Scapes!

So, what are they? These curlicue stems are called “scapes.” They grow out of the center of the garlic bulb and have a very short season. They are cut before their flowers bloom in order to help the bulbs grow. Scapes need to be cut mid-June and all at once (hence, the short season!). At Marty’s Market, we get our scapes locally from Brenckle’s Farm & Greenhouse in Zelienople, PA.  Try making  garlic scape pesto , garlic scape hummus, white bean and garlic scape dip, or giving them a dash of olive oil, salt, and pepper, and throw them on the grill. To prolong their season, you could pickle them to enjoy all year! Hurry, before they’re all gone!

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In the first few months of Marty’s being open, I was restocking soaps and salves produced by Cherry Valley Organics, a local farm that produces USDA Certified Organic body products and herbal teas as a way to diversify their business and preserve their harvest.  (Read more…)  An out-of-town couple approached me and asked a few questions about Cherry Valley Organics products.  We got to talking about the importance of knowing what’s going on your body as well as in.  As the conversation seemed to be coming to a close, the couple started walking over to the register with two bottles of the salve, they turned and said,

You’re a informed young person.  (Now I’d like to think so, of course, and the fact that they thought this of me… Well, they were my new favorite people ever.)  Ha, yes, I think so, thanks,  I said.  Then, out of nowhere, I was fling into dangerous customer service territory.  They asked, What do you think about climate change?

Oh no, what did I think about it?  Well, probably enough to at least cause them to miss their plane back home.  And what if what I thought wasn’t what they thought… EEK!  What would they think of me?!  INSIDE PANIC.

So I rolled up my brain’s sleeves, so to say, took a deep breath, and prepared myself for whatever was about to happen (a metaphor for climate change?)  I told them that I believed it to be a real thing.  I told them that changing weather patterns, abrupt starts to spring, late freezes, drought, crazy rain and wind, all of this is hard on farmers.  I told them that most of us don’t exactly know how climate change impacts farmers but that I believe that whatever impacts farmers ultimately impacts us.  We share this country and we should share the responsibility.  (Yikes, had I said too much?  They weren’t darting for the door…)

And they agreed, but admitted that they were having some issues coming to terms with the changes they could see, right outside their front door, in their neighborhood and community.  They were religious, and it was a challenge for them.

All of the sudden, all of the anxiety of the conversation washed away.  I was touched that they were expressing all of this to me, someone they did not know and certainly had no reason to trust.  We understood each other; it was a random act of awesome human interaction and grace.

But, that’s just it, it was a random interaction with folks who are not farmers, just observant individuals.  Insert Butterfly Effect Theory: Say I had been stocking paper towels instead, perhaps the conversation would have gone a completely different way.  Indeed, it often does.  Both grist.org and the radio show, This American Life have touched on this recently: the need for farmers to adapt to changes seen on the ground (or in the fields) that  are attributed to a phenomenon that they may or may not believe in.

All of this is not to say that anyone is right or wrong.  There is no judgement here.  But what cannot be ignored are the words of US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s on the topic of climate change and the role of the USDA.  (See full transcript here.).  Vilsack made it very clear that he was “not here today to give a scientific lecture on climate change.”  Rather, he was “here to tell you what we’re seeing on the ground.”  Vilsack cited severe weather and storms, drought, wildfires, flooding, and an increase in invasive specie populations as some of the issues that farmers, and most of the nation’s population, are contending with.

But that’s the catch, while specific pockets of the country deal with climate change in the form of natural disasters (like the devastating recent tornados in Oklahoma), most people’s livelihoods are not dependent on the weather.  For farmers, it’s a whole different story.  It’s then appropriate to change our thinking.  Climate change is something we all contend with, and certainly will contend with at some point.  And people are taking notice.  Keeping our food system and farmland healthy and safe is what Vilsack called “a joint undertaking and a shared responsibility.”  In my humble opinion, I couldn’t agree more, and not just on the topic of climate change, but on other risk-related topics associated with agriculture.

