May 12, 2008 by Jeff.

OK, so maybe you won’t get to actually grow your own honey, but you can learn about beekeeping from a couple of experienced beekeepers.

“THE FASCINATING LIFE OF THE HONEY BEE,”

Wendy and Bill Booth

Thursday, May 22 6:30 PM

The Exeter Public Library. 772-3101.

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May 7, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

Soup and information night! ($10) Slow Food promotes connections between plate and planet, the heritage of food, and the traditions that make food pleasurable. Learn about local farm stands, farmers’ markets, CSAs, and other sources of local farm products. Share your thoughts about what we can do to promote sustainable and healthy food choices.

More information >

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May 7, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

from the press release:

TASTE, SIP AND ENJOY GREAT WRITING AT SLOW FOOD SEACOAST’S 1st ANNUAL FOOD WRITERS NIGHT.

This evening, the words are good enough to eat! On  Wednesday, May 21  from 6:30-9:30 p.m. Slow Food Seacoast will stimulate your mind and body  in  a celebration of local food writers and tasty recipes prepared from their cookbooks and essays.

The Seacoast’s  best food writers will whet your  appetite  when they read from their work in this unique evening program. After each reading, guests will be able to taste food inspired by the writer’s recipes and essays.  Tickets are $55 and includes the reading, food and libations. All proceeds will benefit  Slow Food Seacoast. Tickets can  be purchased through www.seacoastfoodie.com. The event will be held at The Pearl of Portsmouth, 45 Pearl St., Portsmouth. Tickets are limited to only 60 attendees and will go fast.

In an innovative experience of  literature  and flavors, each writer will present in “courses” followed sips and tastes.  Beginning at 6:30 p.m.,  guests will be able to sample hors d’oeuvres before sitting down at 7:00 pm to enjoy the reading and between each, they’ll  sample food and drink paired with the listening experience. After the program, all are invited to mingle and ask questions of the authors and purchase signed copies of the author’s books, provided by RiverRun Bookstore. 

 Our nationally renowned food writers include Denise Landis, New York Times columnist and author of “Dinner For Eight: 40 Great Dinner Party Menus for Friends and Family”, Jean Kerr author of  the “Union Oyster House Cookbook” and “Mystic Seafood”, Kathy Gunst author of “Stonewall Kitchen Favorites” and “Stonewall Kitchen Harvest” and “resident chef” on WBUR’s Here and Now and James Haller, author of “Vie De France” and founder of the famed Blue Strawbery restaurant. The evening will be hosted by Rachel Forrest, food writer and restaurant critic for The Portsmouth Herald and host of Wine Me Dine Me, a food and drink themed radio show on Portsmouth Community Radio.  Books will be supplied by RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth and will be available for signing and purchase. The event is sponsored by Seacoast Media Group and Taste of the Seacoast Magazine and includes wine, beer and food donated by local caterers, restaurants and purveyors.

The evening’s proceeds go to benefit Slow Food Seacoast, a “convivium” within Slow Food USA,  a non-profit, educational organization dedicated to supporting and celebrating the food traditions of North America through programs and activities dedicated to Taste Education, Defending Biodiversity and Building Food Communities.

Tickets can be purchased by going to www.seacoastfoodie.com or by calling (603) 315-3276

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May 6, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

The Future of Food in New England

Seacoast Local invites UNH professor John Carroll to talk about increasing local food security beyond peak oil as part of the ‘Making the Connection’ sustainability series, at RiverRun Bookstore on Thursday, May 8 at 7pm.

How can we boost the local economy and re-establish our food security? Dedicating land for grazing taps into New Hampshire’s heritage and is a natural fit for the future. John E. Carroll, author of “The Wisdom of Small Farms and Local Food” and “Sustainability and Spirituality,” comes to Portsmouth on Thursday, May 8 at 7 p.m. to talk about restoring food independence, the subject of his new book “Pastures of Plenty: The Future of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Conservation in New England.”

“This is an important message for our community, especially in light of rising food prices,” says Rich Wood, a board member of Seacoast Local, home to the Seacoast Buy Local program. “Food self-sufficiency represents security and independence. And we know that money spent locally stays in the community, so re-building local food capacity will make everyone’s dollar stretch farther while enhancing our overall economic vitality.”

