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The intent behind ORIGINS, a speaker series, was to highlight the farmers, fisherman, producers, and makers behind the local food movement in the Mid-Atlantic region. Spike Gjerde started his first restaurant, Woodberry Kitchen, with a commitment to local growers and producers. He and his team have returned more than $2.1 million annually to the local economy during the last several years.

This episode will take a closer look at the economics of the local food system from both a retailer’s perspective and an Eastern Shore aggregator called Chesapeake Harvest, based in Easton, Maryland. In Episode #27, we continue the conversation with two local farmers, Dave Liker from Gorman Farms and Mark Toigo from Toigo Orchards.

This episode’s panelists are Scott Nash and Tracy Ward.

Scott Nash started MOM’s Organic Market at the age of 22 with an initial investment of $100 as a home delivery business out of his mom’s garage. On July 2nd 1987, MOM’s made its first sale delivering to a customer who lived in Rockville, MD. Since then, MOM’s has grown to become one of the nation's premier chains of family owned and operated organic grocery stores. MOM’s has nineteen stores in DC, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

Tracy Ward has over 30 years of experience as an economic and community development leader, devoting her career to community transformation and change through collaborative public/private partnership and cross-disciplinary strategies. In 2004, Tracy founded Urbanite, an award-winning glossy magazine with a circulation of over 60,000 in the Baltimore metropolitan area.   After shuttering Urbanite in 2012, Tracy took a year off to work on farms and learn about our local food system.  In 2014, as executive director of the Easton Economic Development Corporation, Tracy started Chesapeake Harvest, a sales, marketing and branding organization committed to increasing sales of locally and sustainably grown food products in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

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This episode will be on foraging in the mid-Atlantic area and features two longtime foragers, Jeff Long and Tom Mueller.

Jeff has been an amateur mycologist for 30 years. He has been foraging mushrooms for 30 years and truffle hunting for almost 8 years now.  He is past president of the Mycological Association of Washington, DC and is currently the only living lifetime honorary member of that organization.  Jeff also lectures and speaks about mushrooms and truffles at least a couple of times a year. 

Tom Mueller, Wild Edible Forager is a CIA trained chef and co-owner of a catering company for 25 years focusing on local and organic ingredients before it was in vogue.  A lifetime of enjoying nature, Tom started foraging for mushrooms in the late 1980’s and began providing to restaurants in 2012.  Tom has been foraging full time since 2017 focusing on wild mushrooms (about 65 varieties) and wild edibles including ramps, wild asparagus and spice bush berries.

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This ORIGINS episode will be about the future of fish farming as well as its current status. Our panel consists of Jillian Fry, TJ Tate, Mark Ely and Jesse Blom.

Jillian Fry directs the Seafood, Public Health & Food Systems Project at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. The project aims to increase awareness, expand the relevant evidence base, and advance policy goals in support of a healthy, equitable, and sustainable supply of farmed and wild seafood products. Jillian is a researcher and educator who believes in the importance of effective science communication. She received her Master’s of Public Health degree from the University of New Mexico and doctorate from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Jesse Blom is an educator with a great interest in agriculture and the environment. He uses aquaponics, the symbiotic production of fish and plants, and other forms of urban agriculture, as teaching tools for people of all ages at the Food System Lab @ Cylburn. Jesse received an M.S. in Freshwater Sciences from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Dartmouth College.

Mark Ely is the owner of Limestone Springs Preserve located in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. Limestone Springs is the largest private aquaculture facility in Pennsylvania. They grow Rainbow trout for their recreational fishing preserve located on its 25 acre farm, also for private stocking, and they process trout for the food industry. Mark currently sits on the PennAg Industries (PA aquaculture trade association) and the US Trout Farmers Assoc. board of directors. June will mark his 30th year in the aquaculture industry.

Tj Tate is the Founder of Seafood.Life a strategic company focused on the defining, implementing and executing solutions to secure the future needs of our seafood consumption. TJ’s goal is to unify cross-sector messaging regarding responsible aquaculture on a global scale. TJ is rooted in her beliefs that a responsible ecosystem of wild and farmed seafood holds the power to change our futures and attain goals of food security, economic gains and maintaining cultural connections to the ocean.

TJ has worked in the world of fisheries for over 18 years beginning her career in Aquaculture and fisheries working at Hubbs Research Institute. She was previously the Director of Seafood Sustainability for the National Aquarium, Founder and Director of the first brand of responsibly harvested and traceable wild caught fish from the Gulf of Mexico called Gulf Wild.

