Visit his web site : www.emmarcusphotography.com

Long day today so my thoughts are going to be shorts !!!!
This week I read Michael Pollan's last book : Food Rules. If you dont know him or have not read any of his books (which planet have been living on??) : go buy them all and read them all, the guy is brilliant and his view on our food system is right on target. Now if you know him this littlle book is really good, nothing really new in it but the format is prefect to take around with you as a reminder and if you are not an avid reader it is really small with large print !!!! What I mean is NO excuses !!!
In the meantime I picked a few points he makes that I particularly liked. About nutrition science, according to his research a fairly young science, is today where surgery was in the year 1650 !!! yup ...
And it is on this "science" that processed food is "created". Actually he does not call it food, he calls it "edible foodlike substances", of course I loved it !!!
On a not so funny note he writes about our so-called Western diet, which consist on a lot of processed food, meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains, lost of everyghing except vegetables, fruits and whole grains and he explains that virtually all of the obesity and type 2 diabetes, 80% of the cardiovascular diseases and more than 1/3 of all cancers can be linked to this diet. Four of the top 10 killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet. What an extraodinary achievement for a civilization : to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick !!!
But he also notes that there is a very hopefull fact : people who get off the Western diet see dramatic improvements in their health, good research suggest that the effects of the Western diet can be rolled back and relatively quickly.
So People there is Hope ... that is if you change the way you eat !!!
The first step go buy the book and then come shop at the farmer's market where we sell real food ....
See you All tomorrow ....


The next generation of Laying Girls ...

Good article this week in the NewYork Times about "A federal effort to push junk food out of school" (link below). While I think the effort is somewhere praiseworthy, I also think it totally miss the real problem and here is why ...
Beyond the point, the article mentionned the whole "business" of selling, let's call it junk,  to help raise money to pay for new sport uniforms or other extra cruricular programs !!! quite paradoxal : selling junk to pay for sport equipments !! it is really sad to think that schools have to go to that extend because they don't have the adequate fundings!!!
Now to the point missed: I have cookies or cake every afternoon and I would not want someone to take it away from me (make me unpleasant).
BUT I bake my cookies/cake which usually include: sugar/flour/eggs/butter and, depending the mood and the week, from nuts to dry fruits to chocolate ... in short the usual home made organic taste delicious cookies.
NOW have you ever read mass produced cookies's labels ??? (yaya I went back to the store with my little notepad) I found out that they all have more or less the same ingredients from : palm kernel oil with TBHQ for freshness (no kidding and I am quoting) (see my google result below), cocoa processed with alkali, Polysorbate 60 (often used in cosmetics to solubilize essential oils into water-based products. Polysorbates are oily liquids derived from PEG-ylated sorbitan (a derivative of sorbitol) esterified with fatty acids.) yup I did not know either !! Vanillin : an artificial flavor (sic) (all spelled out), soy lecithin (even my chickens dont eat soy) etc etc etc from yellow #5 to red #40 you got it and here where the real problem is NOBODY goes after the manufacturers of that junk, of course kids (and grownups) are going to buy it : it is available in quantities and it is CHEAP (here again) and as long as nobody will forbid the food manufacturers to put in your food the same stuff you find in your body lotion (polysorbate) why should they stop ???
If we want to stop the health problems of generations of kids let's stop to produce the crap ... if kids are not buying it at school then they will buy it somewhere else.
Let's teach the kids to bake their own cookies with real ingredients, they will love it and dont give me the "no time" crap ...  
In the meantime you can buy real cookies at the farmer's market.
See you all on Saturday ....

TBHQ is another ingredient that is in alot of food products.
TBHQ, tertiary butylhydroquinone, is an antioxidant derived from petroleum.
TBHQ is a form of butane, i.e LIGHTER FLUID, that the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food.
Ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause “nausea, vomitting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.” TBHQ used in lab rats has cause cancer, stomach ulcers, and damage to DNA.
Ingesting 5 grams can kill.
And here’s a gross fact about McNuggests from McDonalds (they love to see you smile). TBHQ is sprayed directly on the nugget or on the inside of the box is comes in to “help preserve freshness.” They “promise” that each nugget has 0.02 percent of TBHQ oil.

