By Amanda
Martina and I recently got together to celebrate spring and the one year anniversary of this blog, A Growing Season. For both of us, it was a time to look back and see how far our lives have come: what our blog has produced, how it has expanded our knowledge and understanding of local food and food systems, and most of all, where our life’s journey has taken us. Continue reading
By Amanda
I recently visited the P. A. Bowen Farmstead in Brandywine, Maryland in southern Prince George’s County, a pasture-based mixed animal soy free farm operation owned by Sally Fallon Morell, author of the Nourishing Traditions cookbook. With pastured dairy cows, egg and meat chickens and pigs, each part of the farm is organized with sustainability and humane animal treatment principles in mind. Continue reading
Despite the rain, the DC Eat Local festival event was a great ending to the week’s events. Every type of organization or business involved in the local foods movement was represented: restaurants, local farms, food hubs, businesses, food producers, wineries, and more. Here’s a gallery of photos:
Now’s your chance to get together with other DC area locavores and local food activists and celebrate all that is fresh, delicious and sustainable about the local foods movement! Eat Local First is a local food campaign that begins with a week-long celebration of local food in the Washington DC area. Continue reading
Today I went on a farm tour at Grassential Farm in Potomac, MD. Just a few miles outside the beltway and surrounded by McMansions, this ten-acre farm is incredibly productive with cows, pigs, goats, lamb, ducks, chickens and rabbits. The owner, Matt Rales is a three-year veteran of Polyface, and he’s using all their innovative techniques to get the most out of his land while putting the most back into his land. He’s incredibly knowledgable about soil replenishment and doesn’t mind explaining how his cows eat 1/3 of the grass they graze on and trample 2/3 back into the earth to enrich the soil mixing it with their manure and making it better than before. He prefers the terms restorative and regenerative farming rather than sustainable farming, because sustaining is not enough… Continue reading
By Amanda
Growing up, I always was interested in animals and growing things. As I matured, I harbored an inner interest in being a farmer. But this was put away on a shelf, as all my perceptions of what a farmer was, how one did farming and how you could possibly get there. Continue reading
A Growing Season 