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Our discussion tonight will be on natural sweeteners. We are delighted to welcome Joseph and Margaret-Ann Burkholder, who are the owner/farmers of Compass Winds Sorghum, based in Dayton, Virginia, outside of Harrisonberg. Sorghum can be grown either for grain or for crushing into molasses. “Sorghum moved west over the Blue Ridge with the pioneers,” says Joseph. “It was more adaptable to our climate than sugar cane, and it became the first sustainable sweetener of the frontier.”  

Our other panelist is Chris Krantz who is the owner of the HT Krantz Honey Company in Frederick, Maryland.  Chris started his company with 2 hives and now has close to 400. His focus is mainly on bulk honey, package bees and honeybee queens. Their queen bee mating program is at the heart of their success.

You’ll also hear from Alex Weiss from Caledonia Spirits who provided us with our punch this evening. Alex started his journey into distilled spirits via a degree in Botany and a fierce love and respect for agriculture and the relationships humans forge with their environment. After a two year stint studying this subject in China, Alex moved to New York City and began managing sales for a grass-fed beef producer in Central NY. Eventually, Alex was approached by the founder and master beekeeper for Caledonia Spirits to come on board as a Brand Ambassador, becoming the Sales Director a year later and helping to grow the distribution footprint to 29 States and five countries.  Currently, Caledonia Spirits employs more than 40 people in Vermont and up and down the East Coast, while making a positive impact on our community and agricultural landscape.

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Michael is a noted culinary and cultural historian and the creator of AFROCULINARIA, the first blog devoted to African American historic foodways and their legacies. He has been honored by FIRSTWEFEAST.com as one of the twenty greatest food bloggers of all time and named one of the “Fifty People Who Are Changing the South”, by Southern Living magazine and one of the “Five Chetavists to Watch” by TakePart.com. Michael’s work has appeared in EBONY, the GUARDIAN and on NPR. He is also a Smith fellow with the Southern Foodways Alliance, a TED fellow and speaker and the first Revolutionary in Residence at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

His recently published book won the 2018 James Beard Foundation’s Book of the Year award. The book explores the history of southern cuisine and is entitled: The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South.

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McKay Jenkins has been writing about people and the natural world for 30 years. His new book is Food Fight: GMOs and the Future of the American Diet (Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2017).

He is also the author of ContamiNation (Avery, 2016, previously published in hardcover by Random House as What’s Gotten Into Us), which chronicles his investigation into the myriad synthetic chemicals we encounter in our daily lives, and the growing body of evidence about the harm these chemicals do to our bodies and the environment.

Jenkins holds degrees from Amherst, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and Princeton, where he received a PhD in English. A former staff writer for the Atlanta Constitution, he has also written for Outside, Orion, The New Republic, and many other publications. Jenkins is currently the Cornelius Tilghman Professor of English, Journalism and Environmental Humanities at the University of Delaware, where he has won the Excellence in Teaching Award. He lives in Baltimore with his family.

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Our panelists include Sarah Gordon and Sheila Fain, owners and founders of Gordy’s Pickle Jar; Meaghan and Shane Carpenter, the owners and founders of Hex Ferments; and Lauren Sandler, the Director of Preservation for Foodshed, Inc.

Sarah Gordon and Sheila Fain are the founders of Gordy’s Pickle Jar, the much-loved, small batch pickle company from Washington DC. Founded in 2011, Gordy’s quickly become a DC favorite not only for its delicious product line but also for its commitment to craftsmanship, community, and sustainability. The brand has received numerous accolades from the press, including the Washington Post, Food & Wine, Bloomberg, and The Food Network, among others (http://www.gordyspicklejar.com).

HEX Ferments are Maryland-based food alchemists, dedicated to sourcing from local and organic farms. They believe in creating partnerships from these providers of sustenance to create unique ferments that support our individual health as well as the health of our local foodshed. HEX ferments employs a traditional process – they do not use heat or white vinegar – so that they’re creations are teeming with beneficial bacteria, healthy acids and enzymes. They balance old world quality and flavor with modern interpretations, and choose optimal, nourishing ingredients. HEX Ferments is a certified B-Corporation, 100% Wind Powered. (http://www.hexferments.com)

Lauren Sandler is the production manager of Canningshed, a Maryland-approved food manufacturing facility that produces seasonal jams, jellies, and hot sauce, as well as fermented, dried, and frozen foods.  Born and raised in Baltimore, Lauren worked as a line cook at Franny;s Restaurant in Brooklyn, NY, where she developed a commitment to working with local growers and produce. Everything made at Canningshed is sourced from independent Mid- Atlantic growers, from the lavender dried for tea to the vinegar used in Snake Oil Hot Sauce.  Lauren and her team are particularly committed to minimizing food waste: beyond constantly exploring new ways to use the generally unused parts of food (from cherry pits to fibrous leek greens), Canningshed ferments, cans, dries, freezes, and juices, so that they can provide seasonal local produce year long.

