The Local Food Report

Harvesting Dinner—and Jewelry—from the Sea.

For years now, farmer Stephanie Rein of the non-profit Sustainable Cape in Truro has been teaching kids about growing food. She does this in multiple elementary schools on the Outer Cape, and when she first started, she had the kids make something she called a seed wish list.

A few years ago, a Philadelphia arborist named Max Paschall read an article about a man named John Hershey. Hershey ran a tree nursery and experimental farm in Pennsylvania in the 1930s.

Helen loved kvass. The flavor, the fizz, everything about this drink made from fermenting stale bread with water and sugar. But when she got home, she forgot about it for almost forty years.

I have a friend in Barnstable who’s always telling me about unusual edible plants, particularly perennials. Recently, he told me he’s planting something new called a Cornelian Cherry.

To plant a fig tree in our climate is an act of faith. Most figs are native to the tropics—and in the heat and sweat of this world they do amazing things. They’ve co-evolved with a wasp that crawls into the fruit and pollinates it from the inside out.

As a fisheries and aquaculture specialist at the Barnstable County Cooperative Extension, Abigail Archer spends a lot of time trying to help the public connect the dots between shellfish, nitrogen, and healthy estuaries. This relationship starts when nitrogen travels through freshwater streams and runoff into our marine environment.

In 2015, Jess Tsoukalas was living in Wellfleet at a rental property that the tenant before her had planted with an abundance of fruit trees.

Carrie Richter of Peach Tree Circle Farm in Falmouth is a self-proclaimed garlic fanatic."It makes every dish better. There's nothing about garlic that I don't like."

This time of year at the farmers markets, lettuce is the variety queen. It comes in heads and leaves, reds and greens, crisp hearts and soft butter leaves. Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to farmers about growing lettuce, and what varieties they like.

It’s high season for a common wild berry with a whole lot of names.

I’ve been hearing about the Herring River Restoration Project since I moved to Wellfleet in 2004. Restoring tidal flow to the 1100-acre saltwater estuary, which was diked in 1908, is an effort that’s been decades in the making — and hands-on work finally began in early 2023.

Have you ever been in a grocery store and seen items marked “WIC approved”? It stands for “women infants and children.” It’s a federally funded state run supplemental nutrition assistance program.

Over the past few years, I’ve started noticing how much I can control certain plants’ productivity by managing their flowers and seeds.

A New Jersey forager visits Falmouth to give a talk on the magic of weeds.

It’s that time of year where many of us are getting summer seedlings in the ground. And I don’t know about you, but my excitement is usually bigger than my garden — I can’t fit everything I want to plant.

Most cooks have heard of broccoli rabe. But what about other rabe varieties? This week on The Local Food Report, Elspeth Hay talks with growers at the Orleans Farmers' Market about this spring delicacy from the Brassica family.

This week, the joys of keeping indoor-outdoor food plants.