Result: not so many dead wild trees; fewer monocrop tree plantations, reduced use of  horrendous paper-processing chemicals. To say nothing of less giant log truck exhaust.

In other words, I’ve been cleaning out a few bookcases, bookcases that haven’t been cleaned out for quite a while. In addition to books, photographs and assorted memorabilia, they contained folders that I’d been thinking were full of old manuscripts but were in fact full of self-published food newsletters.

Tons – well, many pounds – of food newsletters. Newsletters beyond counting, from gifted writers and the prose-challenged, from good cooks and from people who should not be allowed near kitchens except in restaurants.

Old copies of keepers like The Art of Eating, Simple Cooking and Food History News will go to the Cushing library (which may be the very last library on earth willing to accept such things). The rest – into the recycle bin, with gratitude that there is finally something reasonably benign to do with unwanted paper.

Just because he looks great sitting on the breakfast table when you come around the corner in the morning does not mean a point-and-shoot can cope with a black cat in the bright sunshine.

Possibly an acquired taste, but I’m lovin’ it. You can sign up here.

Some examples from the comparatively recent past

Very affecting in its way, but as the story itself points out, you’d probably have to look long and hard for anyone who regarded this as a major loss to gastronomy.

Rugged, I guess, would be the word for Maine sardines: thick, meaty, insistently fishy without being otherwise flavorful,  packed in soy oil, in tomato sauce, in screaming yellow mustard. The only person I know who eats them is Lois, and I’m sure she does it more out of habit – and loyalty to local products – than anything else.

When I moved to Maine in the early 70’s, the once numerous sardine plants had been closing for years. But there were still 21 of them, including a couple right up the road in Rockland and another right across the river in Port Clyde. That’s what they were called, sardine plants, I don’t think I ever heard anyone from Maine call them canneries.

Nor did anyone think they were particularly romantic. The only good thing to be said for them was that they provided jobs, hard, dangerous, smelly jobs for women (I think the packers were all women) who didn’t have other options. There were no benefits. It was just classic piecework; the faster you packed the more you made, and being really, really fast was a source of considerable pride as well as a pretty good income.

Of course not being really, really fast was depressing, emotionally as well as financially, and the constant need for greater speed caused a great many painful, often serious injuries. Before automated processing, the first thing packers had to do as fast as possible was cut every fish down to size with heavy, razor-sharp shears.

With those shears we arrive at the gastronomic aspect: Maine sardines are not little fish, they’re the tails of mid-size herring. The rest of the fish (Clupea harengus), anywhere from 1/2  to ¾ of the whole, was sometimes sliced and canned as “fish steaks,” but most of it was sold to lobster fishermen for bait.

Other than being less expensive, Maine sardines simply can’t compete with alternatives like Scandinavian bristlings, aka very young sprats (Sprattus sprattus). Although bristlings are as fishy as the Maine article, their flavor is more interesting, with nutty overtones, and the texture is smoother without being mushy. Furthermore, they’re tiny, so eating them bones and all does not require pretending to enjoy the gritty crunch you get with bigger fish.

Please note there are 16 to 22 little fish in there. Maine sardines come 3 to 6 per can. Completely different animal.

The received wisdom seems to be that there’s no such thing as a “real sardine,” that almost anything small and oily (and canned) can qualify. But there IS a fish called Sardina pilchardus, caught among other places in the Mediterranean near Sardinia. It’s a sardine when small, a pilchard when  full grown, and it’s – usually – the fish chefs mean when they’re going on about fresh sardines.

Somewhere around 1980 the UN’s Codex Alimentarius Commission decided that there were 19 species that could be canned as sardines, but all except S. pilchardus had to have some kind of qualifier (country, other place name or common name of the species) on the label. Sounds like first among equals to me. Plus I’m pretty sure S. pilchardus was the first sardine to be canned – in France, in 1826.

Something unfortunate has happened; my brain has been hijacked. Can’t get the song out of my head:

Oh my Darling, Oh my darling, Oh my daarling Clementine…sardine boxes without topses sandals were for Clementine.

Only cure is to go out and plant some sweet peas, hoping I’m not too late instead of too early.

Final note: Back in those early days in Maine there was a common phrase of resignation for when one had a less-than-splendid job like being a motel housekeeper. “Oh well,” the person would say, “better than cuttin’ fish.” The hard working people who did it hoped for better for the next generation, and so do I.

Maine sardine can photo courtesy Maine Maritime Museum.