Vilsack’s speech was a call to attention: “So the fact is, across America, farmers and ranchers and forest landowners are seeing the beginning chapter of what will be a long-term challenge posed by a changing climate.  This problem is not going to go away on its own.  That’s why America must take steps now to adapt.”

In Part Two, we’ll go deeper into those adaptions.  Stay tuned!

The post USDA: Accepting (Climate) Change, Part One appeared first on Marty's Market.

Fragrant Fennel

From Penn’s Corners Farm Alliance

• Gourmet Cut Lettuce
• Mizuna Microgreens
• Cluster Tomatoes
• Compari Tomatoes

From Clarion River Organics

• Gourmet Lettuce Mix
• Romaine Lettuce
• Green Kale
• Red and White Scallions
• Zucchini
• Baby Fennel
• Blue Potatoes

From Goose Creek Gardens

• Rosemary
• Chives
• Spearmint, Peppermint, & Pineapple Mint
• Lemon Thyme

From Brenckle’s Organic Farm and Greenhouse 

*Our newest farm partner*

• Garlic Scapes
• Green Leaf Lettuce
• Red Oakleaf Lettuce
• Rainbow Chard
• Kohlrabi

From Wilmington Gardens

• Tomato Seedlings
• Basil
• Zucchini

From our Blackberry Meadows Farm CSA

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  By participating in a CSA, we have made a commitment to this farm for their entire growing season, giving financial stability to the farm and providing us and our customers with amazing seasonal organic produce.

• Scallions
• Lettuce
• Broccoli Greens
• Beets
• Purple Kohlrabi
• Herbs

The post June 10th: Local Produce This Week! appeared first on Marty's Market.

1.  A substance with food value; specifically: the raw material of food before or after processing.
2.  A series of Marty’s Market blog posts in which we explore how food is always, and was always, more than just nourishment.

Every so often a new food makes major waves, often first in a niche market and then floods mainstream food retail outlets.  It’s celebrated for its health benefits, new unique taste, and (dare I say it?) magical properties.  And very few of us take the time to learn where this shiny new food comes from, what its backstory is.

You wouldn’t go on a blind date without googling your mystery person, yet we jump on bandwagons so easily.  Why?  Well, all of this new stuff is tasty, is unique, and who doesn’t want that?

Two new articles have come out about some of our biggest food trends: super-hydrating and hip coconut water and the faux-exotic and delicious Greek yogurt.

even this blogger can’t resist

What’s perhaps most interesting about these two separate articles, from different sources, is how they describe the issues (and benefits) of trendy foods as they relate to our food system as a whole.  Two very distinct products, yet they share some similarities (as indeed many foods do).  Their core ingredients come from farms (though very different farms in very different places), they must be processed, packaged, shipped, marketed and ultimately purchased and consumed.

Most foods, including coconut water and yogurt, have byproducts: waste material that comes from both the food itself and the processing needed to create the end product.  It is here where the stories diverge.

First, let’s talk Greek yogurt.  This recent post (Warning! Some adult language) from modernfarmer.com discusses the unfortunate byproduct of greek yogurt: acid whey.  The article discusses the detrimental effects of acid whey if released into the environment (aka dumped) and possible uses for it in agriculture.  But the root of the issue is the mix of a food skyrocketing in popularity while a new source of waste exponentially piles up.

Author Justin Elliott explains, “The root of the whey problem is the very process that gives Greek yogurt its high protein content and lush mouthfeel…Greek yogurt companies trying to keep up with exploding consumer demand in the last few years didn’t have a good plan to deal with the ocean of why they were producing.  Now they’re racing to find solutions, all the while keeping mum about the results, if there are any: the yogurt industry is highly secretive and competitive.”

