Posts Tagged ‘Farmers Market’
A mild winter and warm spring means that the city’s fruit trees are blossoming, and the farmers on the outskirts of the city have been hard at work preparing seedlings in their greenhouses. In two more weekends, the indoor farmer’s market will close for the season. Meanwhile, an increasing number of farmers have begun setting up their tables again in Deering Oaks Park (Saturdays, 7 am to noon, beginning on April 28) and in Monument Square (Wednesdays, 7 am to 1 pm).
Since we moved to Maine a few years ago, my wife and I have bartered work for vegetables with our friends at the Snell Family Farm, which has been growing fruit and vegetables in Bar Mills for four generations.
I came to know the Snells by going to high school with their oldest daughter. But working for them at the Saturday farmers’ market, I’ve come to meet some of their hundreds of customers, many of whom have been buying from the Snells for many years. They swap jokes and planting advice and recipes. It strikes me as an unusually personable relationship between a small business and their customers. And it’s by no means unique to the Snell Family Farm: I see similar interactions happening at virtually every booth in the market. Eating is a social activity, and good food has a way of solidifying good relationships.
So because Portlanders care so much about good food, they also care a great deal about the people who provide the raw ingredients. For decades, the city has taken pride in the working waterfront that supplied the city’s seafoods; now, there’s a growing pride associated with the fields of Portland’s working hinterlands.
Vestiges of yankee frugality and self-reliance helped these small businesses squeak through through the decades of globalization and corporate agribusiness. But to explain these enterprises’ current success, more credit is due to a new, post-globalization desire (both among Portlanders, and among the people who choose to move to Portland) to have a closer and more honest relationship with the natural resources we rely on.
Local restaurants — from fine-dining establishments to taquerias to comfort-food diners — prominently list their farmers on their menus, and the farmers markets themselves have been attracting increasing numbers of customers over the past decade. Farmers are collaborating with chefs on equal footing in the city’s increasingly serious food culture.
This week, while we wait for the last threats of frost to fade away and planting season to begin in earnest, SPACE Gallery is hosting their annual Food+Farm series, a collection of programs that highlight and celebrate local foods and farmers. Highlights this year include a screening of The Harvest / La Cosecha, a documentary about child migrant farm workers, a “Grow Fair” with events and workshops for gardeners, and a presentation from Daniel Klein, the producer of the Perennial Plate webseries.
Photo: Urban Farm Fermentory’s window installation at SPACE Gallery. Photo by Christian MilNeil.
In the fracus of First Friday it’s easy to lose sight of what artists in Portland, and creatives in Maine in general, have in common. We talk about authenticity, respect for materials, an awareness of time and the craft of making as attributes of the Maine brand that Portland’s creative economy embodies. Starting this Friday night, at the Coleman Burke Gallery in Brunswick, (and running through May 19) is an opportunity to see a version of that shared sensibility enacted in the work of five accomplished Portland artists.
A Thickening Rhythm is a show curated by artist Julie Poitras Santos that brings together work that embraces “slowness.” Of the five artists in the show, Lauren Fensterstock, Carrie Scanga, Ling-Wen Tsai, Deborah Wing-Sproul and Julie Poitras Santos herself, all teach at Maine College of Art (MECA) except Scanga, who teaches at Bowdoin College. The pieces range from Fensterstock’s Colorless Field, a black-on-black expanse of tall “grass,” to Scanga’s Ballast, a lightweight stack of intaglio printed “bricks,” to Tsai’s silent Water & Wind video and Sitting Quietly installation of noise-canceling headphones, to Wing-Sproul’s Intimate Distance, a 24-minute video that explores what it means to be seen, to Poitras Santos’ raven mirror/unravel, a performance for actors wearing feathered wings to the constant sound of rolling dice.
Coleman Burke also has a gallery in Chelsea, in New York and a storefront in Portland. The Brunswick space is in the converted Fort Andross Mill building. The Mill is a bustling hive of creative economy activity similar to the State Theatre building or the old Railroad Terminal buildings in Portland, but with the addition of restaurants, a huge indoor flea market and a Saturday morning farmers market.
Fans of “Slow Food,” will enjoy the pleasures of slow art as well. And the drive from Portland to Brunswick, where Bowdoin is located, is easy and not particularly slow, and good eats are just down the hallway from the gallery at the Frontier Café.
Two weeks ago, environmental activist, author and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, came to the Portland US District courthouse to join a midday demonstration “marking the two-year anniversary of the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling that gave corporations unprecedented power to fund political campaigns,” according to a story in the Portland Phoenix. “City councilor Dave Marshall recently submitted a resolution that calls on Maine’s congressional delegation to support a constitutional amendment abolishing the so-called ‘corporate personhood’ codified by the ruling. ‘We simply can’t win the battle against carbon if politics remains polluted by corporate money,’ McKibben says.” Dave Marshall’s resolution was indeed passed that Thursday night. The city council of Portland voted 6-2 to call on the state’s congressional delegation to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing “corporate personhood.” [Here's a good roundup of the issue from CommonDreams.org]
McKibben went on to give a lecture that Friday evening at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center hosted by the University of New England entitled, “Local and Global: Notes from the Frontlines of the Climate Fight.” [Here's the video of the talk.] That talk is being broadcast today on MPBN’s Speaking in Maine public affairs program.
Now Portland likes corporations just fine, but we like living and working to be in balance. We like our people to be people and our corporations to be corporations.
In fact, a lot of the companies that are attracted to Maine, and to the Portland area in particular, are trying to create solutions to the kinds of problems McKibben addresses in his most recent book, Eaarth, Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. ReVision Energy, Ocean Approved Kelp, Ocean Renewable Power, all presented at this year’s Juice 3.0 conference and are all based in Portland. Other Portland green businesses listed on the Maine Businesses for Sustainability include Blue Reserve Water, PDT Architects, Wright-Ryan Construction, and Coffee by Design. A great resource for local services with green practices is the new green business directory from The Sunrise Guide.
