Start early in the season to preserve your food
Garfield Farm Museum in Campton Hills will host garden expert Vicki Nowicki from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Sunday, March 18. She will introduce you to a way of storing and preserving your homegrown garden food and even some wild gathered food into an appetizing array of ingredients for winter meals. There is a $6 donation for the workshop and reservations are encouraged.
Today, we have simply lost the art and the reason to plan ahead for our meals. No need to, since we are usually able to leave home and purchase almost any food we desire and can find. With a little bit of logic and forethought, though Nowicki has converted her random and sometimes irrelevant winter larder into an organized inventory of useful foods and little homemade products that combine and fit extremely well with preselected groupings of recipes. She doesn't wait until fall to begin the process. She can start with food that is ripening as early as May and June and just keep going all summer. Her home becomes a nice, warm place to "shop" for the elements of each meal and the whole system will be laid out for you in a simple set of handouts.
Her work has been recognized over the years by Slow Food, e Morton Arboretum, and Seed Savers Exchange, where a profile of her life was recently included in their national publication. She founded Downers Legacy Seed Library in Downers Grove dedicated to preserving and protecting rare and endangered food crops that are so necessary to maintain our biodiversity. The seeds are intended to be cared for by the community and to be held secure for the future.
Call the museum at (630) 584-8485, or email at info@garfieldfarm.org to make reservations or for more information. Visit www.garfieldfarm.org.
Garfield Farm Museum is on Garfield Road, off Route 38, five miles west of Geneva. The 374-acre site is a historically intact former 1840s Illinois prairie farmstead and teamster inn being restored as an 1840s working farm museum by volunteers and donors from around the country.