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Our four panelists are Janna Howley, Director of Operations, Grow and Fortify: Alex Weiss, Sales Director, Caledonia Spirits; Monica Pearce and Kyle Pfalzer, co-owners and founders of Tenth Ward Distillery.

Food, farms and economic development have been Janna Howley’s passions since the early 2000s. Janna is currently the Director of Operations for Grow & Fortify, which manages the Maryland brewers, distillers and wineries associations. In her previous position she worked for the USDA National Organic Program’s Accreditation and International Activities Division, where she conducted auditing and accreditation activities related to organic certifiers and international partners.

Alex Weiss started his journey into distilled spirits via a degree in Botany and a fierce love and respect for agriculture and the relationships humans forge with their environment. After a two year stint studying this subject in China, Alex moved to New York City and began managing sales for a grass-fed beef producer in Central NY. Eventually, Alex was approached by the founder and master beekeeper for Caledonia Spirits to come on board as a Brand Ambassador, becoming the Sales Director a year later and helping to grow the distribution footprint to 29 States and five countries. 

As a nature lover and wildlife enthusiast, Monica Pearce built her career in the conservation field.  Monica has a BS in environmental science and policy from the University of Maryland and her Master’s in natural resource management from Virginia Tech. Prior to the launch of Tenth Ward, she worked for a few non-profits and even spent a year in the Galapagos volunteering for a biological station. With inspiration from the growing spirit industry, she chose to make the crazy leap into booze manufacturing.

Kyle Pfalzer is originally from Long Island, but came to the Frederick area to major in the Civil War at Shepherd University.  The job market for Civil War studies on Long Island being a little slow, he decided to stay (and is very glad he did.)  He grew up in a household that appreciated good beer which introduced him to craft booze.  He took up homebrewing as a hobby, and when presented with the opportunity to start a distillery it was a no brainer.

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In this episode of ORIGINS, we’ll take a closer look at women who have chosen farming as a career and as a way of life. According to the Maryland state census in 2012, there were 2,296 women farm operators in our state – a 20% increase from the 2002 census. We know women have always played important roles on the family farm but increasingly women are turning to farming on their own.

Our first farmer is Lisa Wheeler Duff, owner of Oak Spring Farm is a small, diversified farm in Freeland, MD in northern Baltimore County. The mission of Oak Spring Farm is to provide families and the community with organic, wholesome fruits, vegetables and humanely raised eggs.

Our second panelist is Alison Worman, who grew up gardening in the city of Milwaukee, and came to Baltimore to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art. She stumbled upon Whitelock Community Farm through MICA’s Urban Farming class and has been working there ever since. The farm began in 2010 when Reservoir Hill residents converted a vacant lot into an active urban farm with the help of hundreds of volunteers. Whitelock Community Farm serves as a model community based project showing that providing neighborhoods access to land and resources is a sustainable way of revitalizing urban environments and building communities.

Our third farmer is Ginger Myers, who, along with her husband owns Evermore Farm, a small, family-owned and operated livestock and produce farm. Located in Westminster, Maryland, Evermore Farm raises all their animals on pasture. Ginger has over 25 years of experience in agri-business and small farm production. Ginger has worked as an agricultural marketing specialist in Maryland since 1999.

The 12th program in the ORIGINS speaker series features a conversation with 3 local chicken farmers from Maryland and southern Pennsylvania.

Andrew McClean is the owner of Relief Farms, based in Queen Anne County, Maryland and recently converted his 350 acre chicken operation from conventional to organic and now sells over 900,000 birds to Coleman Organic, a division of Perdue.

Beau Ramsburg is the founder and co-owner with his wife, Cat, of Rettland Farms. Beau founded Rettland Farm in Gettysburg, PA in 2007 and produces pastured chickens and heritage breed pork for direct sale to professional and home cooks. Rettland Farm was recently certified by the USDA to process the Farm’s chicken under inspection by the agency.

Will Morrow owns and operates Whitmore Farm, a diversified, pasture-based livestock operation raising pigs, sheep and chickens in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Whitmore Farm emphasizes sustainability and specializes in heritage breed livestock. Will’s goods are currently sold at area farmer’s markets, direct on-farm sales as well as select local restaurants.

