Illustration donated by Brenda Drew Designs, www.brendadrewdesigns.com

The Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) New Hampshire Herbal Network (NHHN) 1st Annual Spring Herb and Garden Conference will be held on Saturday, May 22, 2010, at Pine Hill Waldorf School in Wilton, NH.

The conference, entitled Beautiful Earth, “will feature some of New Hampshire’s top herbalists, gardeners, farmers, retailers, crafters, artisans and trades people who support organic growing methods, ecologically friendly products, local food, sustainable agriculture, natural medicine, and community awareness.”

Check out the NOFA–NHHN link for details!

It’s less than 2 months until the the first Seacoast Growers Association summer farmers’ market opens in Portsmouth, and the winter farmers’ markets in Newburyport, MA, and Northwood, NH, have finished for the season. But thanks to the efforts of local consumers, craftspeople, food producers—bakers, beekeepers, farmers, ranchers, vintners, and more—and the fabulous local organizations that bring us all together, we in the Seacoast region of New Hampshire are fortunate to have several more winter markets to get us there.

Final Winter Markets

Come check out what the vendors have to offer at the last indoor markets of the season.

• March 13 - Seacoast Eat Local Exeter Winter Farmers’ Market at Exeter High School, 1 Blue Hawk Drive, Exeter (GPS users, please use 315 Epping Road)
• March 20 - Rye Farmers’ Market - 10 am to 2 pm at Rye Junior High (note new location!), 501 Washington Road, Rye
• March 20 - Newmarket Farmers’ Market - 9 am to 1 pm at the Stone Church, 5 Granite Street, Newmarket
• March 27 - Seacoast Eat Local Rollinsford Winter Farmers’ Market at Wentworth Greenhouses, 141 Rollins Rd., Rollinsford
• April 10 - Seacoast Eat Local Exeter Winter Farmers’ Market at Exeter High School, 1 Blue Hawk Drive, Exeter (GPS users, please use 315 Epping Road)

Spring Markets

• April 17 -Newmarket Farmers’ Market - 9 am to 1 pm at the Stone Church, 5 Granite Street, Newmarket
• April 24 - Farmer’s Market at Heron’s Pond Farm, 299 Main Ave, South Hampton

Summer Markets Opening Soon!

The first summer farmers’ markets of the season usually feature early spring greens and locally grown plants to decorate your flower beds, create a vegetable garden, and add color to your life after a long winter. Other food and nonfood products will be available, too. Come see what they have to offer.

• May 1 - Portsmouth Farmers’ Market, Saturdays, 8 am–1  pm, 1 Junkins Ave., Portsmouth
• May 2 - Newburyport Farmers’ Market, Sundays, 9 am–1 pm, Tannery Marketplace, Newburyport, Mass.
• May 6 - Exeter Farmers’ Market, Thursdays, 2:30–6 pm, Swazey Parkway, Exeter
• May 15 - Newmarket Plant Sale & Farmers’ Market - 9 am to 1 pm, 5 Granite Street (Stone Church), Newmarket
• May 22 - Newmarket Plant Sale & Farmers’ Market - 9 am to 1 pm, 5 Granite Street (Stone Church), Newmarket
• May 27 - Northwood Farmers’ Market, Thursdays, 3–6:30 pm, Junction of Route 4 & Route 202A & 43, Northwood
• June 7 - Durham Farmers’ Market, Mondays, 2:15–5:30 pm, Pettee Brook Lane (Pettee Brook parking lot), Durham
• June 8 - Hampton Farmers’ Market, Tuesdays, 3–6 pm, 289 Lafayette Rd/Route 1 (Sacred Heart Church parking lot), Hampton, NH
• June 9 - Dover Farmers’ Market, Wednesdays, 2:15–6:00 pm, corner of Central Ave. and Sixth St. (parking lot of the new Dover Chamber of Commerce), Dover
• June 26 - Wentworth Greenhouses Farmers’ Market, Saturdays, 10 am–2 pm, 141 Rollins Road, Rollinsford (parking lot)

For More Information

Want to know which vendors are scheduled to be at the market, check a venue address, or get directions? Go straight to the source!

