(Photo by Shir Feinstein-Feit)

It seems a long time since I wrote about seeding onions…and indeed, the past two months on the farm have been a bit of a blur. But we planted the onions over chol ha-moed pesach, with much fanfare and mixed emotions (I’ll explain), and so I felt it would be good to give you all an update. (If you missed the last post, I am the Farm Manager at Adamah, a Jewish farming fellowship program in Connecticut. The sadeh is our 3.5 acre field where we grow our vegetables.)

The sadeh looks beautiful. Right now there are beds of onions (cippolini, red, scallions, leeks, walla walla…), with their thin, oniony stalks the size of blades of grass standing pertly up from the soil; beds of beets, red and golden; and several beds of brassicas, the family of hearty green-purple vegetables that includes broccoli, cabbage, kale, collards and kohlrabi. Only a small percentage of the field has been planted, and the evenly spaced rows of green and red and purple are beautiful against a background of tilled brown earth. The field looks serene, and betrays nothing of the work it took to get it looking that way.

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j. Weekly, the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, features Hazon’s own Zelig Golden and Emily Freed in its cover story about young Jewish environmentalists.

Golden is an alumni of the Adamah program and serving as co-chair for Hazon’s Food Conference in 2008. (According to the article, he also makes a mean pickle martini — okay, I confess, I was the one who told that to the reporter, after Zelig made me one at my birthday Shabbos dinner earlier this year). Freed (whom, the article says, had her first candy bar at the age of 12!) is on the executive committee of the 2008 food conference, working to obtain food from local farms. And Jon Rosenfield, who is also featured in the article, will no doubt be at the Food Conference, we just don’t know what he’ll be doing yet.

You can read the full article here.

But at Adamah, and likely all across the Northeast, we’re quietly starting up the season.

(Baby kale plants, Adamah, Summer 2007; photo by Jackie Topol)

Farm time is a quite remarkable way to think about the year. Here I was yesterday with Megan Jensen, our Greenhouse Manager, in a sunny, 75-degree greenhouse (we do use oil heat to warm the benches, but when the sun is out, it really heats up), holding a packet of scallion seeds. In front of me was a tray with 200 little square cells. We’d filled the tray about 3/4 full of soil, packed it down a bit, and then the idea was to drop ten of those little baby seeds in each hole. (When you buy a “bunch” of scallions, in fact, you’re buying ten little plants that were seeded and planted and harvested together.) And to look at the tiny seeds, and the tiny soil blocks, and think of all the scallion omelettes, diced scallions in salad, garnishes and other delightful uses of these tasty alliums was kind of a trip, because the warm summer months of harvest time seem so far away.

Adamah is a program for Jewish 20-somethings to live in community, learn about sustainability and environmental issues, and grow food. This year, we’ll be growing food for the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center; for our line of pickled products, which includes half-sour pickles, dilly beans, pickled beets, sourkraut and kim chi; and for a Tuv Ha’Aretz CSA in White Plains, New York. The long term planning that we’ve done ahead of the season has been really exciting.
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The Potrero Hill Community Center in San Francisco is still ringing with the laughter, song, and meditative silence of 160 young adults who came together from across the Bay Area last night in an unprecedented Tu B’shvat gathering. It was really a blast!

We packed into the Community beyond its capacity (the event beyond sold-out), we drank wine from the four worlds (local, organic, kosher wine from Santa Cruz, CA) and we ate a bounty of fruits from the four directions (literally from all around the world). Even in this room packed wall to wall with tables and chairs, Josh Miller who co-lead the Seder, got everyone on their feet dancing to Tzadik Katimar.

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The personal responses to last Friday’s goat schecting were varied and intense. Thanks to Joti Levy for sharing her reflections in this guest post.

Friday morning I woke at my regular 6 am. The difference was that everyone else in the house also woke up, and more people were gathering. It felt like the cozy feeling of going on a road trip with people you love, except the road trip was down the block to the sadeh (field) to slaughter the goats.

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Multiple people have raised the idea that schecting goats, as Hazon plans to at the Food Conference next week, doesn’t really expose participants to the true horrors of conventional animal slaughter. What would really be effective, they say, is to show a film that conveys the brutality of factory farming.

They have a point - the way in which the Food Conference schecting will happen is not by any means a mainstream practice. But that’s exactly the reason why we’re doing it and also why showing a film just isn’t enough.

Factory farms are one of the worst and most infuriating things I can think of, and they’re a huge part of the reason I’m a vegetarian.  And Hazon has no intention of hiding the realities of the conventional meat industry during the Food Conference.  Quite on the contrary, in fact.

