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Some of the best things in life are shared across the back fence. Wouldn’t it be great to expand your reach?

I’ve started a new forum for neighborhood food-share groups around the Willamette Valley. The goal of the forum is to connect people with others in their immediate area for food sharing opportunities, events, gatherings, work-sharing, volunteerism, gardening tips… you name it!

Hope to see you there. Don’t hesitate to let me know if you or your existing group would like a particular category created.

There’s now a page link at the top of the blog that will lead you to the forum.

Disappointingly, the Salem City Council rejected ordinances that would have allowed chickens within city limits. I wonder if the opponents of the plan have ever actually visited any normal backyard chicken coops. Their arguments seem to be based heavily on fear-mongering.

Wine Country Thanksgiving –More than 140 wineries and tasting rooms in the Willamette Valley will be open during Thanksgiving Weekend (most open 11am-5pm, November 27-29, but hours may vary, so call ahead). Meet winemakers, experience special tastings and enjoy specialty food and live entertainment. Click here for a complete list of participating wineries and tasting rooms.

I made sweet roasted rosemary acorn squash this week, and it was fabulous.  You should try it immediately. Go ahead, I’ll wait here…

Heavenly Harvest Farm in Corvallis is having their Harvest Festival through Saturday.

The College of Agricultural Sciences at OSU is once again hosting the Food for Thought lecture series, beginning Tuesday, November 3rd at 7pm. These free public lectures are held in the LaSells Stewart Center’s Construction & Engineering Hall on the OSU campus.  Lectures include time for audience discussion and refreshments are provided.

Check out this special issue of Oregon’s Agricultural Progress: Food in Oregon.

That’s all for this week — I’m going to try to make this a regular feature of the blog, so please stay tuned!

(photo credit: “Cristom Vineyards” by pete4ducks)

Larry Lev, an agricultural economist at Oregon State University, visits the farmers market in Corvallis. He specializes in agricultural marketing and alternative food systems and helps develop and strengthen farmers markets. Photo by Tiffany Woods.

CORVALLIS, Ore. ­ An agricultural economist at Oregon State University has hit the silver screen in a new documentary that examines and promotes the local food movement and that will show in Portland starting on Friday.

In the film “Ingredients,” Larry Lev discusses the benefits and costs of buying food from local producers. He says that although some local products may cost more than food transported from large-scale commercial operations, the extra expense can be worth it. The taste can be superior, and the money shoppers spend stays in the area and contributes to the vitality of the community, he says. By shopping locally, people are also keeping agricultural land from being developed and they’re establishing close relationships with farmers and fellow consumers, he adds.

“In the end, it comes down to choices. Price is one aspect that consumers take into account, but it’s not the only one and often not the most important one,” says Lev, who was filmed on campus.

Lev, who has worked at OSU for 25 years, specializes in agricultural marketing and alternative food systems. He also works with colleagues in the OSU Extension Service’s Small Farms Program to develop and strengthen farmers markets. He was asked to appear in the documentary because he had worked with one of the members of the film crew on various projects, including workshops to match chefs with farmers.

“Larry gave us a lot of great information to work with,” said the film’s producer and cinematographer, Brian Kimmel, who lives in Portland. “The most important thing he did was describe how this whole economics system works with the local food movement. A lot of the people are looking at this and saying, ‘Yes, this is something we want but it’s too expensive.’ Larry’s experience shows otherwise. It was great to have Larry to fall back on and say, ‘This does make sense and here’s how.’”

“Ingredients,” which premiered in Germany and won a Silver Sierra Award in the documentary category at this year’s Yosemite Film Festival, shows the farmers and chefs around the country who are revitalizing the connection between food and the land. It features diversified farms of the Willamette and Hudson River valleys, the urban food deserts of Harlem, and the kitchen of Alice Waters.

In addition to Lev, other Oregonians featured in the film include: Portland chefs Greg Higgins and Pascal Sauton; Anthony and Carol Boutard of Ayers Creek Farm in Gaston; John Eveland of Gathering Together Farm in Philomath; Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed, also in Philomath; farmer Laura Mastersonof 47th Avenue Farm in Portland; John  Neumeister of Cattail Creek Lamb in Junction City; farmers Sheldon Marcuvitz and Carole Laity of Your Kitchen Garden in Canby; Shari Sirkin of Dancing Roots Farm in Troutdale; and former Lake Oswego Mayor Judie Hammerstad.

The film will screen at 5 p.m. on Sept. 26 and 27 at the Bagdad Theater in Portland.

To buy a DVD or find out how to organize a screening of the film in your community, go to www.ingredientsfilm.com.

I voted to help the Corvallis-Albany Farmers’ Market win $5,000 in the “Love Your Farmers Market” online contest, sponsored by Care2.com and LocalHarvest.org. Every vote helps promote local food, family farms and sustainable agriculture. If you’d like to vote, too, click the image above!

The Corvallis-Albany Market is currently #71 in the top 100 markets with the most votes — I know they deserve to be higher on that list!

I’ve also recently decided to change the tone of the blog a little (yes, again!) and make it more personal. I’m going to put up a page about our efforts to go through this quarter of a cow & am going to try to write a little more about our successes and failures in our attempts at living locally and sustainably. Onward!

“Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.”
~ Frank Lloyd Wright

Remember when I posted back in March, and these guys were all nothing more than little puff-balls? They are 13 weeks old today and each about the size of a medium house cat. With beaks. We really lucked out, not knowing what we were doing when we picked these out — the Barred Rocks are pretty even tempered and hardy. They don’t pick on each other much. The Accidental Rooster keeps everyone in line, but isn’t too mean. Except that he’s selfish when it comes to treats. Oh, we’re giving out a strawberry? WOOSH… that streak was the rooster, grabbing the berry before it hit the ground and darting off to a corner to gobble it down before the girls are any wiser. Oh, Rooster.

We haven’t named them as we still can’t really tell any of the girls apart. They do have personalities, and there are moments when those personalities become very apparent — mostly after we’ve spent some time hanging out with them — like we have a little escape artist, one who likes to sit on laps and stretch out for petting, and one who is super observant. But I can never see at a glance which is which!

They’re not peeping anymore, now their voices have taken on that deeper clucking noise. The other morning, when I was having some difficulty getting the coop door open, Rooster crowed at me a little, but not loudly. We’ll see what he sounds like when he starts crowing in earnest. None of the neighbors seem concerned, so we will just see. (We are semi-rural… very heavy on the semi.)

In other chicken news, I’m really enjoying the blog Happy Chickens Lay Healthy Eggs, written by Orren, a 12-year-old boy who is raising what looks like a pretty darn big flock. He’s concerned about responsible agriculture, supporting local farmers and, of course, healthy chickens. Orren is trying to raise $500 for Heifer International to buy flocks of chickens.

From the Heifer International site:

A flock of chicks can help families from Cameroon to the Caribbean add nourishing, life-sustaining eggs to their inadequate diets.

The protein in just one egg is a nutritious gift for a hungry child. Protein-packed eggs from even a single chicken can make a life-saving difference.

Heifer helps many hungry families with a starter flock of 10 to 50 chicks. A good hen can lay up to 200 eggs a year – plenty to eat, share or sell. With Heifer recipients’ commitment to pass on the offspring and training, the exponential impact of adding chickens to communities in poverty is truly a model that helps end hunger and poverty.

Because chickens require little space and can thrive on readily available food scraps, families can make money from the birds without spending much. And chickens help control insects and fertilize gardens.

I’m planning to donate a bit. If you can donate too, please visit Orren’s blog (linked above) and follow his link to his donation page. If you just want to help spread the word, please consider posting about his efforts on your blogs! I think the cause is great and Orren’s clearly a kid with a big heart, so I’d love to see him meet his goal.

Cluck, cluck!

Well, shoot, so am I. (So we planted two new ones!)

I think we’re both feeling a little pressure (entirely self-imposed, I’m certain) to make our garden something to be proud of, and one from which we can share. You see, all this buy local stuff is great, but it’s the community aspect to all of it that’s really been my motivator behind this blog. There was a great post a while back on Culinaria Eugenius about small community food exchanges, and how they can be anything from swapping jam over the back fence to an organized group that meets to share meals.

So, I’m curious… what do you do on a small scale? Are you involved in anything organized, or is it more like you just share when you have it and, hopefully, enjoy someone sharing with you in return? Do you have ideas on how to reach out to strangers, for the shy among us? How about ideas for keeping it simple, for those among us who dread taking on another “task”?

I hope to see some comments! And if there are any groups out there that want a mention, please let me know.

People who Tweet! Topics like eating local, or news around the valley, or backyard chickens! This is by no means a comprehensive list, just a few names I’ve gathered through searching. Leave a comment if you have any to add. Here they are in no particular order:

• DiscoverEugene – from the Discover Eugene online magazine, “the source for all things Eugene”
• OregonWinePress — The “Who, What, When, Where of Wine in Oregon” from Oregon Wine Press
  
• HeavenlyHarvest — from the Heavenly Harvest farm in Corvallis
  
• MotherEarthNews — “The Original Guide to Living Wisely”
  
• MidValleyVoice — “the online community for people and businesses in the mid-Willamette Valley”
  
• HappyChickens — “12yr old vegetarian, Chicken Farmer, Animal Activist”, visit the blog at happy chickens lay healthy eggs
  
• UrbanChickens — “eating bugs and weeds and laying eggs in the city, we’re coming to a backyard near you”

I’d like to start the recipes up again — maybe not weekly, but semi-regularly — and I’d love it if anyone would like to contribute recipes that utilize local ingredients. If you have a favorite foodie blog, feel free to share that, too, and I’ll include links in the recipe posts. (mwvlocal at gmail dot com)

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I’m currently working on a page of local resources for yarn and wool. (I figured I’d start with the craft that I know something about.) After that, I’d like to expand into other art & craft areas, but I’ll need help with those, so, again… send e-mail or leave comments.

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Also, soap! I know we have local soap-makers… but, readers, how important is it to you that the ingredients within the soap are ALL locally produced? Meaning, if they source, say, goats milk locally but the other ingredients come from a supplier located elsewhere, do you still want links to them?

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Check out the story in the Gazette Times about the Cooped Up in Corvallis event on Sunday. There’s a misinformed commenter there who seems to feel that people keeping chickens are “doing what they want” regardless of impact to neighbors. I have yet to see any information that chickens negatively impact neighbors (roosters I could see being a nuisance, but those aren’t allowed). Anyway, it looks like it was a successful event, so please check out the story when you have a moment.

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Okay, that’s all for the moment!

We got six Barred Rock pullets & they are super cute. They seem to be quite hardy, which is great but isn’t keeping me from being a little anxious.