Farm Fresh Rhode Island blog

Reminder: The market will be closed on December 26. See you on January 2!

Buy local food & share!  The 50 producers of the Wintertime Farmers Market have delicious goodies – coffee, jam, potted herbs, chocolate, soaps, roasted nuts, dog treats, Fresh Bucks gift coins – that will bring a big smile to anyone on your gift list, and incredible ingredients – fish, cranberries, potatoes, salad greens, cheeses, meats, apple cider, ice cream – for your holiday meal. And since everything is locally made, it makes your holiday even more meaningful.

Living here in the Ocean State, you’d think our markets would be teeming with food from the ocean. But that’s not been the case, as industry structure and food safety laws make it difficult for fishermen to market directly to consumers. So we’ve been working for a few years to help make sustainably harvested local/regional seafood more available. Well, when it rains, it pours. This week will see a big increase in regional seafood options at the Wintertime Farmer Market:

• Matunuck Oyster Farm will now have fresh cod filets from RI fishermen and soon their own clam chowder, in addition to the littleneck clams, oysters, mussels, crab and lobster that are already market favorites. Try roasted cod with winter veggies or seared cod with roasted squash. Matunuck littleneck clams are lovely with linguine or stuffed with herbs and bread crumbs. Mussels are often traditionally served so pick up a pound for some Trinity IPA-steamed mussels or mussels with spaghetti, white wine and parsley.
• Bomster scallops shine in simple dishes, try them baked or pan-fried. Plus, taste them wrapped in bacon in this week’s cooking demo by Chef Sophie of My Little French Cottage.
• She Sells Seaweed harvests kelp, wakame, dulse and soup mixes every August off the pristine coastline of Maine. Great for broths or a fun salty snack. Find it at the Farm Fresh & Co table at the front of the market.
• New this week! Dave’s Cape Cod Smokehouse will be bringing locally caught and smoked cod + bluefish and also fish bluefish pates and cod cakes. Dave buys the fresh catch off the boats of Cape fishermen, then slowly smokes the fish over a hickory wood fire. No artificial additives or preservatives – as Dave says, the flavor and freshness are why he does it. This fish is so tasty it’s great with crackers or sliced baguette, or in a hearty salad with winter greens.
• Starting January 9! Sign up for a Sustainable Shrimp CSF (Community Supported Fishery). The fishermen of Port Clyde, Maine have developed the Port Clyde Fresh Catch brand to preserve the resources they depend on and provide consumers with shrimp harvested using environmentally sustainable fishing methods. They’ll be bringing monthly shares of shrimp to RI starting in January!
  • Subscribers receive six deliveries of 5 lbs of peeled, uncooked Maine shrimp, vacuum sealed and frozen in 1 lb packages.
  • Subscribers will receive a total of 30 lbs of shrimp over the 6 month subscription period; each share costs $216.
  • Shares will be available for pickup outside the Wintertime Farmers Market from 12:00-2:00pm one Saturday a month from January- May.
  • Sign up before January 7 to be on the first drop-off

  What makes the Port Clyde fishery “sustainable”?
  Shrimp trawling is known for having one of the highest bycatch rates, but the Port Clyde Fresh Catch (PCFC) uses a fish excluder, or Nordmore Grate, to reduce bycatch. This is the same device that is used in the Oregon Pink Shrimp Fishery, which was the world’s first shrimp fishery to earn a sustainable certification. The Port Clyde Fishery also uses new sorting grids with a partition that separates smaller shrimp out as well so they will live to be adult shrimp. The addition of this device got the PCFC bycatch rate down around 1%. This information is available for review at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. They are experimenting with a new topless net design that further reduces bycatch to close to zero.

See you Saturday 11-2 for all the fixings (and edible gifts) for your holiday. And since there will be no market on December 26, don’t forget to stock up for the next two weeks!

Stock up: this Saturday 12/19 is the last Wintertime Farmers Market until January 2nd!

Good food is a great gift. Perhaps we’re biased, working every day with people who make their living producing food here in Rhode Island. But you really can’t undervalue a gift that can be such a source of pleasure and also be so meaningful to the place we live. Recent case studies have again found that every dollar spent on local food generates an additional 50 cents or even $1 more in local economic activity. The benefits to the community add up quickly, and of course taste great.

