Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Be a Conduit for the Ingredient

"A society's bread is the purest expression of its cuisine."
                                                     --Craig Claiborne

Monday, October 24, 2016

Transplanting Traditions

Tri Sa Selling at Market; Photo Credit: Jagmeet Mac

From Dominique Dery, Healthy Communities Specialist at Transplanting Traditions Community Farm:

As winter approaches, we here at Transplanting Traditions Community Farm are getting close to the end of our yearly CSA season -- and this marks the second season that we've had the pleasure of hosting a CSA pick-up at Ninth Street Bakery, on their lovely porch amidst alluring smells of baking breads and treats. Thank you very much, Ninth Street Bakery!

Transplanting Traditions Community Farm is an educational non-profit farm just outside of Carrboro that seeks to address the challenges of food insecurity, access to healthy foods, and economic inequity in the community of refugees from Burma in and around Chapel Hill. Transplanting Traditions believes that increasing the self-reliance of communities in providing for their own food needs is key to creating a more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible food system. Currently 32 refugee families farm at the 8 acre site and 100% of these refugee farmers were farmers in their native Burma.  The farm showcases a mixture of native N.C. crops and over 40 crops native to Burma. At Transplanting Traditions, gourds, turmeric, bitter melons, ginger, taro root, medicinal herbs and lemongrass mingle with heirloom tomatoes, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, arugula, beets and radishes and many more. The farm provides a cultural community space for families to come together, build healthy communities, and continue agricultural traditions in the Piedmont of N.C.

Check out our website to find out more about our projects and volunteer needs or to sign up for your own CSA! And look for TTCF farmers at the Carrboro Farmers' Market and the Chapel Hill Farmers' Market selling as Mu Tar K'Paw Gardens. 

www.TransplantingTraditions.com

And check out this recent audio documentary about the farm made by members of our teen program: 

https://www.southernfoodways.org/gravy/transplanted-traditions-from-southeast-asia-to-north-carolina-gravy-ep-48/

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Sanctuary: When the Lights Go Out

Between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur this year, Matthew, Hurricane Matthew, visited us for a weekend.  On Saturday, the lights went out at Ninth Street Bakery.  Panic-stricken, I called around desperately trying to find refrigeration space for the thousands of dollars of refrigerated ingredients and finished products stored in our coolers and freezers.  In a time that turned out to be much shorter than I feared (about four hours), I was unnerved by the Bakery without it's usual humming mechanical sounds, illuminated only by cell-phone light.  The Bakery has become my second home, and a character with its own personality.  To see it go down in electrical failure, even temporarily, was like seeing a family member struggling to breathe.

During Yom Kippur service yesterday, fasting, I reflected on all that as I put the past year in some kind of context.  At the Judea Reform Yizkor (healing, or memorial) service, a row of Jewish lesbians of all ages and their partners sat in front of me, some with arms around each other.  I wondered what their life has been like this past year, where they have called home, and where they have gone for sanctuary.  For a state that has made itself unfriendly to the LGBT community, I wished to atone for the slings and arrows they must have felt, as a Jew must atone not only for his/her sins, but those of the entire community.

If you are LGBT, we support you, however we can. Come to the Bakery, and ask for me, Ari. We will feed you and give you whatever support is humanly possible.

When the lights go out, if we should ever stop baking bread, we will still be here, North Carolina.  We will fight until the HB2 and all the bigots go home.  It is not the transgender community that has been outed, it is the Republicans in State Legislature who have just showed their hand and how few cards they hold.  If their only hold on the State is underpinned by their capacity to legislate bigotry, we will fight them, and it will be easy to fight them, because their arguments are so vacuous and their platitudes so hypocritical.  This may be a low-water mark in the history of the State, but we will not stop until they are ousted, and North Carolina can become a sanctuary for all.