The next generation of Laying Girls ...

I got an email from someone looking for "ways" to produce organic chicken feed CHEAP!!!

Ok People we need to get out of Cheap Food LaLaLand, either we change the way food out there is getting subsidies or we accept the fact that real food comes at a price and we need to change the way we eat.

Here is how the system works now : MegaFarm is producing corn at $10 a bushel (please don't quote me on numbers or names this just for the purpose of the example) so their cost is $10, here comes UncleSam giving MegaFarm $10 subsidies to each bushel of corn. At this point the cost of producing corn is Zero (0), arrive HFCS inc., mega food manufacturer, willing to pay $5 for the same bushel of corn, of course MegaFarm is happy to sell and makes a $5 profit. I simplified it but this is the principle. Now let's remove UncleSam subsidies. MegaFarm is still producing at $10/bushel and still wants to make $5 in profit therefor they will sell to HFCS inc. at $15/bushel !! Right here the price of your food tripled !!! Of course I am not taking into consideration all the ugly scheme this corn will go through before hitting your plate. Now you wonder where the $10 in subsidies comes from ??? I have news from you ... WE are paying with our tax $$ and subsequent Health Royalties for ever and this is the "beauty" of it : WE pay before we even buy !!! ... There is no miracle or magic formula, Real Food cost to produce, at $6/dozen for my eggs I pay the feed for the chickens that's all !!!

I went to a workshop called "small scale poultry raising" or something like that. Given by UF, the first speaker, PhD in nutrition, spent 17 minutes bashing organic practices, stating that if you want problems, snags, headaches (his words) that was the way to go !! I was wondering what I have been doing for the last two years or so ?? of course the only way he was promoting was factory farms, it amazed me that someone at that level was not more knowledgeable or at least open to organic practices, it shows how brain wash most people are about food, pretending that the food system in this country is one of the safest in the world ... welcome to LaLaLand. Then, at the other end of the spectrum, I was part of a backyard chickens workshop full of people wanting to raise their own chickens and realizing how dysfunctional the food system is. I loved it and made me want to start having backyard poultry workshops here at the farm, I will give you full details next week ...
Back to reality I have a ton of feed (literally) to unload ... hahaha ... see you all tomorrow ...

PS: I watch a great documentary called : food beware: the french organic revolution (Netflix) about how a small village gets its school cafeteria to go all organic and the impact on the community from the parents to the local farmers, a perfect example of how when there is a political will "things" happend. Watch it you will love it ....

Happy Hour at the farm  ...

First full disclosure, I never bought a can of soup, dont ask why but even before I "knew better" I always thought it was easier to make it ... anyway this explain that I am totally facinated by that ingredients list ... so I went back to the store, with my little pad and a pen and yes they look at me funny !!! 
The ingredients I forgot last time : chicken broth (water, chicken stock) !! They are selling chicken broth made with chicken broth !!!! hahahah ... I wonder if that chicken broth was also made with chicken broth ... you know dilution like in homeopatie ... the more you dilute the stronger ... lol ...
but then next to it was that cute plastic box containing cubes : beef stock.
Ingredients : salt, sugar, MSG, maltodextrin, garlic powder, onion powder, palm oil, wheat flavor, spices, citric acid, caramel, paprika, turmeric, corn starch.
You know how labelling works ?? the most comes first, here it is salt !!! I made sure I did not forget the beef or anything closely related to beef ... like beef bones for example. They sell beef stock that does not contain any beef !!! 
On my way home I was thinking it would be funny to reconstruct backward the food that is out there ... like my chickens: once it is in your plate, we could rewind and we would end up pretty much with a chicken, a little crooked but a chicken, now let's start to rewind a beef stock that does not contain beef to start with ... or the chicken of the chicken broth ... Imagine that one little chicken in a thousand gallons of water ... lol ...
The other day I was watching a re-run of Martha and Michael Polland was on, he said something that I liked very much: you can vote 3 times a day with your fork !!!
Another news this week Forbes Magazine named Monsanto company of the year 2009 !!! what are those people thinking ??? Time to vote I guess ...
Hereafter a great article about organic from you dont know where :
http://vtdigger.org/2009/12/02/your-organic-food-made-in-china-part-2/
Another good reason to come to the market, we may not offer everything you need but at least you know where it comes from ....

