ADVA Reunion Update!

Dearest alumni!!!

The reunion is fast approaching and there are over 130 of you signed up! There aren’t many spots left! Register now at www.advanetwork.org!

Many of you are probably wondering “So what are we actually gonna do at the reunion, besides just hang out and have the best time ever?” Good, no – GREAT – question…

Fairs!

We’re having a farmer’s market/craft & program fair/seed swap! What sorts of cool projects have you involved yourself in these days? Do you work for a place that’s so great you have to tell everyone about it? Would you like to see Dr. Shamu’s personally designed line of fashionable grease-stained wear on display?* WHAT?! Come to the reunion’s market fair and find out!

Sign up now to reserve a full table or just space for a pile of fliers for your cool program or business, sell your t-shirts, books or calendars or to barter your special magic sunflower seeds!

Program Fair: Melissa Simon, melsimon@gmail.com

Craft Fair: Shira Salcman, shiranetanya@gmail.com

Farmer’s Market/Seed Swaperoo: Miram Feiner, miriam@isabellafreedman.org or Lauren Weinberg, lsweinberg@gmail.com

Shares!

What will we learn at the reunion? TONS!

We’ve got networking events with master networker Adam Berman, an exclusive tour of the Isabella Freedman solar panels with Adamah alum and solar panel guru Jason Ross, talks about alternative approaches to education, how to maximize your urban growing space and more….

Saturday Night Auction!

Were you really excited to watch Adam creatively raise money from a relatively broke group of 20-somethings? Looking forward to slouching in your chair so he wouldn’t call you out to drop your coffee-a-day habit in exchange for donating to Adamah? Sorry to disappoint, but we’re going in a different direction this year.

Come bid at the Saturday Night Auction instead and support Adamah and Teva! Sign up to auction off lessons, a homemade craft, a date, some friendly cuddle time or anything else clever you can think of. (I don’t know about you, but if Becca Weaver makes it, I’m bidding on it.) Get creative and have fun!

Contact Jakir Manela at jmanela@yahoo.com to sign up for the auction.

See you soon at this epic event! Register before space runs out at www.advanetwork.org

“Growing Together” w/ Adamah

By: Anna (Farm manager and Summer 2007)

Wanted to tell you about a neat, off-farm event we participated in on Sunday at Congregation Bet Am Shalom in White Plains, NY (one of the participating shuls of our White Plains CSA).   A grant from UJA brought together students from Kol Ami, Bet Am Shalom, and the Elm Street Community Center for an afternoon of learning, cooking and eating with Adamah alumni.  With the sing-song chorus of ‘Dirt made my lunch” echoing in the room, the children worked in small groups to prepare a vegetarian chili and apple crisp using ingredients from the Adamah farm.  They talked about healthy eating, cooking, organic farming and the importance of being thankful for our food.  Afterwards, with a magical sleight of hand, an extremely efficient and impressive team of volunteers whisked away the prepared (raw) chils and crisps, and brought out already cooked ones for everyone to enjoy!  After many helpings of chili, apple crisp and vanilla ice cream, the group offered thanks: girls from Elm Street shared a thanksgiving song, and Rabbi Les Bronstein led the whole room in a version of Birkat Hamazon.

For us at Adamah, it was an incredibly inspiring event.  We loved getting to interact with the kids, talk about their favorite vegetables, and see them enjoy a tasty meal from the food that we grow.  It was also an opportunity for us to reconnect, as the folks attending the event were Adamah alumni from several different seasons, who now live in and near New York City.  Adamahniks carry the spark of Adamah with them after they leave the program, and are ever-ready to bring it out and share it; it was wonderful to have such a great occasion to do so!

Alumni Update: Jeff Yoskowitz

By: Jeff Yoskowitz (Summer 2007 alum, Pickle apprentice 2008)

After my summer at Adamah in 2007 I flew to Israel for a yearlong research project. While living there the values and new sensibilities I took away from Adamah stuck with me and fueled my desire to continue composting in the most hostile of settings, volunteer on organic farms and meet the players in the world of Israeli sustainable agriculture.  When I returned from Israel I returned straight to Adamah, to work in the pickle kitchen.

Since leaving Adamah in the winter of 2008 I’ve moved to New York but have taken those sensibilites with me yet again and have been working on a project that works to provide a new market for independent, small-scale and sustainably-minded farmers in Israel.

