Garlic Galore!

Finally! Our locally published Edible WOW Magazine has put a link to the article they wrote about our garlic farm in their Fall 2010 issue. It is a great article with great photos that nicely captures the spirit of what my husband and I are doing by starting this farm as our "encore careers".

Just one small error (hardly worth quibbling about) was where the article mentioned that I am starting a School to Farm Program for the American Dietetic Association (accurate) to supplement their Farm to School Program (sorry I was not clear during the interview - Farm to School is not ADA's program but a compendium of local, state, and national efforts to bring more locally-grown farm produce into school food programs).

I hope your locality has its own Edible Communities Magazine. In our case, WOW stands for Wayne, Oakland, and Washtenaw Counties in SE Michigan, but in reality, Edible WOW Magazine covers local food in all of SE Michigan! In fact, if you like what you see in this issue, and your community does not have its own magazine, maybe starting a local edition of Edible Magazine will be your way of highlighting, advocating, and contributing to the development of a local/regional food system for your part of the country.

Please don't think I will ever give up olive oil or spices as just two examples of foods that are not grown in Michigan and can only be grown in warmer climates or other parts of the world. My point is that where we can grow and produce food locally, we should be doing do, and where we do, we should be buying it locally (i.e., not importing apple juice from China to serve in schools in Michigan when our state ranks right up there near the top of apple production in the US!).

Anyhow, enjoy the article about our garlic farm and perusing the other articles in this issue and back issues, too. Then hopefully you will find an edition that is closer to where you live and you can also enjoy exploring and supporting the food, farms, and farmers in your neck of the woods.

"Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row"

Diana Dyer, MS, RD