But I can’t resist, because it’s such a classic example of the all-knowing self-righteous preaching that helps the processed food industry keep its stranglehold on the American diet.

Some are ok, some aren't. Can you guess which of these foods you're supposed to make yourself, or never heat - or not eat at all?

Left to right: Back row – Butter, smoked Spanish paprika, olive oil, hard cider, whole wheat flour, center – local cheese: Barat, from Sprout Creek Farm, and Shaker Blue, from Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, (home made cherry preserves, here for another reason), cocoa, thick cut rolled oats.

Having a contest or challenge is widely recommended as a way of driving traffic to one’s blog, so I will follow the “Real Food” example and issue a challenge of my own: how many logical contradictions, dubious pronouncements, definitional confusions and needless make-work can you find, between the challenges themselves and the responses of those who took them up?

Why, for instance, must you make your own fresh sauerkraut instead of buying same? Why must you render your own lard if the only acceptable raw material is coming from the sort of butcher who’s almost surely selling rendered lard already?

Why is the soft cheese made by a local dairy somehow non-U, while the cheese you make at home from the very same milk is just fine?

Have to confess my challenge probably won’t have a prize, though the how-to-drive-traffic people say that’s a very important aspect. It’s not that I’m stingy, it’s that I can’t bear the thought of dwelling on this one moment longer than necessary and can’t imagine you don’t also have better things to do with your time.

But if entries do appear, and there are more than, say, ten of them, the prize will be a jar of cherry preserves, processed right here at home by me. Be warned the preserves contain a small amount of white sugar, the devil incarnate, and were flavored with a vanilla bean that was of course quite complexly processed.

Last time I looked, American consumers were still buying 300,000,000 (yes, three hundred million) boxes of Jello every year. That’s Jello, festival of noxious artificial flavors and colors. Suggesting that the best way to graduate to something better isn’t to mix fresh fruit juice with unflavored gelatin but rather to source some local calves’ feet and start boiling isn’t just silly, it’s counterproductive. Or it is if your goal is to help people see how easy it can be to eat well, and thus create a mass movement toward purer, less processed food.

Important Note: as far as I know this example is fictional, invented for point-making purposes. If she really did say you ought to try making your own gelatin I don’t want to know about it. Please.

This is a revision of an earlier post that contained inaccuracies.

Gray Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor) *

The way to blog brilliantly has been being demonstrated for a couple of years now by Margaret Roach, over at A Way to Garden. You wouldn’t necessarily know it from looking at my efforts, but she has been an ongoing inspiration ever since she started.

As the upgrades here continue I keep thinking I’ll find the right time to say thank you – after I get the new link list up, say, or post the long planned shopping page. But how bogus is that? The time to say thank you is always right now, so Thank You, Margaret, thank you very much.

If you know her, you know why the gratitude picture is of a frog. If you don’t, that’s one more reason to trot over there and have a look.

* I’m saying it’s Hyla versicolor on account of the markings and because it was tiny, about an inch long, max. But it might be a small Green Tree Frog, H. cinerea, not so much because it’s green (the gray ones can also be green) as because it was right there in the garden on a hollyhock leaf instead of hiding where it couldn’t be seen.

I’m happy to tell readers of Bill’s Coyote Post (and everyone else in the area) about a great opportunity to learn more, right from the muzzles of the top experts:

“Wile E. Coyote In Your Backyard: What You Should Know About Canis latrans”

will be presented free and open to the public on Thursday, March 4 at 4:30 p.m., in the Student Lounge in Vanderlyn Hall, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, NY,  sponsored by the Catskill Institute for the Environment (CIE).

The panel will include Dr. Roland Kays, Curator of Mammals at the NYS Museum, who will speak on “New York’s Coyote/Coydog/Coywolf: What is it and how did it get here?;” Dan Bogan, Ph.D. candidate, Cornell University, discussing “Suburban coyote behavioral ecology: Implications for ecology and management;” and Robin Holevinski, Ph.D. candidate at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, who will address “Foraging Ecology and Population Status of Eastern Coyotes.”

For information and weather confirmation, call 845-687-5231.

Dr. Kays is the Curator of Mammals at the New York State Museum where he studies the ecology and evolution of temperate and tropical carnivores. He is the co-author of a recent paper on coyote-wolf hybridization, and of the Mammals of North America (Princeton University Press Field Guide, 2009).

Dan Bogan has studied coyote behavioral ecology since 2001.  His current research addresses coyote behavior and management recommendations for suburban landscapes.

