Anna Stevenson
Anna Stevenson is the Farm Manager at Adamah: The Jewish Environmental Fellowship. Anna has worked with Hazon since 2004 on curriculum materials about Jews and Food, and was the NY Ride Coordinator from 2005-2006. She was the co-chair of the 2007 Hazon Food Conference. Anna has a BA in Bible Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a BA in Urban Studies from Barnard College ('04). She loves to bake bread, ride bikes, and grow vegetables. She grew up in Vancouver, BC.
Zucchini Flowers are Sexy
And how! The rows of zucchini, with their bright orange star flowers poking out here and there are one of the most beautiful sights in our field. Zucchini plants reproduce sexually – that is, they have both male and female flowers on the same plant. Sperm from the male flower is carried to the female flower by honey bees; the female flower is actually the ovary of the plant, and once the pollen is spread, the magic begins! The fruit actually grows in the place between the female flower and the stem – so you can see baby zucchinis that still have a wilting flower at one end as flower makes way for fruit.
1 Comment »Food Lamentations for Tisha B’Av
Today is Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the month of Av. At the peak of summer, in the middle of the week, all of a sudden we turn our thoughts to pain, hurt, loss, sorrow, emptiness.
I’m struck by this practice of bringing up the sorrow on a specific day, this holiday/Holy Day, recalling it on purpose, dredging history and the far corners of the world to remember all the ways we are and have been broken. We put a lot of energy into NOT feeling the sorrow most of the time. We change the channel, cover our ears, flip the page when bad news comes through and for good reason: there is so much tragedy in this world, we don’t know where it will end, and we can’t function if we are stuck in the brokenness.
Because when life is good, but the list of tragedies and terrible things in the world seems to never end, how do you hold joy and sorrow at the same time?
Where my Meat Comes From…
This is from Jeff Yoskowitz, one of the Adamah Fellows (see previous Adamah posts). We are blessed to live in a community that includes Jews, vegetables and animals — and we are learning that the cycles of life and death are sometimes surprising, always awe-inspiring.PLEASE NOTE: This post contains graphic description and images of animal slaughter.
Today one of Aitan’s goats died (Aitan is a part-staff member of Adamah who also has a pasture down the road). The kid was a female named D’vash, which means honey in Hebrew. Apparently she was eating out of the grain feeder and somehow had her head get caught on fencing and her neck snapped. Aitan and I suspect that one of the other kids playfully pushed her as happens a lot, and her poor positioning trapped her neck and led to her death.
Zucchini, part one of 37….
It’s that time of year – the zucchini time of year. Recall Forest Gump: Zucchini pancakes, zucchini tarts, fried zucchini, sautéed zucchini, baked zucchini, zucchini frittatas….
Thing is, after so much zucchini, it still sometimes seems that there aren’t enough things to do with it. I crave it all winter long, and then wham! four weeks of zucchini madness. I have a few zucchini posts coming up in the next few days, with some of my favorite zucchini recipes, and I’d love it if you’d share yours too! To start things off, though, a few thoughts about harvesting, and the exodus from Egypt.
Shefa!
It’s U-Pick time! This weekend I had the great pleasure of going berry-picking — blueberries and cherries — and I am feeling overwhelmed and in awe of the shefa, abundance, of the earth’s produce.
It’s true, I’m working on a farm this summer, and I have my fill abundance right here. We’re just starting to reap the most amazing gifts from the Sadeh: basil, tomatoes, cabbages, kale, collards, swiss chard, beets, daikons, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash — and today, for the first time, garlic!
And on Shabbat last week we had several dishes that were made mostly or entirely from food that we had grown, or made from our animal products. Tzatziki from our cucumbers, garlic scapes and yogurt we made from our goat milk (if anyone has any ideas for local replacements to lemon juice, let me know!) A zucchini-carrot caserole with eggs from our chickens, and our own squash and onions. My favorite creation is a garlic scape pesto: finely chopped garlic scapes, olive oil, kosher salt and red chili flakes makes a tasty sauce for just about anything.
