upcoming events
field notes
Hooked on Fishing
Thursday, August 15, 2013 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Participants learn how to set up a rod, including knot-tying and attaching tackle. The program will include casting practice, angler ethics, catch and release, and safety, before actual fishing begins. Intended for kids 8-15. Chaperone required.
Volume 18 | Number 7 | august 13 & 16, 2013
Ecosystem Farm at Accokeek www.accokeekfoundation.org
National Colonial Farm Presents: The Way of Food
Hello CSA Community,
Saturday, August 17, 2013 12 a.m. - 1 p.m.
The National Colonial Farm presents “The Way of Food”- a journey through Maryland’s food traditions. Learn how our tastes and the food itself have changed over 300 years as we explore the “receipts” (recipes) and meal preparation. This month’s theme is “You Say Potato, I Say Lumper,” featuring A Potatoe Pye and Sweet Potatoes Aflame! For details on any event, please visit www.accokeekfoundation.org.
Where has all the time gone?! We have been observing the winding down of summer with its usual beauty and longer sunsets. With the help of farm crew and volunteers, the fields are filling up with fall crops, and the summer food is showing its usual signs of stress. Thanks to all of you for visiting with us during the farmer happy hour last week. Eat well and be well! love and humid evenings, Farmer Becky
Ecosystem Farm Manager Rebecca Cecere Seward Farm Apprentices Alex Binck, Holli Elliott Farm and Garden Coordinator Daniel Michaelson Volunteers Rosemary Zechman, Amanda Truett, Tom Ellwanger, Mary Lynn Davis, Yvonne Brown, Terrance Murphy, Ethan Carton, Cairna Bode
nasturtiums colors hot flourish spicy bite
301-283-2113.
Mushrooms to the Rescue By Holli Elliott The Mushroom: celebrated in infinite stories, enjoyed in billions of kitchens around the world, used for medicine and to invoke spiritual visions as long back as history can tell; it is a curiosity of collective lore and awe. Yet, the nearly supernatural properties of certain mushroom strains to restore damaged environments are just becoming known. In many cases, hidden beneath the ground, fungi mycelium is actively breaking down toxins and transforming polluted ecosystems into healthy ones. Branching from the base of mushrooms are thin, threadlike mycelia that communicate so much information between plants and trees that it has become known, due to the scholarship of mycologist Paul Stamets, as the neural network of the terrestrial biosphere. Mycelium is found in soil or other substrates, sometimes spreading beneath a forest floor as one gargantuan organism, such as in Oregon where a 2,400-acre contiguous growth has been recorded as the largest organism in the world. Mycelium uses its reach to communicate vital information throughout the ecosystem. For example, if a tree at one end of a forest becomes sick, the mycelia can send this information to the other trees, so that they can boost up their immune systems and prevent contagious spread. As if that were not enough, mycelium moves beyond being the connective internet-type network for forests, to conducting large-scale environmental restoration by neutralizing toxic wastes through digestive processes. As decomposing agents, mycelia of certain mushroom species have digestive systems able to break down recalcitrant bonds of many organic pollutants produced by human beings (and our love of oil and factory farms). With proper knowledge of this appetite, mycologists have been learning how to feed toxic wastes, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of oil wastes, to mycelia. What plays out is nothing less than a magic show of ecological transfiguration. The fruitbodies produced are no longer toxic! (I am looking to learn how to apply these same practices
to runoff from chicken operations and petro-fertilizers used in conventional farming. If any of you have property with these types of problems or know others who are engaged in this work, please talk to me.) Mycelium and Mushrooms share with us the power to transform our toxic environments into once again thriving, healthy, abundant ecosystems. Jai-ho!