On the other end of the spectrum is coconut water.  You’ve probably heard someone describing their love for coconut water in an ode-like fashion… My love is like a cold cold tetra pack.  It’s high in potassium, it’s bursting with electrolytes, it matches your yoga mat, but your hip, health-conscious friend probably didn’t explain how they love consuming a byproduct of a different coconut related industry to help cut down on global food waste.  Unless your friend was someone like TakePart author, Twilight Greenaway.

Greenaway’s article, “How Coconut Water Effects Farmers,” discusses just that, as well as, you guessed it, how this burgeoning industry is impacting the people who grow and harvest the coconuts.  Unlike Greek yogurt’s acid whey problem, coconut water (in a way) solves a waste problem.  Greenaway writes, “unlike other developing-world crops, the high demand for coconut water probably won’t result in a huge agricultural shift.  And that’s because – for years – the coconut water in the biggest coconut-producing nations has largely gone to waste.”

But that’s only part of the story, coconut farmers are not receiving fair wages for their work, like so many other farmers international and domestic.  As great as coconut water makes us feel, more fair trade options in the market will make us coconut water drinkers feel even better.

The post FoodStuff: Food Trends, Food Waste, and Fair Wages appeared first on Marty's Market.

Here at Marty’s Market, we strive to connect our customers to regional farms in an effort to provide you with the freshest and most sustainable foods available. So,  last week a few of Marty’s Market staff traded in the city life for some peace and quiet with a visit to Clarion River Organics’ (CRO) farms in Sligo, PA. As part of the cooperative’s “Chefs in the Field” open house, we were able to get a sneak peak of veggies in their early stages and learn more about the ten-farm operation. Nathan and Zeb, of CRO, were kind enough to show us around*, introduce us to some of the farmers, and answer our questions. We feel good about supplying produce and meat from CRO and want to share some photos with you!

While we’re amped for Spring and Summer fruits and veggies, we can’t help but remember our delicious squash last year. The anticipation is killing us for this year’s harvest. Here are fields of butternut squash being protected from the frost:

Peppers popping up from the ground! Hopefully these hooped wires will help prop up this year’s peppers. This cool-looking machine is used for seeding and transfering greenhouse plants.

Cabbage as far as the eye can see. Look for it in our produce section when it’s ready!

The romaine is ready to be picked! It’s delicious and available now in our produce section!

Hey ewe! These lambs are living the life in the shade.

Mmmmmm…kale! Need we say more? Find it in our produce section!

Pigs with plenty of dirt to play in!

Clarion River Organics isn’t just a cooperative of farms growing deliciously local food; it’s a community. We feel fortunate to be a part of it and excited to bring you food straight from the farm! You can find Clarion River Organics’ green kale, spinach, romaine, and russet and blue potatoes in our produce section!

*Transportation provided by a two-horse drawn hay ride!

The post A Day at Clarion River Organics appeared first on Marty's Market.

From Penn’s Corners Farm Alliance

• Compari Tomatoes
• Cluster Tomatoes
• Spring Onions
• Parsley
• Asparagus

From Clarion River Organics

• Green Kale
• Red Kale
• Collards
• Lacinato Kale
• Blue Potatoes
• Gourmet Salad Mix
• Green Oakleaf Lettuce

From Goose Creek Gardens

• Salanova Gourmet Lettuce Blend
• Spearmint
• Chives

From Brenckle’s Organic Farm and Greenhouse 

*Our newest farm partner*

• Spinach
• Kale
• Red Oakleaf Lettuce

The post June 3rd: Local Produce This Week! appeared first on Marty's Market.