But this didn’t keep me from going out this weekend to pursue even more of the season’s delights: FRUIT.
In praise of fermentation
Our Chief Pickler at Adamah, Josh Rosenstein, went on vacation for two weeks — just as the first succession of cucumbers was ripening and ready for harvest. I have stepped in to manage operations while he’s gone. What an unexpected and delightful realm of food learning this has opened up!
Many wisdom traditions teach that each person has within them all the tools they need to live their life. Bernie Glassman suggests in his Zen Buddhist “Instructions to the Cook” that each of us has all the necessary ingredients to cook the perfect meal. And Moses reassures us from Deuteronomy, “Lo ba-shamayim hi” — the truth of the Torah is not in heaven, some far off place which we cannot access; rather, it is right here in our midst. With pickles I am learning this simple and beautiful truth all over again.
Eco-Kosher Movement Aims To Heed Tradition, Conscience
A great article in the Washington Post today about eco-kashrut — including Tuv Ha’Aretz’s Devora Kimmelman-Block, Nigel Savage and a shout out about The Jew and the Carrot!
First she had to find an organic cattle farm near Washington. Then a shochet, a person trained in kosher slaughtering, who was willing to do a freelance job. Then a kosher butcher to carve the beef into various cuts and other families from her synagogue to share it.
All told, it took Devora Kimelman-Block of Silver Spring 10 months to obtain 450 pounds of meat that is local, grass-fed, organic and strictly kosher. Which is a lot of effort — and a lot of meat — for someone who keeps a kosher vegetarian household.
The article also suggests that the Tsedek Hekscher, under development by the Conservative movement to certify that food is not only kosher but meets criteria for worker health and safety, could be attractive to non-Jews as well as those Jews interested in keeping kosher. Or l’goyim (light to the nations), anyone?
Challah twist
So I got up at 5am yesterday — as has become my routine on Fridays — to bake a massive batch of challah with Julie, Freedman’s bread and cake baker extraordinaire. Challah for 100 people — the risen dough fills a bowl you could take a bath in!
Except this time — the dough didn’t rise. After three hours in the hot kitchen (proofing oven? who needs a proofing oven? the whole kitchen is like a giant proofing oven!) and no dough action, despair set in, a hasty trip to the store for more flour was made, and we started over.
But the dough was still tasty sweet egg bread dough, and I was loathe to throw it all out. So I saved some, and this morning I made cinnamon twists. Kind of a cross between breadsticks and cinnamon buns, this was a very sweet way to salvage the unrisen dough.
Here’s how: Read more »
Fast Tomatoes
By Jeff Yoskowitz, Adamah Fellow
Today is the 17th of Tammuz. It’s a Jewish fast day commemorating many calamities that befell the Jewish people and begins a three week period of mourning leading up to Tisha B’Av. Among other events, this day commemorates when Moses descended from Mt. Sinai with the tablets and found the Israelites worshiping the golden calf, when the priests in the First Temple Period ceased to make sacrifices due to the beginning of the siege on Jerusalem and when the Romans publicly burned the Torah and laid the groundwork for their siege on Jerusalem in 70 CE.
I spent this holy fast day in the hot sun working on the tomatoes. I’ve been made “the tomato guy” here at Adamah and have enjoyed my work suckering and stringing the many different varieties of tomatoes. “Suckering” is cutting off new growth points which direct energy away from the main stem. By removing them, the main stem retains most of the plant’s energy and its fruits grow much bigger. It also feels nice to give the plant a haircut. Stringing the tomatoes helps them to grow tall and strong.
Since the harvest is just beginning, for the past few days I’ve ended my work with a little treat from one of the few ripe tomatoes — usually a yellow tomato. Today was a bit different than usual, though…
Goat milk?
Abby with one of our goat kids
Every two weeks we have a different chore to do. This rotation, I’m milking goats.
