A Farm, A Foraging Foray, & Crutches

This past Saturday I taught a food preservation workshop at Genesis Farm. I went up the night before, and got up early so that I could spend some time before the workshop hiking the grounds. Gorgeous!

I felt like I’d had a mini-vacation before I had even gotten halfway up the slope to the spectacular views from the top. Genesis runs a CSA farm along with its workshops, and powers itself on some impressive solar panels.

The workshop went well-it was a joy and a privilege to share food preservation know-how with genuinely interested participants. We canned fire-roasted tomatoes, blueberries, pickled carrots and green beans, and got tomatoes into the food dehydrator and talked about lacto-fermentation and other preservation methods as well.

The next day I led a foraging class for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I don’t get to collect much on such jaunts because I’m usually too busy teaching, but I did manage to add some elderberries to my stash and spot a fruitful stand of spicebush that I’ll be getting back to in a few weeks when they are ripe. There is an excellent blog post with photos about our day by one of the participants at supereco.

Sadly, I won’t be traipsing off for any foraging walks anytime soon. This morning while teaching a dance class I slipped and dislocated my right knee. Won’t know more until I see the orthopedist, and that is currently delayed under a fog of workers’ compensation legalities. Meanwhile, I’m on crutches.

My garden is nine steps down from my back door. It desperately needs watering. Not going to happen any time soon. I guess I’m about to find out whether it really is true that holding off watering on ripening tomatoes makes them sweeter.

Botany, Ballet, & Dinner from Scratch: A Memoir with Recipes by Leda Meredith

Not sure what this is about? Read Getting Ready for the 250-Mile Diet and The Rules

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