Robin Holevinski worked as a wildlife biologist with the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation for several years before pursuing her doctoral research on eastern coyotes. Her presentation will focus on assessing coyote kill rates of white-tailed deer using GPS collar technology, and determiningcoyote population status with the use of non-invasive genetic techniques.

The CIE, established in 1998, is a consortium of representatives of colleges, institutions and individuals that coordinates symposia and special programming to promote environmental awareness, education and scientific cooperation in the Catskill region. For more information, contact Dr. Morton (Sam) Adams, chairman, madams@mail.nysed.gov, or go to the Catskill Institute.

If you haven't seen something like this yet, it's only a matter of time

Coyote Photographs by Susan Scheid

Spotted before last Christmas, offered in plenty of time for the lucky recipient to have Washington, Lincoln or Obama  - sorry, Texas, no Reagan –  to be in full greenery by Presidents Day. Still not on the clearance counter, however.

According to wikipedia “The Chia Pet was first used on September 8, 1977, and aside from its name, the Chia Pet is not a patented invention. The first Chia Pet was the ram, marketed and distributed in 1982.” They must mean trademarked; you can’t patent a name.

Bust embellishment notwithstanding, chia (salvia hispanica) isn’t an ornamental. It’s a food crop,  native to Central America, where its highly nutritious seeds have been part of the diet for at least 3000 years.

As far as I know, the Aztecs – who were eating a lot of chia when the conquistadores got there – didn’t adorn their terra cotta sculptures with wooly green mats. But they may have been missing an opportunity.  Joseph Enterprises, the company that manufactures the pets, reportedly had 98,000 employes in 2008.

Jeff Koons’  Puppy (1992) has already sucked up all the air in the irony department, so I have nothing else to say except don’t despair. The planting time that revives hope and brings change is just around the corner.

please pretend these are celebratory fireworks

The Cornucopia Institute, which led one of the largest petition drives, has a good report on what happened and why. The New York Times story is shorter but perfectly adequate if you’re not (yet, just stick with me) a farm policy geek.

This is the shortest version of all. At the heart of the new milk standards is a requirement that all dairy cattle be on pasture for the full length of the local grazing season or at least 120 days. Adios to the oxymoron: factory organic dairy.

I’m planning to write and say thank you, on the theory that pats are deserved and will be appreciated. People who run these agencies seldom get any feedback from the public except demands and complaints. Here’s the contact info. if you’d like to join me.

My own – completely unsubstantiated – theory is that individual letters carry a tiny bit more weight than those aggregated by activist organizations, so I wrote directly to the relevant USDA comment page. My letter follows, in case you’re curious, though I’m not sure why I bothered to make any arguments. It’s highly unlikely anyone will actually read them. But somebody will note whether I’m for or against, and that’s why writing matters. Deadline for comments is 2/16.

The USDA’s comment page  doesn’t give you a whole lot of space to make your case.  No matter, under the circumstances.

(salutation is on the  form)

Short Version: GE contamination of feed crops is both anti-competitive and environmentally harmful.

Anti-competitive: Organic feed contaminated by GE traits cannot, by USDA’s own regulations, be used by organic dairies.

Result 1: organic dairies have to find alternative sources and pay more for the now-scarcer feed. Practical outcome: non-organic dairies are given a competitive advantage by the USDA.

Result 2: Organic alfalfa farms are effectively taxed for being organic. If their product is contaminated they suffer large losses that do not befall their competitors. (Not enough words permitted to discuss the inability of liability actions to even this playing field.) Practical outcome: failure of some organic farms, reduction of their farmland’s value and its probable sale at a bargain price to the neighboring GE using farms that caused the reduction in value. Double advantage to GE users.

Environmental damage:

1. Glyphosate resistant weeds are already a well documented problem; encouraging large-scale glyphosate use in comparatively uncontaminated ecosystems is likely to result in more of these weeds.

2. It is a given that some farmers will fail to comply with whatever safety practices are mandated. There is no practical way to avoid this, thus no efficacy – anywhere – for the safety practices. Unleashing “just a little” altered DNA is like being a little bit pregnant.

Damage to consumers:

Price of organic products goes up for no reason connected to weather, transportation costs or other reasonably expected hazards of farming. USDA is thus again advantaging non-organic entities.

For these reasons, I believe it is anticompetitive and environmentally harmful to grant unregulated status to Glyphosate-tolerant alfalfa and I hope such status will be denied.

Thank you