From Wild Purveyors (storefront located at 5308 Butler St. in Lawrenceville)

• Saladette Hothouse Tomatoes
• Gold Potatoes
• Green Chard
• Young Sweet & Spicy Salad Mix
• Wildfire Lettuce Mix
• Red Leaf Lettuce
• White Button Mushrooms
• Portobello Mushrooms

From Penn’s Corners Farm Alliance

• Compari Tomatoes

From Clarion River Organics

• Kale
• Green Butterhead Lettuce
• Romaine
• Blue Potatoes

From Goose Creek Gardens

• Salanova Gourmet Lettuce Blend
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Spearmint
• Greek Oregano
• Dill
• Garlic Chives

From Mott Family Farm

• Rhubarb

From Who Cooks For You Farm

• Pea Shoots

Seedlings From Wilmington Gardens

• Black Eggplant
• Broccoli
• Zucchini
• Asian Eggplant
• Gold Beets
• Red Beets
• Yellow Bell Pepper
• Thai Basil

The post May 24th: Local Produce this Week! appeared first on Marty's Market.

Watch the video here.

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It can be difficult to appreciate this work, not because we don’t love our Moms (of all kinds), but because we often don’t understand or see this work, especially when it comes to food.

Take the sacred family dinner.  The family gathers around the table, they sit, they eat, talk, enjoy, and they appreciate the meal.  But the meal itself is only one aspect of the work that goes into The Family Dinner.  First, there’s planning: meal planning, ingredient inventory, taking into account the family’s schedule and likes and dislikes.  Second, there’s the actual act of buying the food: sometimes this includes budgeting, coupon-clipping, checking for sales or seasonality, planning the actual trip to the store (or multiple stores/farmers’ markets), and then purchasing, driving/bussing/walking home and unpacking.  Then, there’s the cooking, the cleaning, the set up and the break down.  But the work doesn’t end when the family sits, part of eating together is interaction and education: talking and learning about each other’s days, problem solving, and setting an example for etiquette, behavior, and a healthy relationship with both food and family.  Whew!

How much of this do we see?  Work in the home is by nature, private work.  Often completed when no one’s looking.  A meal arrives on the table and only when we’re tasked with performing this work ourselves later in life do we get a peek behind the veil.

In the scholarly world, under appreciated care work in the home was first referred to as “invisible work” by Arlene Kaplan Daniels in 1987.  She wrote about the cultural separation of work and the home space, where the day to day actions to care for and feed a family aren’t culturally considered “work” because work (like suit, tie and briefcase “work”) is something separate from personal life.

Following Daniels. Marjorie DeVault, in her work, Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work, wrote, “Caring work is activity that most women engage in everyday, in their occupations, through voluntary activity, as friends and neighbors, and especially at home… For generations, women’s caring work has sustained life and community.”

Invisible work in the home is often unpaid work, sometimes is considered leisure, routine, even “natural.”  And, of course, sometimes it is all of these things.  But, this Mother’s Day, let’s remember that it’s also work, and Moms are wonderful for doing it!

Thank your Mom for something surprising today, something that rarely goes noticed or appreciated.  It might be the best gift of the day!

*We know this work doesn’t always fall to Moms, but in the spirit of Mother’s Day, we salute them.

The post Making Moms Visible on Mother’s Day appeared first on Marty's Market.

1.  A substance with food value; specifically: the raw material of food before or after processing.
2.  A series of Marty’s Market blog posts in which we explore how food is always, and was always, more than just nourishment.

A series of photos is making the usual rounds on the internet.  The photos, or portraits rather, by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio, depict families around the world posing by a week’s worth of groceries.  (You can take a look at a series of these photos here.)  In such a collection, it’s hard to know how to process each photo.  You might find yourself wondering what to look at first: the food or the people?  Brand or even food recognition (Those Walkers potato chips from the U.K. sure look a lot like Lays potato chips from the U.S.)?  Do the people look like me?  Do they look like people I know?

Your eyes dart from bananas to bottled water to perfectly stylized fish to bags and bags of grain.  And, other questions come up.  Once you get past the food, you might wonder, what did this family think when they were approached to be in this photo?  Who were the other families that got passed over and why?  Who paid for all the food?

In such a collection, no one photo captures the heart of the message, the photos must be consumed together.  Packaged and processed foods are elegantly organized in the photos of families from “developed” countries, while in Mali and Chad, there are more family members than ingredients.  Through the juxtaposition, it becomes clear that food has a journey.  Sometimes there is overabundance, sometimes scarcity, sometimes the food (and the food system) has become globalized, sometimes it’s a matter of health, and sometimes taste.