But there are people - including a growing number of people in the Jewish community - who are seeking out the ethics and practices of responsible and ethical meat eating.  They are certainly not mainstream, at least not yet.  But to say that the work they’re doing is not part of the “real world” denies them the potential to - God willing - influence the larger Jewish community to eat less meat and to eat it with more kavvanah (intention) and respect. 

Perhaps its time to move beyond our outrage towards factory farms and start ”being the change” we want to see in the Jewish community - or at very least, supporting the people who are.

Below the jump, Adamah Program Director, Shamu Sadeh, talks about the realities of “Animals, Life and Death on the Farm.”

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On the eve of Thanksgiving, The Jewish Daily Forward (which just this week ran the controversial “Kosher Food Safety Alert” ad) published an article I’m truly grateful for: Kosher Activists Strive To Slaughter With a Conscience. Below is the article in full, which gives shoutouts to Hazon, The Jew & The Carrot, Kosher Conscience, and Heeb n’ Vegan and - more importantly - is one more, very public indicator that the demand for ethical, kosher products is on the rise.

Kosher Activists Strive To Slaughter With a Conscience
Nathaniel Popper
November 21, 2007
The Jewish Daily Forward

After 18 months of planning, New York’s new kosher meat cooperative slaughtered its first animals this week, just in time for Thanksgiving.

It took the founder of Kosher Conscience, Simon Feil, many months to find a shochet, or Jewish ritual slaughterer, who could do the job, and then Feil needed to find a flock of free-range heirloom breed turkeys. But he was not content to deal only with the logistics. When the first turkey went under the knife, Feil was there to cradle it in his arms — feeling the “solemn experience,” as he put it, of life leaving a body.

“It was an emotional day, and I’m still trying to process all the reactions I had to it,” Feil said a few hours after the first turkeys were slaughtered. “You really watch something that is a living creature turn into meat.”

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Margaret Hathaway’s new book, The Year of the Goat, tells the story of the 40,000 miles she and her partner (now husband), Karl Schatz, traveled in search of the perfect goat cheese - and a new way of life.

Before embarking on their year-long journey, Hathaway was a freelance writer who managed Magnolia Bakery in New York City, and Schatz worked as a photo editor for Time Magazine’s website. Together, they lived in Brooklyn, shopped at the Greenmarkets, and generally enjoyed city life - but they craved something more than the five boroughs could offer. So, they set off on a year-long journey to discover if farming - and particularly working with goats - held the secrets of the next chapter of their lives.

Along the way, Hathaway and Schatz met what they call, a “vivid cast of characters,” including a myriad of goat cheese and meat enthusiasts, a Texas-born Muslim living in Maine and helping the local Somali community in Lewiston acquire fitting goats for their religious festivals, and a Messianic Jew who keeps Shabbat as well as a herd of goats.

I spoke with Margaret and Karl last week about goats (naturally), their adventures in homesteading, the connection between farming and Jewish tradition, and their upcoming event in NYC, the Goatstravaganza (Nov. 8).

Interview continues below the jump…

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Read “Planning the schecting at the Food Conference - part 1″ here.

Having laid all the burecratic ground work for the shechting, I now needed to actually get my hands on a goat! I didn’t know it, but Hazon was planning to use a goat belonging to ADVA Dairy, run by Aitan Mizrahi, who lives and works at Isabella with the Adamah program. I touched base with Aitan, who told me he has some goats that could be slaughtered, but he was planning on slaughtering them in October. He was fine waiting until December, as long as Hazon covered the extra food the critter would need for those 2 months. Seemed more than fair. We would need a few goats, partly to feed all the people at the Conference at least a taste of goat, but more importantly because there was no guarantee that every goat would be kosher.

Despite everything being done properly, after an animal is shechted, it’s lungs are inspected for sirchot, adhesions, which can render the animal unkosher. In order to try and ensure we’d have at least one usable animal, we arranged to shecht 3.  Our friend at the OU told me we’d have an excellent chance of most if not all being kosher due to their young age. Apparently, animals over a year old are more likely to develop these lung blemishes and the younger they are, the less likely we’d find a disqualifying sircha. Since these goats will be all of 8 months old, much younger than the market usually deals with, we could be confident that we’d have meat to eat.

Animals, check.

