Here’s a recipe for a lovely summer day: Pack a little picnic, grab your best floppy hat or Phillies cap, slather on some sunscreen and take a mini road trip to a nearby farm to go fruit picking. This fun outdoor activity is a life-affirming blend of frolicking in a field and getting access to
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When costume designer Heidi Barr looks out the window of her Wissahickon home, she doesn’t see rowhouses, paved streets, parked cars and tidy front yards. Instead, she envisions the Northwest Philly neighborhood as it would have looked 200 years ago, when lush fields dotted with farmhouses sloped toward the banks of the Schuylkill River. Back
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John Janick was an obsessive gardener packing every square inch outside his family’s Mount Airy twin home with native plants when I first wrote about him in Grid in July 2014. He had filled his backyard and the area around his driveway, and was running out of space in his front yard. I found Janick,
MoreIn June, High View Farm’s Linda Geren brought half a hog to Reading Terminal Market for PASA’s “Snout-to-Tail” seminar. Local chefs made some miraculous creations with the rich, flavorful meat, but Geren’s humble homemade scrapple—served with homemade apple butter and new potatoes—might have been the star.
MoreMary Seton Corboy and Greensgrow continue to set an example
story by Lee Stabert/photos by Jessica Kourkounis
Greensgrow, an urban farm and nursery in kensington, is a superstar of Philadelphia’s sustainability community. Having earned an abundance of recent national and local press, the pioneering farm’s name is always at the ready when conversation turns to the rising
In Pennsylvania and other states around the country, goat cheese is undergoing a renaissance. In her recent book, Goat Cheese (Gibbs Smith, 2008), Maggie Foard points out that, nationally, the number of licensed goat dairies has jumped from “a handful” 20 years ago to “over 200” in 2007.
MoreAmazing Acres Dairy produces local, artisanal chevre by Tenaya Darlington
Last May, Debbie Mikulak embarked on a lifelong dream—she became an artisanal goat cheese maker. With 19 goats and a little over five acres in Elverson, PA, she and her husband, Fred Bloom, now produce more than a dozen cheeses, including a French-style Banon wrapped in
Urban farmer and MacArthur Grant recipient Will Allen on the importance of greens, worms and moreby Lee Stabert
Everything about Will Allen is big. The pro basketball player turned urban agriculture iconoclast has hands like baseball mitts, and arms like tree trunks. His normal uniform—jeans, baseball hat, hooded sweatshirt with the sleeves removed—only serves to emphasize
Alex passed his Publisher’s Notes duties along to me this month because I am, simply put, obsessed with food. I’ve been looking forward to this issue for months. Last June, I moved back to Philadelphia—my hometown—after a few years in the wilderness (read: Nashville, TN).
MoreSunnyGirl Farm is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for Mary Ann Petrillo, and her partner Jennifer Cully is along for the ride. Growing on only an acre and a quarter near Kennett Square, the pair sell at farmers’ markets, supply local restaurants and offer a 20-share CSA.
MoreFarming tools by women, for womenby Lee Stabert
Women are pretty amazing and resourceful,” says Ann Adams, one half of the team behind Green Heron Tools, a company designing gardening and farming equipment specifically for women.