The 11th program in the ORIGINS series is about locally made items for your pantry – salt, vinegar and cooking oil. All three makers are working in the Chesapeake watershed area. We are pleased to welcome Paige Payne from JQ Dickinson Salt Works. Paige, along with her husband Lewis and sister-in-law Nancy Bruns are 7th generation salt makers. Their brine source is the 400-600 million year old ancient sea, the Iapetus ocean. Sarah Conezio and Isaiah Billington, former pastry chef and chef de cuisine, accordingly, of Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore, Maryland, recently founded Keepwell Vinegar. They use locally-sourced grains, fruits, and vegetable to fuel their fermentation process. Josh Leidhecker is the owner of the Susquehanna Mills Company in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. Josh provides locally grown, non GMO food oils that are mechanically pressed to create healthier oils that maintain higher level of nutrients.

The 10th program in the ORIGINS series features a conversation with Bernie Herman, the department chair and George B. Tindall Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The discussion will focus on the food, foodways and culture of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Herman, along with Tom Gallivan, Mills Wehner and Heather Terry Lusk, founded the ESVA Foodways, LLC. Their collective goal is to create one job for one person so one family doesn’t have to leave this area.

The 9th program in the ORIGINS series is about sustainable seafood. With the Chesapeake Bay at our doorstep, it is important to note that the Chesapeake Bay provides 50 percent of the total blue crab harvest in the United States. Each year, the Maryland seafood industry contributes some $600 million to the State's economy. Besides blue crabs, the Chesapeake Bay is a source for striped bass, oysters,soft clams, flounder, perch, spot, croaker, catfish, sea trout, and bluefish. Our distinguished panel features Tj Tate, the Director of Seafood Sustainability at the National Aquarium, Lee Duncan Carrion, co-owner with her husband, Captain Richard Young of Coveside Crabs and Tony Conrad, waterman and owner of Conrad’s Crabs and Seafood Market.

The 8th program in the ORIGINS series is about sourcing and baking with local whole grains. We are pleased to welcome Heinz Thomet from Next Step Produce in Newburg, who along with his wife Gabrielle, owns a 87 acre organic farm. Heinz grows and mills whole grains including wheat, oats, barley, and rye and is also one of the leading growers of field rice in Maryland. Our featured baker, Russell Trimmer, worked with Heinz for several years and learned as much as he could about whole grains. Russell is a tireless advocate for incorporating whole grains into your baking repertoire.

A conversation with Dr. William Woys Weaver, an international food historian, author, teacher, gardener, and epicure. Dr. Weaver is the founder of the Roughwood Seed Collection, which houses over 4000 heirloom food plants. Dr. Weaver is also the director of the Keystone Center for the Study of Regional Foods and Food Tourism™, located in the historic Lamb Tavern in Devon, Pennsylvania. The Keystone Center is an independent research institute unaffiliated with state or private industry organizations. Its primary purpose is the survey, documentation, and promotion of Pennsylvania’s five regional food identities, their related culinary cultures in Europe, and their diasporas within the United States.

Discussion about pollinators and honeybees and their critical role in our food production. Panelists include Dr. Dennis van Englesdorp, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland’s Department of Entomology and an internationally known honeybee epidemiologist; David C. Heisler, farmer and owner of The Comus Market in Comus, Maryland; and Jack Leonard, landscape architect, beekeeper and assistant professor of Morgan State University’s Landscape Architecture Program.

Local Cheese: Discussion about local Maryland cheese featuring 3 artisanal cheesemakers representing 3 different animal sources — cow, sheep and goat. And the cheese buyer and ACS Certified Cheese Professional from the Baltimore Whole Foods Market. Speakers are Colleen and Michael Histon, owners of Shepherd’s Manor Creamery; Pam Miller, cheesemaker, Charlottetown Farm; Holly Foster, owner and cheesemaker Chapel’s Country Creamery; and Anedina Canzian, Cheesemonger, Whole Foods Market, Baltimore.

Local Beer and Wine: Discussion about the rise of the Maryland wine and beer industry. Speakers include the Director of the Maryland Wineries and now Breweries and Distilleries, a brewer and local hops farmer, a local winery, and a restauranteur focused on serving local beverages.

Discussion about the economics of producing high quality pork and beef on local farms. Speakers include a butcher, a processor, Heritage pig farmers and the director of a grass-fed beef farm operation.

Local Produce: Discussion about local produce and how the Baltimore City School System is incorporating produce into their lunch programs. The Baltimore City Food Policy Director speaks about the work her office is doing regarding food access. Speakers include the Baltimore City Food Policy Director, the owners of one of the largest organic vegetable farms in Maryland, and Baltimore City School System Office of Nutrition employee.