See you Saturday .. even if you dont need anything, come by, grab a coffee, look around, chat with your farmers ... we love to chat ...


The ducks playing in the mud this morning ...

Two days ago I was at a local grocery store, as I was passing the "can section" (you can not miss it : it is basically 2/3 of the store!) I looked at the label of Chicken Broth .... I went to the cashier and got a pen and paper, I would not miss any of the "ingredients" :
Hydrolized soy, Corn protein, Monosodium Glutamate, Chicken fat, Vegetable juice concentrate (humm ... my favorite so far) Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate etc etc etc ... oh let's not forget the Natural Flavor ....
I googled the first ingredient "Hydrolized soy" and here I just copied the first result :
Hydrolyzed Soy Protein -- The extraction process of hydrolysis involves boiling in a vat of acid (e.g., sulfuric acid) and then neutralizing the solution with a caustic soda. The resultant sludge is scraped off the top and allowed to dry. In addition to soy protein it contains free-form excitotoxic amino acids (e.g., MSG) and other potentially harmful chemicals including cancer-causing chemicals in many cases. A newer method of hydrolysis involves the use of bacteria by itself or in addition to the chemical processes described above. There is a possibility that genetically-manipulated bacteria may be used.
The food industry sometimes uses large amount of hydrolyzed proteins as a "taste enhancer" because it contains significant amounts of MSG (monosodium glutamate). This is what is known in the food industry as "Clean Labels" -- adding MSG to food, without having to list it as "MSG" on the label.
In almost all cases, hydrolyzed soy protein contains a significant amount of genetically-manipulated soy. The hydrolyzed protein products currently added to foods should be considered a detriment to one's health.
Recommended Reading: Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills by Neuroscientist Russell Blaylock, M.D.

It is late so I will let you google the other ingredients ...
see you on Saturday ...
Ps: I will go back to the store because on my list of ingredients that I carefully copied I dont chicken !!! I wonder if I missed it or not ...

Morning chat at the water cooler ...

The New York Times run a great article "Safety of beef processing method questionned", you will find the link down the page if you have not read it yet.

Basically ground beef is injected with amonia in order to kill salmonella and co.
Nice ....
The USDA endorsed it and FDA signed off on the use of ammonia, concluding it was safe when used as a processing agent in foods <!!!>
and because it is a processing agent no need to disclose it on the label ...
School lunch official buy it because it shaved 3 cents, yes 3 cents, per lb ... Hi it's your kids, I dont have any still I find it disturbing <!!!>
 As usual the motiv is cheap cheap cheap ...
I am no doctor but honestly last time I was around amonia was when my Mom was doing her spring cleaning and she used it to clean ... the windows !!!
and it brings me to a story that I read some time ago, the largest or second largest cheese producer in France, I dont remember the exact details, announced they would make their signature camember with pasteurized milk instead of raw milk .... that started an uproar from the street to the food critics to people picketing the factory .... and it worked, the consumers succeeded and the factory backed out and kept making their camember with raw milk !!!!
My whole point is how much more amonia do you need to start to react ??? I mean a real reaction, one that will boycott all process food, one that will make certain you know where your food comes from ??? One that will make you start to grow a few "things", raise a couple of chickens ??? I know it is work and time consuming and money and changes but ultimately it is your health ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?emc=eta1