• Newburyport Farmers’ Market
• Newmarket Farmers’ Markets at Stone Church
• Northwood Farmers’ Market
• Seacoast Eat Local Winter Farmers’ Markets
• Wentworth Greenhouses Farmers’ Markets (Rollinsford)
• Rye Farmers’ Markets
• Seacoast Growers Association (Dover, Durham, Exeter, Hampton, and Portsmouth)

Follow Slow Food Seacoast on Twitter

Forwarded from Food for Maine’s Future, whose mission is “to help build a just, secure, sustainable, and democratic food system to the benefit of all Maine farmers, communities, and the environment”:

5th Annual Local & Sustainable Food Conference: Building Urban/Rural Alliances
April 10 & 11, St Mary’s Nutrition Center, Lewiston, Maine

Presented by Food for Maine’s Future, Lots to Gardens, Healthy Oxford Hills, Lewiston Public Library, and WERU

JOIN US FOR FOOD, FUN, ENGAGING DISCUSSION, MUSIC, & SHARING SKILLS

Register Today!

Registration is now open for the 5th Annual Local and Sustainable Foods Conference: Building Urban/Rural Alliances and Mud Season Dinner taking place in Lewiston April 10 & 11. This year’s conference will explore key issues facing Mainers working for positive change in local and regional foodsheds. Through discussion and facilitated planning sessions conference participants will help create a set of Action Plans to guide our growing movement towards an equitable food system with justice and dignity for all. Conference tracks include:

RURAL FOOD FOR RURAL PEOPLE
What are the principal barriers to rural Mainers’ feeding their own communities a diverse diet? How do we help rural producers sell locally first?

CULTIVATING MAINE’S FUTURE FOOD LEADERS
Creating a sustainable food system involves investing in our youth. How can youth and adults work together to better the food system? What role does farm-to-school and school gardens play in this? How do youth get a seat at the table for decisions that affect them?

WE CAN GET THERE FROM HERE: GRASSROOTS FOOD DISTRIBUTION
Maine has a number of successful grassroots models for getting food from farm or sea to our plates. How do we support and expand what is working? How do we create what is needed?

GROWING FOOD EVERYWHERE: THE HOME ECONOMY & FOOD SECURITY
What support and resources exist for homesteaders, subsistence farmers and fisherman, community gardeners? How can we help each other build a food economy based on bread labor, interdependence, and self-reliance?

Don’t want to sit in meetings all day? Take part in one of eight Skill Shares:

Seed Saving - Will Bonsall, Scatterseed Project
Sheet Mulching & Permaculture Principles - Jesse Watson, Mid-Coast Permaculture
Making Kombucha - Gail Wartell, Winter Cache Project
Starting a Community Garden - Shelby Childs, Stone Soup Garden
Raising Backyard Poultry
Starting a School Garden
Starting a Buying Club
Season Extension

or take a self-guided tour of Lots to Gardens‘ community gardens!

End the day with our Mud Season Dinner, a (nearly) all-Maine meal & a enjoy vaudeville revival with over a cardboard sea!

One day not enough? Join us on Sunday for a round table discussion:

Whose Rules? Balancing Food Safety, Food Traditions & Food Policy
Opening remarks by Mark Silber, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, USM
10:00am - 2:00pm St. Mary’s Nutrition Center, Lewiston
**Please note: Registration for this round table is limited. Please contact Bob St. Peter to register. There is no charge for the event and lunch will be available for a small donation.

Registration for the Saturday, April 10 conference is $15-50 sliding scale, suggested donation is $25. Members of Food for Maine’s Future receive free admission to Saturday’s conference. Sign up today!

Mud Season Dinner is $15-150 sliding scale, suggested donation is $20. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Registration for Saturday, April 10 conference and Mud Season Dinner is required and space is limited.

