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How to Make Fresh Fruit Soda
David Yudkin of Hotlips Soda demonstrates how to make seasonal fruit soda using watermelon and fresh berries. For the recipe, please visit Cooking Up a Story.
Growing Fresh Berries for the Farmers Market
In this episode on Food.Farmer.Earth’s YouTube channel, we visit Unger Farms during the heart of berry season. Kathy Unger tells us, if not for the farmer’s market, they would have lost their farm. Today, in the peak of season, they sell at 17 farmers markets each week.
The Albion Strawberry, Everbearing June Through October
Kathy Unger talks about her Albion strawberries, and their amazing longevity for producing fruit over a much longer harvest period. Their flavor is perhaps second only to the (unbelievably great) Hood River variety in the region.
Next Week: Milk
- Tuesday: Tressa Yellig of Salt, Fire, & Time, who shows us how to make traditional yogurt, and also greek yogurt. It’s much easier than you might think!
- Wednesday: Garry Hansen of Lady Lane Farm, who has been raising jersey cows all his life. It’s what he loves to do. But as milk prices continued to decline, he decided he had to take a risk and start his own creamery, or face the possibility of losing his “girls.”
- Thursday: Garry Hansen contrasts the different pasteurization processes, including the homogenization process that is standard in the dairy industry, and how he processes his milk differently.
The Weekly Roundup
- Family wins fight to keep front-yard garden (St. Louis Post-Tribune)
- Do students eat like prisoners? (Infographic from Good)
- Fraud at the Farmer’s Market: Not common, but it does happen (Connecticut Mirror)
- Preserving fruit and vegetables without canning (The Kitchn)
- Small farmers struggle as drought kills vegetables (Pioneer Press)
- Want kids to be more involved at your Farmer’s Market? Start a POP Club (Oregon City Farmers Market) Kids sign up, get $2 in wooden tokens per week and their own reusable bag and take part in education activities like seed planting.
- Struggling in the drought, organic farmers plead for help (Sun-Times)
- Weeds? If you can’t beat them, eat them (Daily Mail)
- Kids and factory farming: Tell them the truth (Spoonfed) A thoughtful essay on what vegetarian and omnivore kids can/should know, plus resources for both groups.
- How to dry tomatoes (Jonathan Wallace) DIY video.
- Spud bank stores the world’s varieties (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) Five-thousand seed varieties stored in greenhouses and warehouse in Wisconsin.
- Snacktivism: Making sure camp, school and daycare aren’t feeding your kids junk (Real Mom Nutrition) Real-life experience and advice.
- Making fresh strawberry jam (Cooking Up a Story) How-to video and recipe.
- Homemade fruit fly trap 101 (Homegrown) Easy, effective way to clear your kitchen.
- Ten kinds of delicious ice cubes (EcoSalon) Flowers, chocolate, wheat grass, lemon, ginger, mint, coffee, herbs, coconut water, fruit, wine, milk. All frozen.
- Food Inc’s Carol Morison is free as a bird (FixFood) A poultry farmer who was clearly miserable in Food Inc has taken a break from farming and is now back tending to a flock of happy, free-range chickens and marveling at how they eat bugs.