Muscovy ducklings arrived this week, 2 days old snuggling in their box with a little heat pad to keep them warm during their overnight trip

In the 1920, some 60 breeds of chickens thrived on American farms, today ONE hybrid, the Cornish Cross, supply nearly every supermarket.
In the 1940, confinement-rearing became the dominant form of production for the poultry industry and Cornish Cross the bird of choice. Since then the conventional poultry industry has genetically modified them for rapid growth, efficient feed conversion, large breasts, limited feathering (for ease of plucking) and other traits considered desirable for rearing 15,000 birds in filthy conditions in a wharehouse.
Because of all those genetic modifications, they reach a market weight of 5lb in 6 weeks !!!!
Those poor birds grow so fast that their body can not follow : they die of sudden heart faillure, they are prone to joint and ligament problems, their bones are simply not strong enough to support their weight, their immune system is compromised leaving them susceptible to disease (therefor the use of large amount of antibiotics), they are also not good at foraging (they can not really stand on their legs !!), their meat has poor texture and the taste .. well you know : Inexistant.

The result is a Frankenchick, I have seen them and it is not pretty and you dont want to know what they are fed with !!!!
But those are the chickens you find at the grocery store even under the organic label ... and it is cheap  .....

Our broilers are derived from an american and european old heritage breed that was developped in the 60's to meet the high standard of the french "label rouge". We raise them in 12 weeks on pasture.

When I was growing up in Switzerland, chickens was the Sunday roast, my Mom had to order it from the butcher, in advance, that in turn was working with a local farmer that would process what was "ordered". It was not squared in shape, we did not pick it up from a window and it was not cheap BUT I still remember them !!! and the crunchy skin and the legs are still my favorite parts.
The chicken was not processed in an "inspected facility", it was not washed with chlorine, it was not irradiated, it was not added "natural preservative", salmonella sounded like a fancy italian ice cream and you know what ???
 I survived !!!!!!!!!!!

Happy New Year and thank you for coming along.

Weekly food thoughts 12/17/2009

I read label of everything I buy !!! and I am still amazed each time I do it ... At this point I dont buy anything that has more than one line in the ingredients whick makes my life easier : no more processed food !!!

Aspartame, monosodium glutamate and others (see below). These neurotoxic chemical additives directly harm nerve cells, over-exciting them to the point of cell death, according to Dr. Russell Blaylock. They're found in diet soda, canned soup, salad dressing, breakfast sausage and even many manufactured vegetarian foods. They're used to add flavor to over-processed, boring foods that have had the life cooked out of them.
Food companies now "hide" MSG in safe-sounding ingredients like yeast extract or torula yeast. Many so-called "healthy" or vegetarian foods also contain the very same "scarry" ingredients as conventional groceries ... once again read the label !!!! "Natural" in big letters in front of the package does not mean much ...
While MSG is sometimes listed directly on the label, it is more frequently hidden in other ingredients, such as yeast extract, autolyzed vegetable protein, or hydrolyzed vegetable protein. All three of these ingredients contain monosodium glutamate, and yet they are designed to mislead consumers by avoiding mentioning MSG directly on the label ...
A great movie to watch for those using aspartame is "Sweet misery" (instant download at Netflix) and for those of you that do not use aspartame : watch it ... just to make sure you will never use it !!!

Now on chickens and arsenic ...
Most people don't know that the chicken they eat is laced with arsenic. Why do your chicken contain arsenic ?? because in the United States, most major poultry producers add an arsenic compound known as roxarsone to their chicken feed. Inorganic arsenic is a Class A carcinogen that has been linked to heart disease, diabetes and declines in brain function. Recent scientific findings show that most Americans are routinely exposed to between three and 11 times the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended safety limit. The poultry industry has been using the feed additive roxarsone -- purportedly to fight parasites and increase growth in chickens -- since the FDA approved it in 1944. Turns out that the arsenic additive promotes the growth of blood vessels in chicken, which makes the meat appear pinker and more attractive in its plastic wrap at the grocery store, but does little else !!!

