When journalist and food editor Michael Pollan wrote “Eating is an ecological act” on the front pages of his 2006 work “The Omnivorous Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” he was betting with well-known agricultural editor Wendall Berry on the fact that dinner is a farmer’s act.
Drew Dumsch, founder and CEO of Saco School of Ecology, says dinner is also an act.
Since 1998, the School of Ecology has been providing short-term immersion courses (one day, one week, one semester) for schoolchildren, adults and families, designed for diners to join the dots between healthy ecological systems in nature and nutrition (and the source). on their plates.
Dismayed by reports I had read about the number of Maine schoolchildren dining their lunch at their socially remote desks or portable plexiglass walls in the cafeteria, I sought to operate in schools of choice that are already practiced in outdoor learning spaces. Be offering students a little more communion at lunchtime.
I met Dumsch at the new Ecology School at Riverbend Farm, a 105-acre plot of Maine Farmland Trust conservation assets bordered on two sides across the winding Saco River. The position is buzzing with an environmentally inclusive structure powered by $14 recent million in the fundraising crusade and guided through The Living Building Challenge Certification, a rigorous standard of structure functionality.
The 9,000-square-foot bedrooms were built with Maine wood and designed to capture water for a closed-circuit water system. Landscaping includes permaculture training gardens. The position will be fed only through 718 solar panels. The acres wrapped in the curves of the river already offer very rich soil, however, the farmer (and former ecology school instructor) Scott Courcelle has planted a lot of canopy crops to prepare dominance for the school’s agroecological production farm that will feed the school’s internal dining room academics (the school calls it the food domain) 3 times a day , when the School of Ecology can accommodate academics in person. Because of the pandemic, Dumsch says his team has produced easily digestible online content called Nature Nuggets.
Agroecology is a technique incorporated into the cultivation, distribution and preparation of food, uses ecological concepts (such as soil health) and social principles (such as combating food insecurity) to design and manage food and agricultural systems. healthy communities through interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment, while ensuring social justice through a sustainable and equitable food system.
If the term is new to me, the concept was first formalized as an agricultural technique in the 1920s, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The sning of commercial agriculture. Some organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, have known agroecology as a practice that can help adequately feed the world in the future.
“Teaching agroecology is a formula for taming thinkers,” Dumsch said.
At the Waldorf School off the coast of Maine, agroecology has long been a key educational concept taught to its K-12 students. Even in pre-COVID, the student framework of approximately 300 students moved much of their outdoor school day in the herb gardens. Vegetables, permaculture and herb forests that make up the school’s Freeport campus, says progression director Lynne Espy. Students participate in planting, harvesting, distributing their crop yields to others who suffer from food insecurity and prepare their own snacks. “between nature and its food is as vital as anything academics are informed here,” Espy said.
In addition to the old outdoor living spaces where cut logs are heritage seats and apple trees and pollinating hotels are the theme, the Waldorf School on the Maine Coast has built indoor outdoor study rooms: transitional canvases near buildings, other more permanent wooden pavilions positioned on the edge of the forest – for each school level The position where students physically eat their lunch – maximum brought to the home for younger diners or bought in the local cafeteria through the best academics of the school – is everyone’s choice, Espy said, based on the agroecological lesson of the day.
CHRISTINE BURNS RUDALEVIGE is a food writer, designer, recipe tester and cook in Brunswick, and is responsible for “Green Plate Special”, an Islandport cookbook based on those columns. You can contact her at [email protected]
Makes 12 handpies
FOR THE MASS:
3 cups (12. 5 ounces) flour
10 tablespoons (5 ounces) butter
3 vegetable shortening
2 teaspoons dried parsley
1 teaspoon floor turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons ice water
3 tbsp milk
TO FILL:
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1/4 cup chopped yellow onion plus cup chopped onion
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped ginger root
2 cups diced combined vegetables (peppers, carrots, zucchini, summer squash, beans, peas)
2 teaspoons floor turmeric
1 teaspoon floor cardamom
1 teaspoon floor coriander
1 teaspoon floor cumin
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly painted black pepper
1 can (13. 5 oz) coconut milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 egg, with 1 teaspoon warm water
To make the dough, combine the flour, butter, vegetable butter, parsley, turmeric and salt in a standing mixer with a paddle and mix until the combination resembles the crumbs. Mix the ice water and milk and pour into the dry combination while the blender rotates at low speed. Mix until a homogeneous dough forms. Leave the dough at room temperature for 30 minutes before use.
To make the filling, heat the coconut oil, then fry the chopped onion, garlic and ginger in a giant frying pan over medium heat until fragrant, 3-4 minutes, add the chopped onion and other chopped vegetables, spices and sugar and cook for 1 minute Add coconut milk and simmer until vegetables are tender and sauce thick , approximately 25 minutes. Allow the aggregate to cool completely and add the lemon juice before preparing the cakes.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Lower the dough to 1/8 thick. Trim 12 circles (5 inches); You can use a bowl as a practical measure. Place about 0. 33 cup of the cooled filling in the middle of the circle. Fold the dough over the filling to form semicircles. Cut the edges of the handpiece. Roast with egg porridge and bake for 15 minutes until golden brown. Serves hot handpies or at room temperature.