Carroll explains why we should be thinking about raising our self-sufficiency. “In all of the preparations we must make in order to respond to the demands of greenhouse gas reduction—80 to 90 percent reduction in carbon dioxide by 2050 or sooner—and the end of the era of cheap oil, our greatest challenge will not be transportation nor home heating, but food and the threat to our food supply,” he says.

Princeton petroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, author of “Beyond Hubbert’s Peak: The End of Oil,” has said that agriculture is the first victim of peak oil. James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Long Emergency,” has written that “Agriculture is going to come back to the center of the American way of life in a way that we couldn’t imagine.” Matthew Simmons, Houston oil analyst and investment banker, tells us that local agriculture will be of critical importance to our future.

Carroll offers a response for our locale, New England: grass-based agriculture. The how and why for a return to grazing; for a full range of dairy and meat product (not only cows, dairy and beef, but also sheep, pigs, goats and poultry); for integration with diversified horticulture for vegetables and fruit; and for integration with forestry, is spelled out in detail in the new University of New Hampshire book, “Pastures of Plenty: The Future of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Conservation in New England.”

A sequel to his earlier work on sustainable agriculture at the local level, “The Wisdom of Small Farms and Local Food,” Carroll’s latest book takes a close look at the prospects for our own region. “Take advantage of your local circumstances,” Carroll suggests, “and reconstruct your world around them.”

Carroll will read at RiverRun Bookstore, located at 20 Congress Street in downtown Portsmouth. For more information on his research, visit http://www.unh.edu/natural-resources/fac-carroll.html. For more details on the event, call 603-431-2100 or visit www.riverrunbookstore.com. For more information on Seacoast Local, including its “Buy Local” program, visit www.seacoastlocal.org.

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April 22, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

NH Seagrant brings us a series of roundtable talks throughout the summer, beginning tonight! Free and open to the public.

 April 22nd       Sector Allocation

Speaker(s): Tom Nies, New England Fisheries Management Council; Cindy Smith, Gulf of Maine Research Institute; Erik Anderson, NH Commercial Fishermen’s Association; Mark Grant, National Marine Fisheries Service; and Jackie Odell, Northeast Seafood Coalition.

Details: The discussion will involve the current status of sector applications to the New England Fishery Management Council as well as technical and financial assistance that may be available to current applicants. This will be an opportunity to continue discussions from the New Hampshire Commercial Fishermen’s Association meeting.

Location: Hilton Garden Meeting Room, Portsmouth Library, 6:30-8:30

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April 5, 2008 by Jeff.

A fun sounding event is coming up at UNH if you’re so inclined…

“The University of New Hampshire’s Hospitality Management students and making their Spring 2008 Gourmet Dinner sustainable. Calling the event “Green Cuisine,” for a ticket of just $50 (you can even use Cat’s Cache!) you can enjoy an seven-course meal made from locally grown and harvested food from all over New England. Live entertainment and a cash bar will be available all night.
Green Cuisine Spring 2008 Gourmet Dinner
Friday, April 18th or Saturday, April 19th
6 PM cocktail reception followed by dinner
UNH New England Center

The full menu, ticket information, and more are available at www.unhgourmetdinners.com. You can also buy tickets by calling the UNH MUB ticket office at 603-862-2290.”

For more information about this and other sustainability minded events at UNH, visit the University Office of Sustainability’s new-ish blog, http://discoversustainability.org/

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April 2, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

I was googling something rather unrelated when I came across this Youtube video of our own local farmer Shawn Stimpson, who, along with his partner Sarah Anderson, farm at Nelsons Organics and use a used-veggie oil radiant heat system to have fresh organic greens almost all year round. Nelsons Organics will be one of the farmers at the April 19th Sustainability Fair in Portsmouth (10am - 4pm, Parrot Avenue near the middle school and library), selling their fresh and sustainably grown greens:

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April 1, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

Mary Salmon of the Piscataqua Sustainability Initiative is looking for volunteers - the day is sure to be phenomenal and is going to feature some local food vendors, including meat, greens, early gardening plants, maple syrup, and more.

“We are also looking for volunteers to help out at the Sustainability Fair on April 19. Volunteers need only work a half day or less. Please hit reply if you can help us out. Event volunteers will help set up, be zone captains for parts of the event, participate in the clean up crew and be on zero-waste teams to encourage recycling.”