As many people who join CSAs and eat locally in the Northeast will tell you, there are some things you cannot get locally but you still consider a staple in your kitchen.  One of those items is without a doubt quality olive oil.  Marvin Israelow, a strong supporter of sustainable desert agricultural research in the Negev and founder of Negev Nectars, had been working with an olive grower in the Negev who was fulfilling his lifelong dream to grow in the desert, without harming the land.  With Doron and incredible olive oil in mind, I teamed up with Marvin to bring Negev Nectars to fruition. 

Negev Nectars is a company that operates like CSA and three times a year provides an array of shelf-stable, Israeli products, such as olive oil, dried herbs, date syrup and special desert honeys (eucalyptus and desert flower varieties), as well as others. Negev Nectars distributes to existing CSAs in the New York area, and also ships to individuals’ homes.

The ultimate goal of the company is to support responsible Israeli farmers and their innovative growing practices, such as using brackish water to irrigate their fields, using plants native to the desert (the Barnea olive tree was discovered in the Sinai) and employing the latest in water conservation technology.  All of the profits from the company are going back to reinvest in the land of our partner farms, and while we don’t represent the only market for some of our producers, we are offering vital support, which we hope will be a mark of  success for organics in Israel that will hopefully influence surrounding farms to change their practices, and lessen the footprint of industrial farming.

Another mission of Negev Nectars is to connect many of Israel’s many tourists with our farms and encourage a different kind of travel in Israel, that involves visiting the farmers who grow and produce their favorite products and get to know the land in a unique kind of way.

To become a supporter of sustainable agriculture in Israel and a Negev Nectars member who receives three shipments throughout the year, go to the website and click on join, and if you live near our partner CSAs and want to pick up your packages, just click on one of those locations.  If you’d like the shipments mailed to your home or the home of a friend as a holiday gift, sign up with your address.

And perhaps the greatest aspect of it all is that one of Negev Nectars’ partner CSAs is White Plains, the same CSA where Adamah delivers its vegetables every week and sells its pickles, cheeses and jams once a month. This means that not only do I get to spend time with good friends from Adamah, but together we work to provide the latest and tastiest in gourmet, sustainable and kosher food for the White Plains community.

Pickles are God. Cheese is also God.

Join Isabella Freedman and Adamah at “Everything is God: a Jewish Spiritual Woodstock”, taking place at the Center for Jewish History in New York on Thursday, October 29th. This event celebrates the release of Jay Michaelson’s newest book, Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism. The event will include multiple musicians, a panel of Jewish scholars, and a Jewish organization fair.  Isabella Freedman and Adamah will be there; with literature, stickers, beautiful baskets of books and other goodies to raffle off, and of course, pickles and cheese for sale.

Details:

Center for Jewish History

15 West 16th Street (near Union Square) NYC

6-10 pm Thursday, October 29th

6-7pm: Welcome, ‘Spiritual Woodstock’ organization fair part 1, mingle, book-signing, hang out, get a good seat for the panel

7-8pm: Panel (starts at 7pm sharp!)

8-9pm: ‘Spiritual Woodstock’ organization fair, kosher reception catered by the Village Crown, DJ Dreamkote, book-signing

9-930: Music performance by Darshan & performance by Matthue Roth

Alumni update: Aviv Gerber

By Meg (Greenhouse manager)

I had the pleasure of visiting Aviv Gerber (Summer 2007, Farm Apprentice 2008) last week in Emeryville, CA (outside of Oakland) at the industrial kitchen where he works for a company called Scream Sorbet. Scream Sorbet began in March of 2008, the brain child of three co owners, one of whom is a pastry chef, another a physicist. The idea behind this enterprise focuses on fresh, local, mostly organic fruit and veggies, purchased from the growers at local farmer’s markets. The produce is simply prepared; peppers are roasted and peeled, raspberries are pureed, lemons are juiced; and then blended with beet sugar and frozen. The frozen fruit and sugar mixture is then whipped with the help of a super fancy, high tech Swiss machine, which makes the sorbet as creamy as any ice cream I have ever tried.

Scream sorbet is currently sold only at farmer’s markets, 27 of them in the San Fransisco area. Soon they hope to open a retail shop in downtown Oakland.

