still open as well and taking care to keep their products available and safe for the public. Browse regional farmstands and farmstores. Click here to view a map of regional farmstands and farmstores.
A list of Take-out and Delivery options has also been compiled by the Adirondack Almanack.
Many events and social gatherings have been canceled or postponed, but market organizers have updated protocol in some cases to provide a safer experience. The Saranac Lake Farmers’ Park-it is still open and offering curbside pick-up. You can order ahead online here.
Pictured here: Blue Pepper Farm in Jay. Photo courtesy of Lisa Godfrey.
Orgs launch program to deliver farm-fresh food packages
AdkAction has partnered up with the Hub on the Hill in Essex in order to launch an Emergency Food Packages Project (EFP) to assist local families who may be struggling due to the coronavirus. Every EFP contains a week’s worth of fresh, pre-prepared meals delivered directly to families. The organizations’ goal is to provide 100 boxes of food each week over the next 10 weeks. A total of 1,000 packages, supplying 15,000 meals – all for free.
Each EFP contains eggs, bread, apples, healthy snacks, yogurt, greens, granola, soup, and two large trays of frozen entrees. The food distributed is purchased from local farms, and prepared and delivered by local labor provided by Hub on the Hill. Families and individuals in need are being screened by partner agencies and local organizations with a history of supporting those who need food.
EFP’s have a $55 production fee but are provided free to families in need. A $7,000 grant provided by the Adirondack Foundation’s Special and Urgent Needs Fund launched the project. AdkAction has also created a online fundraising page to help reach the overall goal. Over $30,000 was raised in the first 24 hours, enough to support the first 545 EFP’s, with a total of $55,000 needed to support the creation and delivery of 1,000 EFPs.
For more information and to contribute to the fundraiser, please visit this link: https://emergencyfoodpackages.funraise.org/
AdkAction has partnered with BOCES, United Way and local food pantries to identify families in need. More about AdkAction and/or to refer an individual/family in need of food aid: https://www.adkaction.org/
Vermicomposting is the process of using worms to digest food waste to produce a nutrient and microbe rich soil amendment known as vermicompost (vermi – being latin for worm).
This compost is sometimes referred to as “black gold” because when mixed into the soil, it’s extremely valuable to the health and growth of the plants. » Continue Reading.
The fourteenth annual Thurman Maple Days, a three-weekend event, is set to kick-off Saturday and Sunday, March 14 and 15, continuing through March 29th. The event offers self-guided tours of eight agricultural sites in the rural town of Thurman, self-dubbed “Maple Capital of Warren County,” just 20 minutes from downtown Lake George. » Continue Reading.
Coming off the heels of the successful Petrova Elementary School Cultural Fair, The Adirondack Global Festival continues to use the arts as a way to introduce different cultures through entertaining activities.
Adirondack Global Festival supports cultural experiences at area schools. This year school groups are invited to attend a showing of the movie Harriet at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, the home base of the festival. » Continue Reading.
The Annual Long Lake Hors D’Oeuvres Tour, part of the Town of Long Lake’s Winter Wonderland Week, took place on Friday, February 21st.
Guests of the tour were invited to ride the Long Lake’s community “Little Bus” and visit the local restaurants to vote for their favorite appetizer. » Continue Reading.
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