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Walking down the streets of Brooklyn, you will inevitably run into some cobwebs - not the kind actually made by spiders (that’s asking a little much for our concrete jungle).  Instead, you’ll find manufactured, cotton candy-like cobwebs that people drape on their bushes and pile on their stoops (along with winking pumpkins and smirking cardboard witches) for Halloween.  Before too long, those pumpkins will be replaced by plastic Santas and reindeer dotted with little, white lights.

What does all this have to do with The Jew & The Carrot?  It means the holidays (the “high” version) are over and the holiday (Chanukah) is not that far away.  Don’t stress - Chanukah isn’t about gifts anyway -  it’s about the lights and miracles and delicious fried foods.  But, if you’re looking for 1. a great gift 2. that will benefit a great cause 3. and help you stay on track with all the Jewish holidays, look no further.

The Jewish Farm School has created an absolutely gorgeous 5768-5769 Jewish Farms Calendar that pairs food and farm photography with a 16-month (Sept 07-Dec 08)  calendar.

The Jewish Farms Calendar features:
• All Jewish holidays
• Intimate photographs of freshly harvested produce and livestock that Jewish hands helped to cultivate (see attached preview)
• Dates for special Jewish food events (e.g. The Hazon Food Conference)
• Jewish/agricultural quotations
• 100% post-consumer recycled paper

How to purchase the calendar
The calendar is $18 dollars ($14 if you purchase 10 or more) and proceeds benefit the educational programs of the Jewish Farm School and Hazon.  Each purchased calendar makes a huge difference!  To purchase a calendar, email Robert Friedman or visit The Jewish Farm School’s website. 
 
 

Adamah fellow, Jackie Topol, put together a beautiful photo collage of her summer living with other young, Jewish farmers and working in sadeh (field) at The Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center.  More photos and Jackie’s reflections below the jump.

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I just came home for Rosh Hashanah to be with my family at my parents’ home for the first time since I started Adamah last May. I expected to miss baskets filled with seasonal, local produce; I anticipated longing for the cultural values of so many people at Adamah. Usually my family does pretty well on the organic front, but hardly any of the produce in the house at any given time is local or fresh. It’s usually organic from California or Central America (the avocados). I was pleasantly surprised.

There is squash and zucchini aplenty on my mother’s kitchen counter. In fact, there is a small garden outside my house that supplies peppers and tomatoes, and all the other produce in the house is from a Morristown, New Jersey farmers market. Somehow, my experience with Hazon and Adamah had an impressive influence on my parents. From visiting the field at Isabella Freedman, talking to me over the course of a few months, sponsoring me in the New York ride and attending the New York ride celebration at the JCC, my mother and father literally took many of the messages home with them along with their delicious lacto-fermented Adamah pickles. Read more »

Bonjour from Paris!! I have spent the last three days biking in France — the first of a seven-week vagabonderie in Europe. (The transition from Adamah to traveling was very quick: a week ago I was eating just-picked cucumbers and harvesting round 57 of our beloved & prolific green beans. I expect that this trip will give me space to think about everything that happened this summer, & fully intend one or two posts on the subject. But for now, though I’m still in my Carharts, I’m in Paris on a rented bicycle and it’s a few hours before Rosh Hashanah.)

One thing I will say about the summer, as it relates to me now in France, is that I’ve never FELT more Jewish my entire life than I did at Adamah. I’ve always been more or less connected and involved with Jewish people and events, but this summer for the first time I developped a Jewish practice that I really connected to, involving food brachot, morning prayer & Shabbat. It was easy this summer, living as I was with all Jews (& all Jews who mostly wanted to practice as I did). But now I’m here, & the holiday is starting soon, & I’m trying to decide how I can still “feel Jewish” while travelling with my non-Jewish friends & staying at a hostel in Pigalle!

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As Hazon’s New York Ride approaches, everyone here at Adamah is excited. For one, we’ve been training for the Ride and it so happens that our program culminates with the awesome shabbaton followed by the Ride itself. That means Anna’s in the kitchen baking bread to help us load up on carbs this week and we’re all making pancakes with goat’s milk every morning. We’re also doing last minute maintenance and repairs on our bikes and scrounging around for extra bike shorts. In two days we look forward to welcoming hundreds of riders to our community and showing off our three months of work. Can’t wait for you all to get here.

Isabella Freedman is also gearing up for the 400+ people who will help make the New York ride the largest retreat to be held at the center. We’ve stocked up on new items, such as silverware, plates, wine glasses, as well as new pots and pans. In order for these items to be used in our kosher kitchen, we need to do a whole lot of toiveling. Toiveling is the practice of dipping kitchen accessories in a mikveh (ritual bath) to purify them and make them kosher before permanent cooking use. Read more »