With that in mind, here are a few edible gift ideas, all produced locally, available at the Wintertime Farmers Market:

• Cook a meal with someone special: an afternoon at the market followed by a winter stroll and then a delicious dinner together. The vegetables, meats, seafood, breads and cheeses at the market set the stage for a meaningful gift.
• Farmacy Herbs Tea Sampler: a collection of organic tea blends to help you relax, fight colds, and warm up this winter. Add a jar of local honey for an extra sweet gift!
• Deluxcious Foods gluten-free chocolates, cookies and confections are hand made using farm fresh local ingredients. They make perfect stocking stuffers!
• Spoil someone with succulent scallops and herb butter from Bomster Scallops.
• Narragansett Creamery cheese baskets feature heavenly cheese made in small batches in Providence, RI. Give it to someone who’ll share.
• Or ask Farmstead Cheese to help you put together a collection of exquisite cheeses from across Southern New England.
• Coffee-lovers will be pleased with a pound of New Harvest Coffee Roasters “El Alto” fair-trade coffee (have you seen their new bags!) plus maybe illustrated tee shirt.
• Jacks Snack’s handmade dog biscuits are made from human-grade ingredients, local and organic when possible. Dogs love ‘em!
• From hot pepper jelly to salsa to apple butter, there is a spread for anyone on your list. Pick out your favorite flavors made from ingredients grown in RI.
• Sweet or spicy roasted pecans from Purple Pear of Providence make a great gift for a food-lover. Once you try them you’ll want to keep them for yourself!
• Assemble your own gift basket: help someone de-stress with Earth Essence Herbals lavender aromatherapy spray, an herb plant from Allen Farms, and ache-away salve from Farmacy Herbs.

Fresh Bucks, gift coins for the farmers’ market, can be purchased at the Farm Fresh info table or online. They can be used at any vendor, never expire and always bring a smile!

Back this summer, when Genie Trevor let us know that the Winter issue of Edible Rhody would be all about dairy, we knew there was a important story to be told. However, it was bigger and timelier than anyone could have expected.

Just weeks later, the US Department of Justice launched an inquiry into alleged monopolistic practices by Dean Foods, the national conglomerate that owns Garelick Farms, Horizon, Silk Soymilk and 50 other regional milk brands. The Department of Justice’s concern: Dean now controls 70% of the milk processing in the Northeast (and as much as 85% in places like Michigan) and its profits are rising just as the price paid to farmers is plunging. Even though the consumer price of milk at the grocery store hasn’t changed much, dairy farmers are getting squeezed on price. In fact, the money farmers get is now below the cost of production.

The lack of competition presents a number of issues:

• It’s hard for individual farmers looking to get a fair price for their milk when one company controls so much of the processing.
• Such high concentration of food processing has been a central concern in recent food safety crises for tomatoes, peanuts, cilantro and beef.
• The control that large conglomerates hold over processing often also extends to control over the shelves in your local supermarket. Dean Foods and other large food conglomerates essentially own the shelves in the grocery store by paying supermarket chains what are called “slotting fees” that keep out competition and especially disadvantage smaller producers.

So where does that leave the farms of the Rhody Fresh dairy coop or the two farms that process the milk of their own herd – Arruda in Tiverton and Wright’s in North Smithfield?

• These independent milk producers have worked hard to develop strong relationships with Rhode Island customers. By taking their milk directly to customers, they’ve been able to maintain more control over pricing.
• Sure, as a dairy farmer you get up hours before dawn every day and work ’til the cows come home, but one of the hardest parts is surviving the price swings. One of the most significant things that the Rhody Fresh coop does for its members is to stabilize prices. No matter the market price, Rhody Fresh coop tries to buffer the farmers so they always get a price that at least meets their production costs. (The go-it-alone alternative has been disastrous for many dairies, especially in Vermont, where many family dairy farms have been lost in recent months.) Rhody Fresh just turned 5 and it’s working: the coop grew from 5 to 9 farms and its milk is now available in many new stores, schools and restaurants.
• Supporting our local dairies is as important as ever. It’s only because Rhode Islanders relentlessly asked store managers “Where’s the Rhody Fresh?” that the milk is now on the shelves in stores like Stop and Shop. (By the way, where’s the Rhody Fresh at URI and RIC? Providence College, Brown, RISD, Salve Regina, and Roger Williams all proudly serve Rhody Fresh. The Governor and Lt. Governor have both spoken out that our public colleges should serve RI milk. What’s the hold up?!)

Local dairy farms are priceless: we’re talking about our milk, our cheese, our yogurt, our butter. How much dairy do we eat everyday? Over your next bowl of cereal, think about the happy cows, the early-rising farmers, the pastoral landscape of Southern New England and how good it all tastes.

The Dairy Issue of Edible Rhody is now out at the Wintertime Farmers Market and your favorite food spot. The stories do an incredible job of capturing and contextualizing this moment of challenge and hope for dairy in Rhode Island: from family dairy farmers to milk processors and from cows to cheesemakers to cheesemongers. It’s an excellent read and provides a 360 degree view of what’s at stake.