We milk & feed our goats before breakfast –- it’s a mitzvah to take care of your animals before yourself in the morning. And it’s an odd kind of pressure, to wake up, especially on the weekend when I *could* sleep in if I wanted, knowing that there are two beautiful she-goats with full udders, who will be more and more uncomfortable every time I press snooze. We are grateful to our animals, and we appreciate eating their eggs and drinking their milk, and I think we appreciate it more because of the work involved in getting it.
Starter: for bread and conversation
This summer working on the farm at Adamah I’m learning that making things is extremely enjoyable. We are satisfied because it is our hands that have weeded the onions, our milking and washing the jars, and prepping the feed, that brings our milk to our table. No wonder God said “it was good” after every day of creation. God was making things! And having a damn good time.
I offer this as preamble to my latest most exciting project. And while it’s not strictly on the Adamah curriculum, this summer is the first time I’ve found myself to take it on in earnest: bread the ancient way, catching the living yeast in the air….SOURDOUGH!
Read more »
Growing food?
In honor of my parents, Edith & Richard Stevenson, on their 27th wedding anniversary today -– may the next 27+ be just as full of joy and adventure!
It’s the end of our fourth week here at Adamah. We’ve marked time with Shabbatot, a Rosh Chodesh, and yesterday, the summer solstice. And so, I’m stepping back to consider what it is I’m doing here, what it was I was hoping to learn, what in fact I have discovered.
The most important realization has come around what I am actually doing. I wanted to work on a farm this summer because after talking so much about CSA, farmer’s markets, eating locally, supporting organic agriculture, on and on about the benefits for health and community — I had never actually experienced what it was like to do the growing, the actual agriculture itself. I told everyone – I’m going to grow food all summer! I can’t wait!
Well, we’ve been busy dawn till dusk, doing and learning all kinds of things, but in four weeks I realized I’m not doing the one thing I came here for. I’m not growing food.
GMOs at the Teva Seminar: Tomatoes, anyone?
A few weeks ago, the Adamah fellows attended the Teva Environmental Education Seminar at Surprise Lake Camp — what an amazing day. Kudos to Teva for organizing such a great event. Here are some thoughts inspired by one of the sessions by Jackie Topol. Jackie is an artist who loves photographing nature (esp. produce from farmer’s markets) — check out her website: www.jackietopol.com. Hopefully we’ll get some of her photos up here soon ;-)
– Anna
As you may have gathered from Jeff & Anna, our schedule here at Adamah is exciting and filled to the brim. So — as much as I love working in the fields, the greenhouse, and the pasture — it was a nice change of pace to head to the Teva Seminar for a day of Jewish learning and environmental education. The first lecture I attended was about GMO foods and the Jewish response, led by Noam Dolgin. Genetically modified organisms are a major piece of the conversation around contemporary food issues. We talked about BT corn, square tomatoes, vegetables with fish genes, and other new and bizarre developments that are or will soon be growing on farms in the US.
Noam shared examples from the Torah and Rabbinic commentary that could be said to pertain to our current agricultural practices, including the question of GMO. A quote that I found particularly poignant was: “Look at My creations! See how beautiful and perfect they are… Make sure you do not spoil or destroy My world, for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you” [Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) Rabbah 7:13].
But, although the biblical excerpts really resonated with me, what has really been on my mind for the past two weeks is the square tomato.
CSA troubles? Not the ones you’d expect…
When I was home in Vancouver this spring I had the opportunity to write a piece for my friend’s awesome new newsweekly, Tooth and Dagger, about the state of CSAs in the Vancouver area. Fresh from NYC, where Just Food lists over 50 CSAs for the five boroughs, I was surprised that there were only a handful of CSAs in Vancouver — some of them barely getting started.
In talking about CSA I have a list of ready answers to the usual skepticism. But it seems the problem in Vancouver (and I wonder other cities?) is not price, consumer awareness, interest in organics, or availability of local farmland or distribution sites. Rather, we have an imitator species that has taken hold in the niche where CSA should be…
PS - more from Adamah soon!