This is discusting ... next week I will tell you all about cornish X ... or what I call the epithomie of Frankenfood ...

ok it is Friday and I am awfully late and it is pourring rain again ... going to tell the girls if they dont start to lay substential eggs I am going to add some arsenic to their feed ... see if fear works ...

see you tomorrow at the market ...

The 3 Agrumes we are using in our preserve, from top to bottom :
Satzuma Mandarines, Meyer Lemon and Oranges ...

Weekly food thoughts 12/12/09

Eating local is easy as long as you are willing to give it a try and the challenge is not finding the produces but what to do with them !!!!
When you buy your produces at the farmer's market or at a farm stand or directly at the farm you first realise that tomatoes or zucchini do not grow all year around !!! even in our beautifull Florida !!! and I found out that a lot of green "stuff" is growing, it started last year with collard green : never heard or tasted them before and got really suspicious when each time I asked how to cook them it involved some form of lard!! After some trial and error I found a way to stew them in a curry sauce ... totally delicious ...
Last Saturday, at the market, I got 2 different greens from Drangonfly Fields, same thing I would have never thought of buying them if it was not that they grow locally and were freshly picked.
At first I thought eating local was limiting my choice as I was use to the grocery store spread then I found out that the offering is changing all the time, the grocery store hasd the same whole lot all year around ...
and you never know going to the market what you will be bringing home.
Now you are making all that effort to buy local, one last point : make sure it is local, know your farmer, know what is growing in your area and when and if you really dont find it locally and really need it make sure it is grown in this country. 
Great story from Lori at waltonoutdoor.com about eating local
http://www.waltonoutdoors.com/buying-locally-grown-produce-a-winner-for-consumer-and-farmer/

Weekly food thoughts 12/05/09

One of my good friend spent the long Thanksgiving week end at the farm. It was her 3rd Thanksgiving at the farm and the first one where all the food was local/organic. At b'feast I was bragging about the real butter I was finally able to buy, at the market, from a local diary (Ocheesee Creamery), butter from happy cow that actually eat grass and enjoy the sunshine and she kept on complaining how hard it was to spread and how much easier and convenient the "butter" she buys is !!!
Yes I put "butter" in bracket because for me anything one molecule away from plastic deserves brackets.
It occurs to me that she did not realize that easy spreadable butter is not a natural occuring, in order to get that-always-ongoing-what-ever-temp-is-your-fridge-soft "butter" manufacturers put the oil through a process called partial hydrogenation. To make margarine (and the likes), first the oil is extracted under high temperature and pressure, and the remaining fraction of oil is removed with hexane solvents (yummy so far??). Then it goes through a whole process that removes all the goods and leaves all the bads, a process that include steam cleaning ! emulsifiers ! bleach ! artificial flavors ! synthetic vitamins and as they are not allowed to add synthetic colors (at this point God knows why ??), they add some other natural coloring and advertising promotes this garbage food as healthy ...
then we talked about price, $7 for 1 lb. I can only relate to the pseudo european butter that I was buying before  for $3something for 8oz. Hopefully that butter was between the horror story above and the Ocheesee'one so price wise not that far from each other.
The jar lasted one month, used every morning by 2 people on 4 to 6 pieces of bread with preserves or 15c per person to start your day healthy ...
Little note ... it is hard to spread so you dont use much of it !!!
I will figure out the price of the slice of bread, made at the farm, and the spoon of preserve by next week ...
in the meantime let's get real about the real price of cheap unhealthy food ....
http://www.twinoaksfarm.net/content/1268

Our Bradford pears in their best autumn colors

Weekly food thoughts 11/28/2009

One of my client at the market told me that if you are "allergic" to chicken eggs proteins duck eggs are a good alternative as their proteins are not the same ... just when I was starting to think that an egg was an egg !!! So I did some research and I could not find confirmation of it but I found a study about the nutrition of a duck eggs versus a chicken eggs ... look at it : pretty amazing !!!

