Slow Food is an international member-supported, volunteer-based organization that has developed many structural entities to help realize its projects. Slow Food Monadnock is the local chapter serving the Monadnock region of New Hampshire.

When: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 from 6:30 to 9:00 p.m.
Where: Harris Center for Conservation Education, 83 King’s Highway, Hancock, NH

Our presenters will include:

Tom Burford from Virginia. Also known as “Professor Apple,” Tom is an orchard consultant, fruit historian, and nurseryman, whose books include “Apples: A Catalog of International Varieties.” Tom’s family has been involved in the Virginia fruit industry for seven generations, since the early 18th century. He serves as a horticultural advisor to Monticello and other historic sites and museums. Twenty years ago, Burford rediscovered the once-famous “Harrison” cider apple, long considered extinct, at a site in New Hampshire. He is truly a national treasure and a walking encyclopedia on fruit growing.

Roger Swain, the former science editor for Horticulture magazine and for 15 years served as host of the PBS show “The Victory Garden.” Like Tom, Roger has forgotten more about plants than most people will ever know. He splits his time between his home in Newton, MA and his family farm in Greenfield, NH, where he leads tours of his amazing ornamental and edible gardens, including an extensive home orchard. Roger is the author of several books, including “The Practical Gardener” and “Field Days,” and he is a founding member of the Slow Food Monadnock chapter. Roger will talk about how the modern half-high blueberry was developed nearby, at Dr. Frederick Coville’s farm in Greenfield, on the flanks of Crotched Mountain.

Ben Watson, co-leader of Slow Food Monadnock and Chairman of Slow Food USA’s Biodiversity Committee, which nominates special and endangered, place-based foods to the international Ark of Taste program. Ben is the longtime Senior Editor for Chelsea Green Publishing and a freelance writer whose books include “Cider,” “Hard and Sweet” and “Taylor’s Guide to Heirloom Vegetables.” A former Yankee Books editor, Ben has lived in the Monadnock Region for most of his adult life and continues his garden preservation work, maintaining heirloom bean varieties through Seed Savers Exchange and operating the not-for-profit Monadnock Heritage Nursery, which specializes in growing rare, endangered, and regional fruit varieties for homeowners and small commercial orchards. He is a Director of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, based in Italy, and a consultant for the RAFT Alliance (Renewing America’s Food Traditions), which is actively working on a Heritage Orchard Initiative to identify and conserve historic apples and other American heirloom fruits.

Following the presentations, Tom and Ben will conduct a heritage apple tasting, showcasing a wide variety of amazingly delicious, rare, or just interesting varieties. There will also be a fruit dessert and coffee reception prepared by members of Slow Food Monadnock.

Sponsored by Sponsored by Slow Food Monadnock, admission is free, but donations are encouraged to assist the work of Slow Food Monadnock, which promotes and supports local growers and food producers and mounts educational programs such as this one.

Preregistration is required. Call (603) 525-3394 or email Jacobs@harriscenter.org by November 2.

Because of the overwhelming positive response, the special offer is extended through October 15. For one more week, a gift of any amount will make you a member. And thanks to the generosity of one of our supporters, Mr. Donald Sussman, the offer is even more compelling: Mr. Sussman has offered to match all donations, dollar for dollar, given as part of this extended membership drive.

There is no limit to this match, so every new gift will have double the impact. Please do what you can to continue welcoming people to join Slow Food USA at whatever level they can give.

Our voice will be louder than ever as more people join the cause for good, clean and fair food. Thank you again for everything you are doing to grow the movement.

If you care about the environment, rural America and family farmers, please forward this notice to a friend.

Factory farms pose a real threat to our communities, our natural resources and the livelihood of hardworking family farmers who dedicate their lives to raising poultry and livestock in ways that safeguard our air, water and public health. With so many farmers struggling in this tough economy, the last thing they need is to have the USDA funneling money to factory farms. We need everyone who supports family farmers and sustainable farming policies to make themselves heard now.

Please take the next step by forwarding the below link to all your friends and family to join the campaign.

Join us in asking Secretary Vilsack to end guaranteed government loans to factory poultry and hog confinements.

Click here to sign now: <http://fdn.actionkit.com/cms/sign/Factory_Farm_Bailout/>

Thanks again for all you do!

September is nearly over and with it our Membership Drive, where a gift of any amountrenews your membership to Slow Food USA.

This month we have waived our traditional $60 membership fee because we want to grow our movement, adding more voices to our powerful network of change makers demanding a just and healthy food system. We want you back!

With your help we can tell our elected officials they have a duty to look out for America’s children, and that right now they’re letting kids down. School lunch programs are so underfunded that most schools can only afford to serve fast food and junk food – setting kids up for a lifetime of bad eating and bad health.

We need a school lunch program that invests in our children’s welfare, protects kids from the foods that make them sick, and links local schools to their local communities and job force.

It’s up to us to give Congress a reality check, and that’s why we need your help. Stand with Slow Food USA – give what you can and renew today!

Recently, an alliance of over a dozen giant food conglomerates and some industry “experts” came up with a new nutrition labeling program meant to help consumers make “smarter food and beverage choices.”1 You might be surprised what they define as a “Smart Choice”: products like Froot Loops®, Keebler Cookie Crunch® and Lucky Charms®.

Are they serious? In an age when childhood obesity and type II diabetes has become an epidemic, labeling sugar cereals as smart choices is unacceptable. Please join us in telling the FDA and USDA to investigate the Smart Choices® Program and put an end to deceptive labeling.

http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/39?akid=23.15803.IVSK5L&t=1

The new Smart Choices® label, a large, bright green checkmark, is starting to appear on packages of processed food across the country thanks to the help of major corporations like ConAgra, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kraft, PepsiCo, Tyson Foods and Unilever.2 For only $100,000, a company can join the Smart Choices® program3 and “recommend” products that contain as much as 44% sugar to your children4

This new label is a sign of everything that is wrong with food industry driven labeling programs.

According to Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the criteria for the new “smarter food” label is so low that: “You could start out with some sawdust, add calcium or Vitamin A and meet the criteria.”5

Jacobson, who was on the original panel of experts that worked to create the nutritional standards for the Smart Choices® program, resigned last September in disgust because the results were so far in favor of the industry.

Thankfully, the FDA and USDA have taken notice.  The agencies sent a joint letter saying they would “be concerned if any FOP (front of package) labeling systems…had the effect of encouraging consumers to choose highly processed foods…”6 The letter is a good start, but The FDA and USDA need to do more. The Smart Choices program will  encourage bad food choices if it’s allowed to proceed.  And the FDA and USDA have the ability to stop it.

Please sign this petition now and tell the FDA and the USDA that Froot Loops® is NOT a Smart Choice for our children.

http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/39?akid=23.15803.IVSK5L&t=1

Thanks for all you do,

Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! Team

Thanks to Kin for all the work invovled in organizing this event. We gathered lots of signatures for the Slow Food School lunch program and signed up some new members.

Sunnyfield Farm really needs a generator.  The ice storm situation was an extreme hardship for Dan and Ruth.  Not only did they have to milk all the cows by hand, they spent most of those days carrying water to the 40 cows and fowl from quite a distance…..

Please consider making a donation in lieu of your dinner tickets.  Checks can be sent to Slow Food Monadnock, 121 East Road, Greenfield, NH made out to Sunnyfield Farm(memo post:generator fund) or be given directly to Dan and Ruth.

If you have any fundraising ideas please share with me!! ~ Aasta