Register Today!

An interview with Gary Paul Nabhan (text, interspersed with short videos) from Indiana Public Radio’s EarthEats contains many great definitions for terms that mean a lot to people who care about good, clean, fair food: GMOs, monoculture, “local eating”, and heirloom seeds. This particular video is about Slow Food and eating locally; read the entire interview and see other videos at Questions for Gary Paul Nabhan “Father of the Local Food Movement”.

(Nabhan has been called a “bio-terroir”-ist. Love that!)

Here’s a new idea:

• What if wannabe gardeners could find an open community garden plot, or folks with an extra acre could find community gardeners to transform their land?
• What if community gardens and gardeners could share their needs and solutions and learn from each other—even get to know each other?
• What if start-up community gardens could find everything they needed—sample documents, supplies, information and real live people with experience—in one place?
• What if we could build an interactive community that would support the growth and uniqueness of our community garden movement right here on the Seacoast?

This is the idea behind the Seacoast Community Garden Network—an open-to-all website that will be launching this spring, funded by the New England Grassroots Environment Foundation. Networks are popping up all over as people seek better ways to communicate with each other, but the Seacoast Community Garden is the first of its kind here. At a recent meeting, the ideas were coming fast and furious for how to build the Seacoast Community Garden Network (SCGN). It’s being designed now and should see the spring sunshine just in time for gardening season!

SCGN is still in the planning stages. If you’d like more information or want to become involved, please contact Jenny Isler to be put on the mailing list.

From Roger Doiron of Slow Food Portland and Kitchen Gardeners International comes this update and opportunity to say thanks. Take a look at the White House Garden video featuring Michelle Obama and White House chef Sam Kass. Roger says:

By the way, I’m going to visit the garden next week along with some of the other FAS fellows and will be bringing the 110,000+ petition signatures and thank yous we collected in the course of our 14-month “Eat the View” campaign.  I’m going to print them on recycled paper and ask that Chef Sam Kass toss them onto the “First Compost Pile” so that we can literally become part of the garden we helped plant.  There’s no guarantee he’ll do it, but I’m hoping the symbolism will be too much for him to refuse.

We’ve kept our White House garden petition open on Facebook causes for people who might have missed it during the campaign but still want to show their thanks:
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/petitions/43

For the non-Facebook crowd, we have another thank you form set up here:
http://www.kitchengardeners.org/2009/08/white_house_here_we_come.html

Best wishes,
Roger

UNH Cooperative Extension announces a meeting and workshop on growing small fruit (blueberries/raspberries) and vegetable on Thursday, August 20, 2009 form 5:15 pm till 7:30 PM.

The event will be hosted by Ron and Lois Laurence, Blueberry Bay Farm at 38 Depot Road, Stratham, NH

Topics are:
- Integrated Pest Management
- Transitioning to Organic farming
- Cultural practices
- Update on insects, diseases on blueberries, raspberries and mixed vegetables
- Organic, natural pesticides and alternatives
- Biological control
- Bird and netting control

Sponsored by:
UNH Cooperative Extension, Rockingham County, Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA-NH), NH Department of Agriculture, Markets & Food and Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Speakers from UNH Cooperative Extension are: Alan Eaton, Entomology and Integrated Pest Management Specialist, Becky Grube, Sustainable Horticulture Specialist, Cheryl Smith, Plant Health Specialist, Nada Haddad Agriculture Extension Educator and Janis Connor, Agriculture Inspector with the NH Department of Agriculture, Markets & Food

The meeting  was approved for 2 (two) pesticide re-certification credits (Private and Commercial)

The twilight meeting is open to all and there is no cost to attend; registration not required. Rain or shine
For more information call UNH Cooperative Extension: Deb Stevens or Nada Haddad @ 679-5616 or visit www.extension.unh.edu Persons requiring specialaccommodations should call two weeks prior to the event so that proper consideration can be given to the request.

