Notes from the Field

Montana Fare: A Community Food and Film Fest

“Montana Fare: A Community Food & Film Fest” will be held from 10am-2pm on Saturday, April 11, 2009 at the Emerson Cultural Center. The event begins with taste testing during the Bozeman Winter Farmers’ Market from 10am-1pm, followed by the premiere of the documentary Montana Fare, a new film by MSU film graduate Jaime Jelenchick.  Supervised children's activities related to local food will be available for kids ages 3-10 from 1-2pm.  This event is free and open to the public.

 

Montana Fare tells the story of two women based in rural Montana—farmer and rancher Jenny Sabo and Native American tribal elder Minerva Allen.  The short 20-minute film covers a number of relevant food issues, including nutrition, food access and security, changing taste preferences and homogenization, disassociation/distance from food, and public health.  Along with inspiring local scenery and down-to-earth, poignant discussions with both women, Montana Fare captures how two people with distinct pasts and different futures decide what food to put on the table.

 

The documentary will be followed by a short Q&A with the women featured in the film and a panel discussion that highlights “Food and Family Health, Food Access/Distribution, Economics of Local Food, and Growing Your Own”.  Children’s activities will run simultaneously so parents can drop off their kids to attend events in the theater. 

 

For more information about the event, please call (406) 599-3642 or email Jaime Jelenchick at jjelenchick@yahoo.com.

Upcoming Backyard Food Production Workshops

This spring Livingston community members will have the opportunity to learn about backyard food production through two classes being offered throughAdult Community Education programming. To access the Adult Community Education Catalog and learn how to register for classes click here.

March 31 , Mark Rehder will offer a class on raising pastured poultry. This class will present a unique opportunity for individuals to explore small scale broiler production in Pastured Poultry Pens. Commonly called-"chicken-ttractors", these pens allow birds to forage on fresh pasture, while protected from predators and the elements. The class will discuss the basics of pen design, pasturing systems, and poultry processing.

Class Title: Pastured Poultry

Fee: $9

Date/Time: March 31, 6:30-8:30

April 23, Megan E. Drimal and Mark Rehder will discuss the U.S food system since WWII and explore what happened to our gardens, our root cellars and our food self-sufficiency and security. Megan will provide an overview of the Green Revolution and the current global food system. Then, Mark will cover the 1942 Victory Garden Project, which produced over 20 million gardens and 40% of the food in the United States during WWII. In the remainder of the class, historic victory garden design will be discussed and participants will have the opportunity to design their own victory garden and learn about the development of the Community Kitchen in Park County.

Class title: AGR410 Victory Gardens in a Global Food System

Fee: $13

Date/Time: April 23, 2009 6:30-8:30

 

For more information on these classes contact Mark Rehder at (406)222-7886.

Hope to see you there!

Chewing on the News: Food and the Economy

March has already been a big month for local food in the news, here are a couple of news bites, we thought might be interesting for our “Notes from the Field” readers...

Firstly the Associated Press released an article, "Dollars from dirt: Economy spurs home garden boom", which notes a recent industry survey showing double digit growth in the number of home gardeners this year. Exciting news for the local food movement, though we were disappointed that these gardens have been dubbed “Recession Gardens”; what happened to the “Victory Garden’s” of WWII. Could we at least get something a little more upbeat?

In other news, the Local Food, Farms and Jobs: Growing the Illinois Economy report was released to the Illinois General Assembly by The Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force. This report takes a ground-breaking look at how local food infrastructure development could benefit the Illinois economy. Way to go Illinois! It will be facinating to see what comes out of this report.

Community Food Assessment Surveying at Town and Country Today!

8:30-3:00pm

SURVEYING AT TOWN AND COUNTRY MARCH 7th

The Community Food Assessment Team will be administering their last round of consumer surveys to Park County residents at Town and Country, from 8:30 am to 3:00 pm this Saturday.

Stop by and say hi, especially if you want to see Lori in a giant strawberry suit.

Cultivating New Ways to Connect

Springtime is nearly here and Farms for Families is gearing up for a busy season. In an effort to keep you all better informed of our current projects and to provide a network of support for a community of local food advocates and growers in the region, we have established this blog site. Welcome.

The Farms for Families blog is still a little rough around the edges, but it is our hope that this site eventually becomes a place for community members to connect and cultivate new ideas for creating and sustaining a local food system.

Keep checking back with us as we learn how to navigate the blog world. We look forward to keeping in touch with you.