This is not my big idea, by the way. But what
are we, if not mosaics of stolen pieces of other people's brilliance and inspiration?
Tristram Stuart, a professional gleaner in the UK was horrified at an early age
by the amount of food waste in his school cafeteria, and began feeding the food
scraps to his pigs, and feeding his community some of the often overlooked, but
still delicious pig-parts. He is now a famous gleaner responsible for the many “Feeding the 5000” events that have taken
place around the world.
One local version of this same brilliance comes
in the form of Chris Brown of Brown Family Farm in Bar Harbor. Chris has been
gleaning from Hannaford Supermarket to feed his pigs and support a Community
Meal, which he organizes every Thursday from 3-6pm at
the Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in Bar Harbor. Another pioneer is Stewart
White of White's Farm in Monroe, who until recently would pick up school food
waste to take back to the farm, taking his piglets along for the ride for the
kids to experience. Unfortunately, Stewart is too worried about what is being fed to
the kids to actually feed the scraps to his pigs; he also gets no return
from this activity. However, virtually anyone who has pigs and birds at a
non-commercial level is doing some form of gleaning: that is repurposing food in quality appropriate ways. In order to ensure quality and to support the many decentralized
gleaning systems that are developing throughout Downeast Maine, the Gleaning
Initiative is developing a Community-Based Gleaning Guide to meet
the needs of partners in all food sectors across the region.
For the sake of context, we are in the second
chapter of the Gleaning Initiative's Exploratory Phase. The first chapter was a
time for networking, outreach, community-building, and on-farm gleaning. This
second chapter adds in farmers’ market gleaning, restaurant food waste
prevention, retail-to-pantry, on-farm resource-based consulting, surplus
management, marketing, and transportation. We are expanding to Washington
County, and we have also just recently added our first official processing
experiment.
Deborah Evans of Bagaduce Farm is an incredible
community player. From the beginning, she has bought in to the gleaning idea,
and we have had many a conversation about how to include different versions of The Pig Idea. We worked with David's
Folly Farm to raise money for two pigs for the Tree of Life, thanks to the
Aragosta at the Barn event for which Deborah donated a pig (see June post in A
Girl's Got to Glean). We have had informal gatherings to taste headcheese and
pick the pig heads to make pork tacos. We have grilled pig tails and eaten them
¨like popsicles¨, by suggestion of Aragosta Sous Chef Susannah Taylor. Most
recently, led by Deborah Evans, we had our first official processing workshop
and made a Danish pig liver pate at the Halcyon Grange in North Blue Hill, for
which we had seven participants from the ages of 6 to 65.
To follow the recipe see: http://www.food.com/recipe/danish-pork-liver-pate-13895
As we continue to think about the many creative ways in
which we can rescue and repurpose food that is otherwise going to waste, the question
arose of whether we could use frozen pig liver to make pate. Interestingly
enough, people who were connected to one of the seven volunteers who joined the
workshop at the Halcyon Grange loved it. Others to whom the product was
presented to without context, maybe not so much. Some wise palates say that
frozen pork liver is not ideal, or that purely pork liver pate is in fact liver
pasté, generally accepted as a Northern European traditional food that
would be a very different taste for many of those raised on an American diet. Is
this something worth putting a lot of energy into? What are the health benefits
of eating liver? Maybe we can do it again and have a tasting of the different
variations of the recipe and decide next steps. I can just see Bagaduce Farm celebrating
the 10th Annual Pork Pate Pop-Up Party in Blue Hill Maine.
Imagine... got
liver?
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Check us out in the news!
NATIONAL - http://newsdef.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/08/20/25505636-gleaning-americas-farms-unused-crops-feed-hungry-families#th4131487-c84944874
REGIONAL - http://bangordailynews.com/slideshow/gleaning-program-puts-garden-surplus-on-tables-helps-fight-food-insecurity-in-hancock-county/
LOCAL - http://weeklypacket.com/news/2014/aug/28/gleaning-initiative-connects-farm-produce-with-peo/#.VAYPTUgU7Xc