McKibben’s talk was Skyped live around the State to Belfast, Bangor, Houlton, and the Portland Public Library. Bill said he has been to all of these places, but this “is a very low carbon way to get around Maine!” He apologized, in advance for being, “a professional bummer-outer of people,” but then went on to tell what we can all do to make things better. He praised Maine’s initiatives in the local food movement and Portland’s permaculture efforts during the 10.10.10 day of action, but he also said we need to do more.
In particular, McKibben thinks that the injection of money into politics is crippling our government’s ability to make any substantive changes in our energy future. ”I gave a little talk at the Portland courthouse today,” he said, “because there was a demonstration to mark the second anniversary of the Citizens United thing that sort of opened up fully the money spigots for corporate America to interfere in our political life. And this is just cheating. If the Patriots make the Super Bowl, and Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, is caught giving money to the referees beforehand, it’s a national scandal. Everybody would be outraged, but if Exxon does it, then it’s OK. That’s crazy and we’ve got to stop it, right now.”
McKibben speaks from the deep Yankee tradition (see my discussion with Colin Woodard in relation to this). In fact, in 2010 he wrote a series of articles for Yankee Magazine subtitled How New England Can Save the World. And he was clearly speaking to a receptive audience that night in Westbrook, “The thing that keeps us from fixing things is our cynicism. This is how it’s always going to be. We need to be aggressively naive about this. I think we need to say, ‘This is not right, it’s not fair, it makes no sense. We don’t know how it got started, but it’s time to stop it.’ And we won’t stop it perfectly and all at once, but hopefully we can at least throw a scare into them. So we’re going to have people all over the country and they’re going to be following around their congressman with big signs pointing out how much money they’ve taken. And we’re going to be making up suit coats for them that look like those uniforms that nascar drivers wear, with decals, logos, for each of their companies. It’s shameful what’s going on and there needs to be some shaming done.”
Bill is not a naturally outgoing person and he has taken the mantle of activist leader somewhat reluctantly. In many ways, like many creatives, he would rather sit in his room and write. But there’s clearly something about the momentum of social engagement, and 350.orgs surprising victories, that keeps him going. Returning at the end of his talk to the theme of local foods he concluded, ”The secret is to have more fun than other people have, and part of that involves eating delicious, good things close to home, and frankly i think we’ve reached the point that i’m going to stop so I can eat some of them!”
For many Portlanders, our Farmers’ Market is just about the best thing in town. Twice a week from April to November, more than 30 farmers descend on Portland, and we get the benefit of fresh, local produce and meats from across Maine.
Come December, the whole operation just moves indoors, to the Maine Irish Heritage Center (the former St. Dominic’s Church). Starting this past weekend, the Portland Winter Farmers’ Market is open every Saturday morning, with farmers hailing from Sumner, Dresden, Etna, Greenwood, Unity, Bethel, up and down the Pinetree State.
This week, your correspondent saw an array of celeriac, Manchego cheese, duck eggs, fingerling potatoes, rabbit pot pie, bunches of winterberries, Anadama bread, cider, sunchokes, bagels, honey, feta marinade, and a colorful bounty of carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, squash, garlic and more. Over on the stage, a fiddler and guitar duo serenaded the crowd with old-timey music. Kids ran around, parents mulled purchases, old friends reconnected, and pretty soon bags were stuffed with the makings of many delectable dinners to come.
Make your way to the big brick church at State and Gray streets any Saturday morning over the next few months, and join the foodie fray.
Photos by John Spritz. Top: Fishbowl Farm
Common Wealth Farm purveys free range duck and chicken eggs…and bagels.
A farmer’s market inside a former church basement? Well, why not?
Soaps, cheeses, and jams from Nezinscot Farm.
The Pickle Jar Defenders playing away.
Fresh, local, seasonal—you hear it a lot—but Maine chefs do it better. That’s the delicious argument of “Fresh from Maine,” a gorgeous (and locally produced) new cookbook by writer Michael S. Sanders and photographer Russell French. The book is also beautifully designed by Lucian Burg of LUDesign (who had a major hand in the look of liveworkportland) which makes for an additional amuse bouche. Sanders and French, both founding members of Slow Food Portland, have surveyed the food scene from Kittery to Mount Desert Island for chefs who make the most of what the coast and farms of Maine has to offer. The book includes more than 50 recipes by 20 chefs and runs the gamut from Town Hill Bistro‘s Maine Shrimp and Peaky-Toe Crab Salad, to Bar Lola‘s Pan-Roasted Striped Bass with Endive and Orange, to Hugo‘s Braised Oxtails and Caoila‘s Panna Cotta with Raspberry Sauce. Steve Corry of 555‘s iconic Truffled Lobster Mac ‘n Cheese (above) is pictured in the book, but the recipe actually resides on the Table Arts Media‘s website with other premium content from the book and the author’s combined culinary archives, and is available to people who buy the book or subscribe to the site. The recipes are mostly fairly straight forward in the Maine style, but the ingredients are quite particular. The emphasis of the book is on the personalities of the different chefs, their novel approaches to food and how they finish and plate their dishes. They have a second edition and other projects in the pipeline, so we can count on not only more great food, but more great media about it. Perfect inspiration for cooking and eating out both, and proudly produced in Portland.
Spiced Lamb Loin with Carrot Puree, Hugo’s, Portland, Maine
Grilled Calamari with White Bean and Spinich Salad from Cailoa’s, Portland, Maine
Pan Roasted Striped Bass with Endive and Orange, Bar Lola, Portland, Maine
