Paul Mock’s Lettuce

Increasingly, folk want to eat local, safe, fresh, organic greens and meats with no additives or pesticides or antibiotics or GMOs for fear of what is known and yet unknown about their effects.

While runaway development everywhere threatens this effort to go green and fresh, pricing small farmers out of the market, nevertheless, the public appetite for good and better food is growing, and people are prepared to pay more to eat better.

At a Rural Innovation Confab in Winchester last Thursday, Lovettsville’s goat cheese meister, Molly Kroiz, said “real cheese tastes better, and people are tired of eating Kraft singles.”

Molly said cheese is a “combination of science and art” and allows for experimentation that lends a pleasurable flavor from how you make it, and where it’s made. Molly’s place is a farmstead meaning that she milks the Alpine goats, who forage on her rich pasture, and at this same farm, her husband Sam and she make the cheese. Molly said, “This quality is called, ‘Terroir,’ the taste of place.”

Some talk as if California is a “local” market, but a market truly local allows a farmer who favors craft to produce food that can be distributed close to the farm and consumed fresh. Continue reading →