Chelsea Green Blog
Farming & Homesteading
RECIPE: Maple Mushroom Martini
Permaculture designer and author Michael Judd gets really excited about mushrooms. So when he found this recipe for a mushroom infused cocktail, he was barely able to contain himself. It may sound strange, but Judd swears this sweet mushroomy cocktail is magically delicious. The following is an excerpt from Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist by…
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Food Justice: What it Means and Why We Need it
What does true food justice look like? Elizabeth Henderson, longtime sustainable activist, Chelsea Green author (Sharing the Harvest), Farmer at Peacework Organic Farm, and co-Founder of the Agriculture Justice Project explores and explains what food justice means. I come to my understanding of Food Justice from the perspective of my life as an organic farmer…
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Growing Your Own Herbs in 6 Easy Steps
Author Didi Emmons understands it’s intimidating to work with unfamiliar herbs. In her book, Wild Flavors: One Chef’s Transformative Year Cooking From Eva’s Farm, she takes the simple approach that herbs, like any other plant, need good soil, water, sun, and air to thrive. Just vary the amounts of these four life-giving resources for each…
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How To Make An Herb Spiral: The Ultimate Raised Bed
The herb spiral: A beautiful year-round focal point for your garden that is easy and fun to build and saves both space and water. In Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist, author Michael Judd walks readers through step-by-step instructions on how to create this edibles-producing superstar. In addition to herb spirals, Edible Landscaping covers food forests, raised-bed gardens, earthen…
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Butchery: Reclaiming the Lost Culinary Art
Do you know a butcher? Chances are, the answer is “no.” True butchery has become a lost art, and many people have no idea how an animal gets from the pasture to their plate. In The Gourmet Butcher’s Guide to Meat, master butcher Cole Ward aims to revive this traditional culinary art that is an…
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Got Pie?
Thanksgiving is just days away and your pie-loving friends here at Chelsea Green thought we’d share with you one of our favorite fruit pie recipes. The following apple pie recipe was adapted from Michael Phillips’ book The Apple Grower by the foodies over at The Washington Post and is named for Michael’s farm in northern…
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Red Delicious: Ester’s Apple Strips
Need the perfect companion to your afternoon cup of joe? Hanne Risgaard’s Home Baked: Nordic Recipes and Techniques for Organic Bread and Pastry has just the thing. Cozy up and use your fall apple harvest to make Ester’s Apple Strips! These strips use sweet-tart apples as the filling for a delicious baked treat.
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Making Yogurt or Kefir Cheese: A Simple How-To
Making your own yogurt is an easy, healthy, and affordable way to experiment with fermentation, make milk last longer, and replace an industrial food product filled with mysterious chemical ingredients with one you know all about. Yogurt itself is a wonderful, versatile food, but you can also turn it into a spread or dip by…
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Watering Your Plants: How Important Is It?
There’s an old saying: water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. But now with climate change, make that: water, water rapidly disappearing, and more and more gardens popping up that need watering. A terrible rhyme, but a paradox for sure; with the increase of local and small family food production, comes a bigger…
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Sustainable Food: The Movement Toward This System
Respect for the land, for the worker, and for the value of agriculture are some of the underlying principles of Community Supported Agriculture—an increasingly popular movement that helps connect consumers to the growers of sustainable food and fresh, local, and organic produce. The following is an excerpt from Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to…
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The Permaculture Way—Tending Your Personal Garden
An integral aspect of Permaculture—”an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies”—is the realization that all things are connected. Finding peace in the harmonious systems of your garden is a good entry point for plugging into the interconnectedness of all systems on Earth. The…
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Build Your Own Cold Frame, Part 3: Get a Jump on the Planting Season
For a cold frame to really work, the light has to be just right. It creates the perfect climate to grow your food when the temperatures make it seem impossible. It can be adjusted to allow for ventilation or more closed to prevent snow or large amounts of water from entering and damaging the plants.…
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Grow Berries in Your Low-Light Urban Space
The following is an excerpt from Fresh Food from Small Spaces by R. J. Ruppenthal. It has been adapted for the Web. A central problem for many of us who garden in the city is a lack of light. This is covered extensively in the vegetable chapters. I mention it again here only to note…
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Raise Bees in Your Apartment: Urban Apiculture
Not everyone is a fan of bees, but when you get down to their level, you start to appreciate all that they do for us; pollinating the flowers and giving us delicious honey. Beekeeping is a noble profession or hobby to take on as you are providing a habitat for your colony to thrive. But…
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Food Shopping: CSA in the Global Supermarket
The following is adapted from Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture (revised and expanded) by Elizabeth Henderson. I grew up in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, a bedroom suburb of New York City, raised by parents who were deeply committed to the struggle for world peace and economic justice. They were city people…
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Replace Your Soap with Soapy Plants
Sick of chemical-filled soaps that leave your hands feeling dirtier than before you washed them? Then we’ve got the project for you! Do it yourself soap with soapy plants! It’s as simple as adding water. The following project is from When Technology Fails by Matthew Stein. It has been adapted for the web. There is…
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Good Food Corner: Spicy Fried Egg and Tomato
Add some punch to a bland winter afternoon. Dust off your frying pan and whip up some Spicy Fired Egg and Tomato for yourself or your family.
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Rare and Hard-to-Find Perennial Seed Sources
Eric Toesnmeier, author of Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro, A Gardener’s Guide to Over 100 Delicious, Easy-to-Grow Edibles, knows the value of a good seed source. So, to encourage interesting selections for your food garden this summer, we thought we’d post this helpful seed source appendix from Perennial Vegetables. From the book: Perennial vegetables…
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