If you’d like to help on April 19th, email msalmon@seacoastonline.com

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March 20, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

Gary Hirshberg is one thoughtful dude - and he’s built a business around that. Stonyfield Farm yogurt is only kinda local, but it is a very environmenally conscious product. Hirschberg did extensive studies of the carbon footprints of the milk he uses, discovering that getting powdered milk from New Zealand, where most cows are grass fed and pastured, shipped on a boat to NH was environmentally more sensitive than getting liquid milk trucked from Wisconsin, where the corn the cows eat and the cooled trucks for the milk added a lot more carbon to the journey. Of course, he’d get it all locally if he could, but we don’t produce the quantity of organic milk that Stonyfield needs - but we should talk about all that sugar and where the fruit is coming from. I would love to see yogurt sweetened with honey or maple syrup - and where’s my rhubarb flavored yogurt?

More from the Seacoast Local press release:

What can small businesses learn about sustainability from international companies? Gary Hirshberg, founder of Stonyfield Farm, comes to Portsmouth on March 20 to talk about building profits based on a message of environmental and social responsibility,
The “Making the Connection” speaker series, sponsored by Seacoast Local and RiverRun Bookstore, aims to be a catalyst for continuing education, community connections, and sustainable change.
Hirshberg’s “Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the Word” (Hyperion Books, 2008) outlines how consumers and businesses can be forces for positive and tangible change.Hirshberg, 53, has overseen the growth of Stonyfield Farm from its infancy as a seven-cow organic farming school in 1983 to its current $300 million annual sales as the world’s largest organic yogurt company. This growth has been built with innovative marketing techniques that often combine the social, environmental, and financial missions of the company. One of the company’s five missions is “to serve as a model that environmentally and socially responsible businesses can also be profitable.”

In fact, Hirshberg has been at the forefront of movements working for environmental and social transformation for 30 years. In the early days of Stonyfield, he wore many hats - from yogurt-maker to bookkeeper. He served as director of the Rural EducationCenter, the small organic farming school from which Stonyfield was spawned. Before that, he was executive director of The New Alchemy Institute, an ecological institute devoted to organic agriculture, aquaculture and renewable energy systems. Hirshberg was also the Founding President of the Cape Cod Environmental Coalition which sued the US Air Force over a large radar facility that has recently returned to the news. And he was the Founding Chairman of the Cape and Islands Self-Reliance Corporation. Earlier in his career, he was a water-pumping windmill specialist, an author, an environmental education specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and a manager of environmental tours to the People’s Republic of China

Hirshberg is a New Hampshire native and was one of the first graduates of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has received six honorary doctorates. He serves on several corporate and non- profit boards including Honest Tea, Sambazon, Inc., Peak Organic Brewing and as the Chairman/Cofounder of O’Naturals, a chain of organic and natural fast food restaurants. He co-chaired The Social Venture Network for 5 years and is the Founder of the Social Venture Institute, a “boot camp” for community-minded entrepreneurs.

Hirshberg will read at RiverRun Bookstore, located at 20 Congress Street in downtown Portsmouth. For more information on the book, visit www.stonyfield.com/stirringitup. For more details on the event, call 603-431-2100 or visit www.riverrunbookstore.com. For more information on Seacoast Local, visit www.seacoastlocal.org.

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March 17, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

Tomorrow night at 7pm, Francis Moore Lappe, author of Diet For A Small Planet and now the new Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad, will give a talk at the South Church in Portsmouth. The event is brought to us by RiverRun Bookstore, Slow Food Seacoast, and South Church’s Minds Alive! and Green Sanctuary Programs.

If you’re going, why not bring along a snack to share at the reception afterward? From a Slow Food volunteer comes the details for this request: “The parameters are simple: it should be fingerfood, not needing any bowls or plates. You can drop off your food donations between 5 pm-6:30 pm on March 18 in the basement at South Church. Volunteers will be on hand there to accept your food donations. The food will not be eaten until after the talk, which starts at 7:00 pm. Probably the easiest thing to do is bring food that can keep at room temperature for 2-3 hours or so. Please mark your serving dish so it can easily be reclaimed after the reception. “

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