Food from the Ground Up

Much of the food on our plates starts in the soil. That’s easy to forget, especially if much of what you buy comes in boxes, cans and jars. Even the big bargain bag of chips -- so many steps removed from the natural world -- depends on corn or potatoes that spring up out of the dirt. Three upcoming events connect us to the simple yet significant fact. They’ll do it from three very different perspectives.

RIPE, Sept. 24-26, is a new family focused festival at the Cleveland Botanical Garden that’s bringing the local food movement a little closer to home. In addition to putting farmers and the restaurant chefs that support them in the spotlight, it aims to educate visitors about how doable and pleasurable it is to grow your own food. The brainchild of Kari Moore, founder of FarmShare Ohio and leader of the Northern Ohio Slow Food group, and Doug Katz of fire food and drink, this is the first time for this event. Expect good things to eat; a marketplace of area vendors selling, jams, honey, herbs and green products; cooking demos; and all kinds of how-to sessions on a variety of topics from canning to composting. Complete program, tickets and more information available here. Five-course Harvest Moon preview dinner on Thursday.

Ben Bebenroth will be one of the cooks for that feast. He’s the man behind the Plated Landscape dinner series and partner in Spice of Life Catering. A self-described “woods stomper” who’s been camping and finding forest edibles since he was a boy, the chef has decided to share some of his stalking expertise. He’s the instructor and guide for a course in food foraging sponsored by the Continuing Education department of Case Western Reserve University. Foraging, according to a recent article I read, is the next big thing in the foodie universe. Bebenroth's three expedition series, September 22nd, 29th and October 6th, from 10 a.m.–1 p.m., is open to the public and costs $75. Modern day hunter-gathers will scour the meadows and forests of the School’s 389-acre University Farm in Chagrin Falls and get some instruction on what to do with their harvest. I hope to be among them. To register, call 216-368-2090.


A benefit dinner for R.E.A.P. is scheduled for Oct. 3 at Dante Restaurant in Tremont. The acronym stands for The Refugee Empowerment Agricultural Program. It is part of a larger collaborative effort involving the Ohio City Fresh Food Collaborative, which operates a 6-acre farm at West 24th Street and Bridge Avenue, Refugee Response, the Ohio City Near West Development Corporation and Great Lakes Brewing Company. The farm, on formerly vacant land behind an apartment complex, is an amazing and spirit-lifting sight. The training initiative employs 15 immigrants: They’re getting a fresh start in their new home, and the community gets fresh locally grown food. Chef Dante Boccuzzi will incorporate vegetables they’ve raised into the meal. Grazing stations serve from 6-9 p.m., but show up at 4:30, and you can board a Lolly Trolley for a tour of the farm with wine and cheese. Tickets are $100, $75 for dinner only and can be obtained by calling the Refugee Response office, 216-236-3877, or e-mailing info@refugeeresponse.org. Seating is limited. Chef, who has a generous heart and a philanthropic bent, is doing more than raising money for the group. He’s offering one of the refugees the opportunity to build career skills by working with him in the restaurant’s kitchen. It's a chance that could change a life.

Horny Horticulture

"Orchids aren't just pretty ... they are sexy. ... In Victorian England, women weren't allowed to have orchids because the form of them was thought to be too erotic and too sexual, and it would be too much for a woman to bear, having a flower that sexual in her possession."

- Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession

If that's the case, Cleveland Botanical Garden is positively swelling with sexuality this month as it hosts Orchid Mania for the seventh time.

"We have an amazing array of orchids here," says chief horticulturist Cynthia Druckenbrod. "We have over 500 varieties and over 1,000 plants."

They suspend from rafters, drape over railings and sprawl around the waterfall. They emanate sensual scents: Vanilla, chocolate, coconut, lemon and angel food cake.

Should your trip to the garden inspire you to create your own little hothouse, orchids are easy to grow.

"There's brands where you just add ice [cubes] at the top and they melt and it gets your orchid to keep blooming and blooming and blooming and setting up a new flower to spike the following year," says Druckenbrod.

And you thought botany was boring.

Cleveland Botanical Garden’s Orchid Mania runs through March 28.

Photo by Miranda S. Miller.

Think Big

There was a giant amongst us last week, and few knew of his presence here. The man was Will Allen. His stature derives both from his size- he’s 6’7”with biceps as big as a baby’s head and hands like catchers’ mitts- and his extraordinary accomplishments. A recipient of a MacArthur Genuis Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Leadership grant, and a grant from the Kellogg Foundation, Allen is the founder and visionary-in-chief of Growing Power, an urban agricultural project, currently operating in Milwaukee and Chicago that focuses on community building through sustainable farming. The multi-faceted organization is dedicated to filling the need for access to high quality fresh food for those who live in the most underserved neighborhoods and to teaching inner city residents- especially kids- how to grow fruits and vegetables and produce food in ecologically responsible ways. And he’s doing things on a huge scale- running 70 different programs from intensive year round greenhouse growing to compost production and aquaponics. In the process, empty lots and blighted landscapes become mini-Edens and people acquire tools for economic independence and a productive future.

He was recently profiled in the New York Times Sunday Magazine- it’s a fascinating story and you can read it here. There’s also an interesting Q & A with him posted on the American Horticultural Society’s website

Allen was in town to deliver the keynote presentation at the American Horticultural Society’s 17th Annual National Children and Youth Garden Symposium hosted by Cleveland Botanical Garden, July 23 – 25. He used the occasion to meet some of CBG’s Green Corps participants and visit three learning gardens where they work. The training program for urban teenagers, which fosters food growing and entrepreneurial skills and environmental stewardship, is right up Allen’s alley.

I got to tag along as he toured the Yellow House site at Chester and E.66th. He chatted with the teens who were showing off their berry bushes, pepper and tomato plants, beds of kale and carrots, honey boxes, and compost bins, asking questions and giving them advice. Then we had lunch on the porch, dipping chips into bowls of Ripe from Downtown Salsa, one of the products Green Corps kids make and sell at area farmers markets and grocery stores. “This is good stuff,” he said, “very, very good.” And it was clear to me he was talking about much more than what we were eating.

Afterwards we drove to the Fairfax garden at E.79th, a place where three abandoned houses once stood, and the Lonnie Burten “farmstead” at East 46th and Quincy. Allen was all smiles, calling these spots “places of inspiration.” He sees value and opportunity in the vacant weed filled lots and boarded up buildings that are endemic to so many city neighborhoods. So do the Botanical Garden’s Green Corps staff, students, and volunteers. Given enough time and support, people like this are convinced that urban agriculture has the potential to generate economic activity and jobs, make wholesome food readily available to all, and create something less tangible but equally important- hope.