***     ***      ***      ***      ***      ***      ***      ***
Nada Haddad
Extension Educator, Agricultural Resources
University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension       Rockingham County
113 North Road
Brentwood, NH 03833-6623

Phone: (603) 679-5616
Fax: (603) 679-8070
e-mail: Nada.Haddad@unh.edu
***     ***      ***      ***      ***      ***      ***      ***

Portsmouth Public Library invites all backyard gardeners to their summer series of events on five Thursday evenings in July and August. Learn about garden restoration, herbal gardens, composting and the benefits of attracting honey bees to your garden. Plus enjoy a special movie night featuring music by Yo Yo Ma.

• July 9 – Restoring an Eighteenth Century Garden
• July 16 - The Herbalist’s Garden
• July 23 - Composting and Rain Gardens of Portsmouth
• July 30 - Honeybees in Your Garden: Keeping or Attracting These Premier Pollinators
• August 6 - Special Movie Night with music by Yo Yo Ma

Click here for more details.

If you’re a gardener, chances are you will have some extra produce this summer—or might even be willing to plant a little extra. Those efforts could go a long way to helping feed folks for whom food is scarce—and this year, there is even more need than usual. The recession means that more families are experiencing food shortages, and food banks and assistance agencies are finding their resources are also required to stretch further and further.

Though lots of people know how to grow fresh food and are willing to share, in the past, it’s been hard to figure out how to get that food to people who need it. Most of us thought that food pantries could not accept fresh food. As it turns out, that isn’t always true! Many pantries  do take fresh veggies and other perishable items. And thanks to a new initiative called the Giving Gardens Network, it’s easier than ever to find them.

A volunteer-driven cooperative campaign set up with the help of several partner organizations,  the Giving Gardens Network is described as “a network of home gardeners, farmers and organizations that are working to encourage and support the donation of fresh food, grown locally in New Hampshire, to food pantries and shelters. By planning to raise a little extra … by growing the foods that are most needed … and by donating to locations that can accept fresh foods…we can help reduce hunger in New Hampshire.”

Using the Giving Gardens Network website, you can plan, grow, and donate your food to any one of the Seacoast food pantries that accept fresh food. And you can also keep track of statewide efforts to help feed the hungry using food grown right here at home.

Now that’s helping your neighbor.

At RiverRun Bookstore on Monday, May 18 at 7 pm: a free workshop on New Ideas for Preserving Nature: Useful Tips for NH Landowners, Gardeners, and Landscapers

With rural areas fast disappearing in the Northeast, it seems the only way to preserve our identity as a place where people, plants, and animals can share the land is to integrate the landscapes around our homes, communities, and work spaces with the natural world. What does that mean and how do you do it?

And what about landscaping’s far-reaching effects on water quality? No matter where you live in New Hampshire, the actions you take make a difference. Why? Because we all live in a watershed, where water drains into a lake, river, wetland, or coastal estuary. How do we protect that natural resource?

Take some time to “sit at the feet” of experts who will share what they’ve learned—and taught—over many years. Mary Tebo, a community forestry educator, and Lauren Chase-Rowell, a landscape design expert, will present information from two books they’ve co-authored with other experts: Landscaping at the Water’s Edge: An Ecological Approach and Integrated Landscaping: Following Nature’s Lead, both published by the UNH Cooperative Extension.

You will learn

• How to establish landscapes that look and feel as if they belong
• To integrate natural principles into beautifu, functional landscapes
• To create landscapes that sustain themselves with minimum cost, energy, and effort.
• To think in terms of plant systems, rather than mere collections of individual plants.
• How to use and apply plant-system models designed for challenging conditions
• Where to find alternatives to invasive species.
• How to create landscapes that benefit wildlife, both above and below ground.

RiverRun Bookstore is located at 20 Congress Street in downtown Portsmouth. For more information on the event, visit www.riverrunbookstore.com or call (603) 431-2100. The event is free and open to the public.