Modern Farmer

via USDA Photo by by Keith Weller

 Modern Farmer has a great article on the diversity of potatoes and the efforts to expand the number of varieties being grown in the US. It's a great example of what I love about MF; an in-depth article about something not enough people know about, and, in this case, a great partnership. Written by Ferris Jabr, the article notes "This article was reported with support from the UC Berkeley-11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship." So, yay!
But, depressingly, the New York Times is reporting that this wonderful, quirky magazine may by about to disappear. Currently, the magazine part of the operation has suspended after the departure of the magazine’s founder, Ann Marie Gardner, followed by the remainder of the editorial staff. The editorial content has been left to two interns--and they're gone February 1st. 
Sadly, there is a Canadian connection to this story. The Times reports;

At the center of Modern Farmer’s collapse is the magazine’s financial performance. Mr. Giustra, who made money from mining interests, founded Lion’s Gate Entertainment and is a major contributor to the foundation headed by Bill Clinton, had been eager to move into food. He started an Italian olive oil company, invested in both industrial and small-scale farming operations and financed a specialty food company based in San Francisco.

Modern Farmer was part of that portfolio. But after a handful of issues, Mr. Giustra was disappointed in Ms. Gardner’s performance regarding early revenue figures and her ability to deliver additional investors. In the end, the chasm between the two became too wide to bridge and she left.

 Modern Farmer has been a great read. Mr. Giustra has said that the spring edition will be cancelled, but after some new hires, he plans a summer issue. I'll be surprised if he finds writers and editors who can catch that same quirky tone--ranging between global warming and chicken breeds with passion and good humour.

Things We're Losing (1)

Glass Gem Corn. How cool is this?

Apparently this has gone viral from Milkwood Permaculture's

Facebook page. The original caption:

Glass Gem Corn... hands-down winner of the most amazing heirloom corn variety we've seen yet! Carefully stewarded by Seeds Trust in Arizona...

"Seedsman Greg Schoen got this seed from Carl Barnes, a part-Cherokee man, now in his 80's, in Oklahoma. He was Greg's "corn-teacher". Greg was in the process of moving last year and wanted someone else to store and protect some of his seeds. He left samples of several corn varieties, including glass gem. I grew out a small handful this past summer just to see. The rest, as they say is history. I got so excited, I posted a picture on Facebook. We have never seen anything like this - Bill (Seeds Trust)

More photos at http://www.facebook.com/seedstrust

Wheat. The Dominant Grain Just Gets Better

Wheat is one of the dominant grains grown on this planet, and most traditional cuisines have been forced to adopt it into themselves. Wheat opened up the Canadian west, allowing the prairie provinces to become the "breadbasket of the world" back in the middle of the last century. Wheat is one of the heavyweights, no doubt.
Now, wheat's just got a shot in the arm--improved salt tolerance. The University of Adelaide announced on Monday 12 March 2012:

A team of Australian scientists involving the University of Adelaide has bred salt tolerance into a variety of durum wheat that shows improved grain yield by 25% on salty soils.
Using 'non-GM' crop breeding techniques, scientists from CSIRO Plant Industry have introduced a salt-tolerant gene into a commercial durum wheat, with spectacular results shown in field tests. Researchers at the University of Adelaide's Waite Research Institute have led the effort to understand how the gene delivers salinity tolerance to the plants.
The research is the first of its kind in the world to fully describe the improvement in salt tolerance of an agricultural crop - from understanding the function of the salt-tolerant genes in the lab, to demonstrating increased grain yields in the field.

This is actually important news. A significant part of the world's soils have a high salinity. And irrigated soil sees its salinity rise also. This latter could be addressed with better soil management practices, but the drive toward repeated cropping without fallow periods means that much of our land will continue to degrade. And if its being irrigated, its salinity will increase.
Domestication and breeding has narrowed the gene pool of modern wheat, leaving it susceptible to problems with saline soils. But early wheat cultivars had better resistance to salty soils. The researchers at U Adelaide used conventional breeding to move the salt-tolerant gene (TmHKT1;5-A) into a modern cultivar. By using traditional practices, rather than modern gene splicing, means that the new variety will be able to be planted anywhere without concerns or resistance being raised.
The salt-tolerant durum wheat shows no yield-penalty from the breeding. Yields remain about the same under normal planting conditions, and show as much as 25% increased yield in salty conditions. Which means that the new variety will be able to be sown uniformly in a field, regardless of whether or not there are patches of saltier soil.

Dr James, who led the field trials, says: "While most studies only look at performance under controlled conditions in a laboratory or greenhouse, this is the first study to confirm that the salt-tolerant gene increases yields on a farm with saline soils.

The researchers have taken the next step and have bred the salt-tolerance gene into wheat cultivars used for making bread. 

Bletting Medlars

Yeah, there's a couple of words you usually don't see together. Or at all, really. But they are both words and they really do belong together.

photo compliments of : http://www.andrewdunnphoto.com/

The medlar is a fruit-bearing tree more familiar to those reading old English literature. The fruits of this tree are pomes, and as the word suggests, are related to apples and pears.

Medlar fruit photo from historicfood.com

I noticed this small (~1.5 metre) tree outside St. Saviours church and by the end of summer couldn't help but see the fruiting bodies all over it. Medlars are about 25mm to 50mm across and not quite as deep, making them an oblate spheroid.
I had no idea what the tree was, until one day Paula came by with me. "Hey!" said she, "you've got a medlar tree! You know, those fruit are supposed to be edible...." So we picked the fruit and took them home. I peeled one and tried the flesh. It might have been edible, bu tit certainly wasn't something I was going to eat. Just this rock-hard starchy thing.
So after some research (or, at least, reading the Wikipedia page for medlars), I discovered that the fruit had to be bletted before eating. Bletting is when certain fleshy fruits, after ripening, begin to decay and ferment. Much like an apple bruising, the flesh changes colour and undergoes physical changes. In the medlar, the flesh changes from white and hard to a soft, dark brown paste. At the same time, the starches convert to sugars, and the fruit becomes quite tasty.
There may be ways to hurry the process (one suggestion was freezing, but I've no back-up for that), but we simply laid the medlars out on a tea towel on a large baking tray and left them there in the kitchen. Two, maybe three weeks later I noticed some darkening patches on the skin and cut one open.

medlar part way through the bletting process

The paste is so tasty! The starches are being converted to sugars, and the hard texture is gone. We left the medlars a few more days until they were thoroughly bletted, and then Paula coarsely chopped them and boiled them down. After passing them through a jelly bag and adding sugar, they made a lovely deep transparent brown jelly that has an earthy, unusual taste that is lovely.