food museum blog

Happy Tercentenary Birthday, Carl!

Carl Linneaus, the Swedish botanist and medical doctor who codified the naming of plants and animals, is celebrating his 300th birthday today, May 23. Well, the rest of the world is.

According to an informative website from the University of California Museum of Paleontology, Linneaus is not only credited with establishing a set and simplified pattern of binomial naming--a Latin name for the genus, and a type of shorthand name for the species--but he was also a gifted teacher. One of his most famous students during his time at the University of Uppsala was Daniel Solander who sailed with Captain James Cook on his first voyage around the world, bringing back to Europe the first plant specimens from the South Pacific and Australia.

Linneaus' farm at Hamarby near Uppsala is a food heritage site one can visit today, as is the first botanical garden established in Sweden in 1655.  1300 species grow here, all familiar to Linneaus. The garden has been restored to a design dictated by him in 1745.

Linneaus was a controversial figure in his lifetime, accused of being too sexually explicit in his system.  And he started out calling humans  Homo diurnis , or "(hu)man of the day," but later settled on the more flattering, Homo sapiens, "wise human."  Hoping to boost Sweden's economy, he tried and failed to grow coffee, rice, bananas and cacao, plants that were decidedly inappropriate for his country's chilly climates.

Dr. Jude Philp of the University of Sydney sums up Linneaus this way: "Linneaus was an extraordinary man. He was a doctor who wrote on everything from the evils of coffee and tobacco, to syphilis and healthy eating. He was an astute political person with royal contacts and connections with the Dutch East India Company. He was a teacher, gardener, traveller and a magnificent self-promoter."

( Portrait of Linneaus thanks to the Swedish Museum of Natural History,  http://linnaeus.nrm.se/botany/fbo/welcome.html.en)

Barging into Veggies

As I launch my own green revolution here in the high desert--growing veggies in large pots and bins, in order to conserve water--I read with great delight about the Science Barge  moored at Pier 84 in New York City's Hudson River. It's growing veggies with recirculated water and no pesticides and is intended as a model, along with green rooftop growing, for sustainable urban agriculture.

Designed by the New York Sun Works Center for Sustainable Engineering, the Science Barge operates this way, according to a report on CNET news:

"Powered by a combination of solar energy from photovoltaic panels, five wind turbines and a generator that runs on biodiesel and waste vegetable oil (commonly known as "french fry grease"), the Science Barge generates zero carbon dioxide emissions.

An on-board greenhouse uses hydroponic technologies to grow vegetables using a quarter of the water that traditional agriculture would. Inside the greenhouse, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, herbs and lettuce are germinated in "rock wool" made from basaltic rock spun into cotton candy-like fibers. They're grown using recirculated water, and a mix of coconut husks and rice hulls--waste products that otherwise would be sent to landfills--in lieu of soil."

( Barge pic from http://nysunworks.org/science_barge/about_the_barge.html)

Stone Barns Center in New York--Splendor in the Snow

In the good old days, if you were a Rockefeller and you wanted to have only unpasteurized milk on your table, you hired an architect and built your own fine damn dairy on your property. That's what John D. Rockefeller, Jr. did in the 1930's on his family's huge landholdings in Pocantico Hills, New York.

Today the dairy barns and some 80 acres of their surroundings comprise the stellar non profit Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, a place made possible in 2004 through the largesse of David Rockefeller, to honor his wife, Peggy, who died in 1996. Peggy Rockefeller was a hands on farmer who created, and oversaw more than one Rockefeller family farm in New York's Hudson Valley. She also founded the American Farmland Trust. 

Stone Barns is firmly committed to sustainable farming, based on traditional and even artisanal methods, but all with a modern spin. And food education is a key part of the mix. ( We include Stone Barns in our list of food heritage sites--an example of farming that honors the past and yet seeks out the most reasonable high tech approaches available today.)

The day we visited, a cold rain on its way to becoming snow was driving against the folks enjoying lunch outside the tiny cafe--we joined them and tasted assorted winter root vegs including Jerusalem artichokes in a salad built on cooked wheat grains. This was after our tour of the impeccable greenhouse---lined with young green salad sprouts and a perfect tribute to the upcoming St. Patrick's Day. The young woman working there sported a "Farmy" tee shirt and said she had never been happier. A former employee of the parks department, she said she had always "wanted to grow food instead of flowers."

Stone Barns is working hard on its educational mandate--even in the supposedly elite counties just up river from Manhattan according to ed director Judy Fink, "wealthy and poor commingle." Younger student visitors learn not only what sustainable means and how to pluck greens, but also explore their way around a white tablecloth and cutlery. Apparently people of all ages touch base at Stone Barns. While we ate lunch a bevy of Italians, including a couple of chefs, arrived in the heavy snow, to take a spin through the place.

Alas, we didn't get a chance to eat at Blue Hill, the handsome high end restaurant at Stone Barns that features the finest of the food produced there, augmented by the finest of the food produced in the relatively immediate area--their reservation list involves a two months  wait. Chef Dan Barber and his crew have made their reputation by stressing the actual fresh raw materials they work with, rather than fanciful manipulation of sauces and spices. This review from the NYTimes attests to that approach.

As we drove away, I recalled a visit to another magnificent  farm originally created by old American money--1400 acre Shelburne Farms in Vermont, once a Vanderbilt holding, now an educational center and food heritage site whose mission is " to cultivate a conservation ethic." More on this later.

If you visit Stone Barns, do not bypass the shop--its buyers have rounded up superb farm/gardening/culinary items in one spot.