Nutritional Comparaison of eggs
Nutrients		Duck	Chicken
Water	g	74.57	70.83
Kcal		185	158
Protein	g	12.81	12.14
Lipids	g	13.77	11.15
Minerals
Calcium	mg	64	56
Iron	mg	3.85	2.09
Magnesium	mg	16	12
Phosphorus	mg	22	180
Potassium	mg	222	130
Sodium	mg	146	138
Zinc	mg	1.41	1.44
Vitamins
Thiamin	mg	0.156	0.087
Roboflavin	mg	0.404	0.301
Niacin	mg	0.2	0.62
B6	mg	0.25	0.12
B12	mg	5.395	1.547
A	IU	1328	520
"Properties and Food Uses of Ducks Eggs
Rhodes, Adams, Bennett, Feeney

Chicken broth is a cure all :
Help cure colds, builds strong bones, assuages sore throats ... Stock countains minerals in a form the body can absorb easily not just calcium but also magnesium, phosphorus, silicon, sulphur and trace minerals. It contains the broken down material from cartilage and tendons, stuff like chondroitin sulphates and glocosamine, when broth is cooled, it congeals due to the presence of gelatin, the use of gelatin as a therapeutic agent goes back to the ancient Chinese. Gelatin was universally acclaimed as a most nutritious foodstuff,
that was before the food industrie started to cut corner, in a General Foods Co report issued in 1947 !!chemists perdicted that almost all natural flavors would  soon be chemically synthesized ... that bring me to an excellent article in this week NewYorker about "The secret world of the flavor factory" and hereafter I am quoting a small part of the article :
"At first, most flavors were natural. ... chemists began to find ways to create these molecules entirely in the laboratory. .... Today, vanilla is the world's most popular flavor, and thousands of tons of vanillin are synthesized from industrial petrochemicals and waste from the production of wood pulp. There is no molecular distinction between synthesized vanillin or vanillin extracted from vanilla beans, but the way the molecule is made determines whether it will be advertised as "natural or artificial". .... The flavor industry has long resisted the public disclosure of its formulas, and so monitoring the safety of the chemiclas in them is complex, After extended negotiations, the FDA and the industry agreed to maintain a list of compounds "generally recognized as safe", the use of which companies are not obligated to reveal. "

and the story goes on and the consumer once again has no clue what is in the food because somewhere somehow the food industry does not have to disclose it !!! pretty amazing ...
for the full article : The Taste makers by Raffi Khatchadourian, NewYorker 11/23/2009.

for the full article on the chicken broth:
http://www.twinoaksfarm.net/blog/3852

This week I watched "The Botany of Desire" really nice and interesting, available on PBS or Netflix.

Remember unless to know the farmer who raise/grow the food you are eating, you have no idea how it was raised/grown.

First frost of the season this morning .... pretty but bbrrrr ...

Weekly food thoughts 11/19/2009

The "vegetarian diet only" on a carton of eggs (or a chicken) only means that the hens were not fed crushed bones from a dead animal. Let me tell you there is nothing less of a vegetarian than a chicken !!!! My hens spend their entire day scratching for bugs and yes bugs are meat and they eat a lot of it !!!! it also means that this chicken has never been outside ... scratching the concrete floor of their warehouse definitively makes your chicken a vegetarian.

Free range only means that they were raised on the floor (instead of cages) does not mean they were ever outside. The USDA definition of free range only request that somewhere along the wall of the "building" there is a door !!!!

I just posted on our web site a great article about chicken broth. If you buy our chicken make sure to make some with the carcasse.

If you have not watch Food Inc. yet, it is now available on Netflix.

Remember unless to know the farmer who raise/grow the food you are eating, you have no idea how it was raised/grown.

We have started to pick our mandarines, one of my favorite fruit to pick, it just smell so good ....