Category Archives: Resources

Revealing article and graphics on the globe’s reliance on an increasingly smaller variety of foods.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/07/food-ark/food-variety-graphic?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+psm-articles%2Ffeed+%28Per+Square+Mile%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

The cultural traditions and heritage of every community can be an engine for driving economic development if they are preserved and shared with others.  The FARM2U Collaborative® has developed a toolkit with five (5) easy-to-use guides that enable communities to identify their cultural assets and use them tobuild relationships with tourists that can be sustained for years to come.

The Toolkit focuses on heritage tourism, both cultural and culinary.  Once your community decides what makes your “homeplace” attractive to tourists, you can create an authentic experience that will be rewarding for the visitor and community alike.

The Keezletown Community Cannery is one of the oldest community canning kitchens in the United States and is the only privately-owned facility of its type in Virginia. Located in the fruitful Shenandoah Valley in a small town called Keezletown, the Cannery first opened its doors and fired up its cook kettles in 1942.

After nearly 70 years of preserving fresh harvests, the Keezletown Community Cannery is still open! Individuals and groups are invited to use this community facility to learn how to can or to quickly and easily can large batches of fruits, vegetables, sauces, or other foods.

These two outstanding books present different takes on “food heritage,” one from the woods of Virginia, the other from the bush of the Bahamas.

Bush Medicine of the Bahamas, by Jeff McCormack

“A sound ethnobotanical book with good coverage, pleasing format, written in an engaging style. The reader will especially enjoy, as did I, the interesting and colorful personal accounts of bush medicine. … The wondrous field of Ethnobotany grows and grows, thanks to great books like this.” — James A. Duke, Ph.D. author of the CRC Handbook of Medicinal Herbs, and The Green Pharmacy.

“… This book feels as though it has emerged from the field, and not from a lofty tower. The interviews have more than mere data in them: they have story. And what beautiful stories they are, some of them with healing power in their own right.”— from the Foreword by Gary Paul Nabhan, internationally-celebrated nature writer, and ethnobotanist

The Beginner’s Guide to Hunting Deer for Food, by Jackson Landers

“Hunting deer is the most inexpensive, environmentally friendly way to acquire organic, grass-fed meat. Even if you’ve never held a gun before, author Jackson Landers can show you how to supplement your food supply with venison taken near your home. He addresses everything a new hunter needs to know: how to choose the correct rifle and ammunition, how to hunt effectively and safely, and what to do if something goes wrong. He includes chapters on field dressing and butchering after the kill, recipes for using the meat, and a chapter on the politics and psychology of hunting. Whether you hunt to be more self-sufficient, to eat the safest and most nutritious meat possible, to protect the environment, or to save money, this book is the perfect guide.”  – Amazon.com

Early Virginia Indians hunted, fished, and collected wild grains and berries, which they prepared in various ways. Meats were roasted, while grains and tubers were pounded into ashcakes and then baked.

For many millennia, boiling water was difficult, but by the Late Woodland Period (AD 900–1600), technology had improved among the Powhatan Indians of Virginia such that a large ceramic stew pot became the focus of family eating.Roasted meats, shellfish, and wild berries were all added to the stew, which boiled throughout the day.

Read more from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities “Encyclopedia Virginia” –>

All across the country, Americans are seeking more fresh, local foods – at home, in their schools, in restaurants, and at food markets. Grassroots community food projects from Boston to Nashville to Birmingham to Seattle are rising to meet this demand. Led by innovative, creative people from all walks of life, these projects are building community by creating valuable jobs, preserving cultural traditions, building local knowledge about growing food, and educating school-children.

Where others have made the case for the local food movement, Reclaiming Our Food shows how communities are actually making it happen. This book offers a wealth of information on how to make local food a practical and affordable part of everyone’s daily fare.