Another interesting point to consider: all of these pictures show the relationship between food and people in just one moment in time (photography then, perhaps, is truly the best method of communicating this).  Just by looking at the photos, there’s no clue as to who made/grew the food, where it came from, how it came into the home, and even what meals could be made with it, who would make it, who would be sitting at the table (if there was a table at all) to eat it, and who would be sneaking leftovers later that night?

That is, the food “chain” is missing, but also implied.  Though the physical act of eating (or not eating) is in many ways the way that people relate with food, there are plenty of more invisible activities that go along with it.  Those invisible activities make up the “negative space” of these photos.  It’s very loud once you start listening and questioning.

In her Foreword to Menzel and D’Aluisio’s collection, What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets, Marion Nestle writes about the people who participated in these projects, “In doing so, these people revealed volumes about their identity, culture, and daily life, and the world they inhabit.”  Do we know the families in these photos better after seeing these photos?  Probably not, but we imagine them more clearly, and the food as well.

For photography by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio, check out their collections:

What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets

What the World Eats

And more…

The post FoodStuff: Standing by Your Food appeared first on Marty's Market.

Their romaine was coming in, plump, slow and steady.

The mustards were showing off their beautiful textures and colors.

And we learned about the innovation that is Salanova lettuces.  Does “innovation” seem like a strong word?  Maybe, but lettuces are still a relatively new food for the Americas.  If you’ll permit us to nerd out for a bit, wild and cultivated lettuces had been enjoyed for thousands of years across the Atlantic Ocean, but only since the Columbian Exchange have we enjoyed this under appreciated food source on this side of the pond. (Learn more about the history of this particular variety of lettuce from Edible Phoenix.)

So what is so innovative about Salanova lettuces?  Well, first of all, they are quite beautiful and diverse, ranging in colors and leaf types.  For the farmer, they are marketed as having a 40% higher yield than other salad mixes, and tend to be more heat tolerant, meaning they can be grown throughout the season, when other lettuces tend to start complaining about the sun.  But that’s good news for retailers (like us!) and consumers (like you!) too!

These lettuces have a different physical structure, meaning they grow as heads but can be cut in one easy swipe to produce relatively uniform, baby lettuce-like leaves.  They’re tender, tasty and have a longer shelf life.  Shall we go on?  Certainly sounds innovative to us.  Learn more and see for yourself from this YouTube video from Johnny’s Selected Seeds.

Goose Creek Gardens is excited to be growing this variety, and we’re certainly happy to be offering it to you!

The post Salanova Lettuce: The Beauty of Spring and Change appeared first on Marty's Market.

from nfccertification.info

Natural Food Certifiers, as their name would imply, has multiple certifications, from Vegan to Kosher to Organic.  GMO Guard is the newest on their list.  Until now, there has been only one other certifier for Non-GMO products, the Non-GMO Project.  You may be wondering why we need another Non-GMO certifier at all, but consider this:  In the United States alone, we have over eighty-four Organic certifying agents.

So here’s where it gets a little tricky.  Yes, the USDA regulates organic through the National Organic Program but they do not themselves carry out the act of certifying farms and other food vendors.  This is where these agents come in.  Food producers can choose an agent that best matches their needs.

Non-GMO is a new frontier of certification.  With two certifiers, the choices are clearly not as vast as organic, but it’s a step in the direction of allowing for greater choice for those who are seeking certification.  It’s also worthwhile to point out that the appearance of a new Non-GMO label means there is greater market for non-GMO products.  And that’s a nice thing to hear.

Keep an eye out for the label above, and we’ll continue to increase the amount of Non-GMO foods available at Marty’s Market!

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Listen to the story here and take a gander at Pittsburgh coffees from all over the city!

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Check out the article here!

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