Move over ComiCon, here comes AgriCon
Eggs are having a moment. “You paid what for a dozen?” But for Christine Hutchinson of Newburgh, NY, a veteran teacher and self-described tinkerer, an egg lies at the core of her journey into growing the next generation of young farmers.
Backyard Food Growers Celebrated at Eighth Annual Kitchen Garden Tour
Over 100 turned out for Dirt magazine’s 2022 Kitchen Garden Tour on Sunday, July 31. Equipped with a guide of 14 local backyard food gardens, they spent the day hopping from one veggie patch to the next, chatting with gardeners, and even sampling some of the produce along the way.
Porch Priestess
Drumming. Joyous voices. The rhythm of dancing feet.
Early last year, Hudson native Nkoula (pronounced Koola) Badila was walking near the ferry terminal in the vibrant port town of Zanzibar, Tanzania, when the sounds of performance troupe Zan Ubuntu reached her ears. Coming from a family of performers herself, she couldn’t help but be drawn toward the music.
This Is What Food Justice Looks Like
A warm, earthy smell drifted in from the snow-covered fields as I pulled up to Freedom Farm – how welcome in the doldrums of winter. The herd of dairy cows at nearby Freedom Hill Farm, which graze these pastures in the summer, had recently returned the gift in the form of fresh manure, newly laid on the beds in preparation for the forthcoming planting season.
‘Like a Magnet’
Ana Isabel Rodriguez Angel recalls her favorite food memory: pumpkin blossoms with epazote zucchini. As she answers my questions in Spanish, I can hear Ana’s mind wandering back to her native Progreso, Mexico. Her daughter, Jennifer, hums along lovingly to her mother’s trip down memory lane.
The Honey Hustle
Scene: 1980s, an elementary school in Tarrytown, NY. In anticipation of parent-teacher day, a young James Pratt tells his teacher, “My dad is a beekeeper.” The proclamation, which couldn’t have been further from the truth, became a running joke among Pratt’s crew of friends anytime a jar of honey was around – until 2016, when Pratt decided to indulge his childhood imaginings and, yes, become a beekeeper himself. Mix in Pratt’s childhood friend, self-declared hustler Carlo Esannason, and a good dose of brotherly love, and you have Fly Honey Farms.
Keeping the Faith…in Farming
Growing up Muslim in 1980s Rockland County, NY, meant spending a lot of Saturdays in church basements. Nascent community that we were, we didn’t yet have a mosque to call our own. So the kids learned the stories of our holy book, the Qur’an, while the adults socialized and enjoyed their chai, all under the watchful eyes of Jesus and his sheep.
Mission: be a bridge person
To me, that’s one of the points of religion, is to understand the place of your ego. But you get out on that land, you sit there in the mud, and the sweat, and the sun and the rain and the wind and the snow, you know your place. You get your butt kicked, and you’re like, I am not the owner. I am the caretaker. This thing knows what it wants, and I have to respect that. To me, that’s one of the biggest lessons of being a fully submitted human being. A human being, I’m just going to say. A human being.
