Farm Fresh Rhode Island blog

With the economy so sour, many families are looking for ways to stretch their food dollars. That doesn’t have to mean turning to fast food, as a new TV ad campaign tries to imply.  Or that families must switch to the overprocessed products that pass for food and dominate many grocery stores.

Providing your family with good, healthful foods is not something that has to wind up on the chopping block. In addition to gardening and cooking more, it makes sense to shop for food that’s in season — it’s more flavorful, has more nutrients intact, and is more affordable when it’s in season and therefore in abundance.

This summer, Farm Fresh is launching two programs to help families on a tight budget access the fresh foods at our farmers’ markets.

Double Value Program for SNAP Participants
When: June - October
Where: 7 farmers’ markets in Providence, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket
Who: Farm Fresh RI with funding from Wholesome Wave

The Double Value Program is simple: a SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) participant brings their EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) card to the farmers market and finds the Farm Fresh info booth. A staff person will swipe their card for the dollar amount they’d like to spend, and then match that amount up to ten dollars. For example, spend $16 of SNAP benefits at the market and receive $26 in Fresh Bucks, tokens for use at the market. Farm Fresh RI will pilot the Double Value Program for SNAP participants at seven farmers markets this season.

Healthy Foods, Healthy Families
When: July - September
Where: 4 farmers markets in Providence, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket, see below
Who: Farm Fresh RI, URI SNAP-Ed with funding from Blue Cross Blue Shield of RI

Healthy Foods, Healthy Families program that helps families learn how to turn fresh, seasonal foods into delicious, affordable meals. The program will run at Armory Park and Broad St. Farmers Markets in Providence, and the Pawtucket and Woonsocket Farmers Markets. Low-income families that participate in WIC or SNAP can sign up at one of these markets or by emailing Christie.

The Healthy Foods, Healthy Families program includes recipes, shopping tips, children’s activities, surveys, and cooking demonstrations. All materials and lessons will be in English and Spanish. In order to encourage families to attend several weeks in a row, individuals will receive gifts for participating: a cookbook, a reusable shopping bag, and after completing three weeks, $25 in Fresh Bucks.

We hope that the Double Value program and Healthy Foods, Healthy Families give Rhode Islanders some help with their grocery bill and allow them to continue to make the most of the delicious, nutritious food grown in Rhode Island.

Travel to Quebec in late May and you may be surprised by the abundance of local tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, apples and potatoes. All of them are crops you’d expect to see first start coming into season in the middle of the summer. But in May and June?

Actually it’s not just Quebec that has seemingly fast-forwarded the season. More and more Rhode Island farmers have early tomatoes and cucumbers available this year. As the market for local foods matures in RI, so too is our local food systems’ production capacity. RI eaters are hungry for local tomatoes when farmers’ markets and farmstands open in May and June. So RI farmers are figuring out how to grow ‘em earlier and earlier. But how do they do it?

• Tomatoes. These tomatoes are started in hot houses to be ready for late spring. The cherry tomatoes are particularly delicious. The slicing tomatoes, which are mostly beefsteaks, are missing a bit of flavor but they’re still tastier than any mealy tomato that comes off the truck from California. These early season tomatoes do require some extra technique and greenhouses, and so there’s usually a price premium to cover the farmers’ costs. Right now, we’ve seen tomatoes from Moosup, Schartner and Wishing Stone farms.
• Cucumbers and zucchini. Certain varieties, like English cucumbers, are happy to start early in a greenhouse. Their texture and flavor are wonderful, just like the summer, but as in tomatoes they require more effort to get going so early than the field cucumbers that come in July and so cost a bit more. Schartner and Wishing Stone are growing early cukes, but we haven’t seen any early zucchini in RI.
• Apples. Since the apple harvest is until the fall, those in the markets right now have been resting in controlled-atmosphere storage since last season’s harvest. The CA storage maintains a consistent level of oxygen, carbon dioxide and cool temperature so that the apples stay crisp. Some varieties are better at storing than others, and growers optimally stagger when they take the varieties out of storage. In addition, the earlier an apple is harvested and put in CA, the crisper it will be when it’s taken out. So some apples are picked for CA before they are fully ripe, especially if they are intended for this final stretch before the new harvest. The trade-off for these apples is that the flavor and sugars never had the chance to fully develop. So while they are crisp, they’re less interesting to taste. And vice versa, flavorful apples this time of year often lack the crispness of a new apple. The only local apples we’ve seen are Ida Reds from Hill Orchards, which had unexpected crispness, given how fully flavored they are.
• Potatoes. Though a classic storage crop, there is still no comparison to a fresh dug potato. The RI Royal potato growers sold out in December and most of their potatoes were enjoyed while they still possessed the wonderful youthful flavors. From December and January on the starches begin to break down. These potatoes are good but do taste and cook differently. Come spring, seed potatoes can be exposed to light early in the season and they’ll sprout and produce new potatoes earlier in the season and provide greater yields. It’s impractical to start hundreds of acres of potatoes this way, but it is practical enough to provide delicious potatoes in early June. Moosup and Schartner have new potatoes.

You’ll find these early season crops at these growers’ markets and farmstands, and chefs can buy them on Market Mobile.

Get ready for June…

• Spring spinach, garlic scape and Salty Sea feta omelets
• Salads of crisp lettuce, spicy arugula, sliced radishes and turnips, chives, and Ida Red storage apples
• Strawberry rhubarb pies
• Mint iced tea

Hurrah! This is what June tastes like at a farmers’ markets near you. With each passing day there is something new ripening and a new farmers’ market opening up for the season. Three of our markets open this week, and the two weekend markets are moving to more spacious, tree-covered spots to accomodate new vendors:

• Armory Farmers’ Market in Providence’s Westside
  Thursdays 3-7pm, opens June 4
• Hope St. Farmers’ Market at Lippitt Park
  Saturdays 9:30-12:30pm, opens June 6
• Pawtucket Farmers’ Market at Slater Mill, Downtown
  Sundays 12-3pm, opens June 7

A bit of RI farmers’ market trivia:

• 40 summer farmers’ markets in 2009 vs. 34 last year
• 19 in Providence County, 13 in South County, 8 in Eastern RI
• 1 farmers’ market for every 26,000 Rhode Islanders
• New markets this year in Harmony, Johnston, Middletown, Portsmouth, South Kingstown, Weekapaug
• 19 farmers’ markets are already open this first week of June, at least one every day of the week. Bon appetit and cheers to a new season!
• Zip code with the most farmers’ market (4): 02906 Providence
• Zip code with the most farmers’ market per person (1 per 4,300 people): 02857 Scituate
• Towns with farmers’ markets and farmstands (19): Barrington, Block Island, Burrillville, Charlestown, Cranston, East Greenwich, East Providence, Johnston, Lincoln, Middletown, North Kingstown, Portsmouth, Richmond, Scituate, South Kingstown, Tiverton, Warwick, Westerly
• Towns with farmers’ markets but no farmstands (5): Bristol, Newport, Pawtucket, Providence, Woonsocket
• Towns with no farmers’ markets but with farmstands (12): Coventry, Cumberland, Exeter, Foster, Glocester, Hopkinton, Jamestown, Little Compton, North Smithfield, Smithfield, Warren, West Greenwich
• Towns with no farmers’ markets or farmstands (3): Central Falls, North Providence, West Warwick