Not only did I get to visit the beautiful kitchen where these goodies were prepared, I also got to taste them. The flavors are incredible. There are staples like strawberry, chocolate, and raspberry; and more unique  flavors such as persimmon, maple walnut (made using walnut butter) and fennel citrus. The commitment to seasonality is evidenced in some of the more unusual flavors that Scream produces, including roasted sweet corn, cucumber mint, and beet lemon. We even got to try an experimental pickle flavor!

It seems perfect that Aviv, who spent a season at ADAMAH as the farm apprentice,

growing produce for the first season of the CSA as well as the first commercial pickling season; would go on to work at a local company, with seasonal fruits and veggies, and a product that is sustainably and locally produced. Yay for sorbet!

ADAMAH in the Canadian Jewish News!

Check out this article by Dorothy Lipovenko about ADAMAH in today’s issue of the Canadian Jewish News. The article features various Canadian alumni including Talia Allen (Summer 2009)and  Sabrina Malach (fall 2005) and highlights Risa Strauss’ (Summer 2008) newest project, The Kavannah Garden.

Everybody’s talking about pickles….

ADAMAH alum Jeff Yoskowitz (Summer 2007) returned to ADAMAH last year as one of two pickle apprentices. His love of pickles and ADAMAH has continued to grow after leaving the community, so much so that he continues to help ADAMAH out at various pickle sales in New York. Last weekend Jeff lent a hand at the Lower Eastside Pickle Festival, where Lauren, the current pickle apprentice, Rachel (Summer 2009) and Segulah spent the day talking, tasting and selling our delicious pickles and cheese. Jeff wrote this article for The Atlantic about his experience at last weekend’s pickle festival. Check it out!

In other pickle news, ADAMAH will be selling delicious pickles and cheese at Temple Israel Center (280 Old Mamaroneck Road, White Plains) twice next week! Join us for:

~ADAMAH pickles and cheese at the White Plains Tuv Haretz  Wednesday, October 14th from 4-8 pm

~ TIC’s “Green Day” featuring environmentally friendly workshops, keynote speaker Nigel Savage of Hazon and lots of pickles, dilly beans, kraut, fire kraut, beets, jam, holy chevre, falls village feta, and goatgurt. Sunday, October 18th from 10 am to 1pm.

An update from Adamah’s CSA

Each week Anna, Biz or one of the Adamahniks writes an email to the members of our CSA. These letters update people on what is going on in the fields; how the crops are growing, what the weather is like, what kinds of work we’ve been doing. The letter also includes a list of the veggies in this week’s CSA box. You’ll notice that we’re starting to get into fall vegetables; squash, turnips, carrots and other roots are making their way out of the ground and into people’s refrigerators. The letters also often include tips for using lesser known veggies. Here is last week’s letter, written by the farm apprentice, Biz.

Dear CSA supporters, 

We are in full swing with our fall Adamah group and they are a spunky group of kind hearted, passionate, thoughtful young people.  I feel blessed to have an opportunity to work with another group of wonderful  fellows.  Today we had our first day of the new year in the sadeh.  We harvested and then uprooted all the bean plants.  Anna showed us some of the nitrogen fixing bacteria that forms small nodules on the roots of the plants.  They were abundant!  This means that while the beans were growing they were also giving back some nitrogen to the soil.  

Fall is really peeking its head out from under the morning fog as we watch the mountainside change colors and as we watch our field begin to shift from vegetable production to cover crop.  

The harvest this week will likely include:

onions
garlic
parsley
tatsoi
delicata squash
watermelon
radishes
peppers
swiss chard
carrots
turnips

We hope you enjoy this harvest!  I’ve been making vegetable soup with the turnips, squash and carrots.  Don’t forget to save your veggie scraps to make soup stock!  

Wishing you warmth on these cold mornings, 
Biz

The epic winter squash harvest! Photo by Julia Gazdag

Adamahniks in the New York Times!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/garden/01collective.html?_r=1&hpw

Check out this awesome article in the New York Times on urban communal living. It features both Sara Teitelbaum (Summer 2006) and Johanna Bronk Summer 2009)!

Picklefest! This Sunday, October 4th in NYC!

We’re going to be there! Come visit us and eats lots of delicious pickles (although we all know that ADAMAH pickles are the best)!