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Boulder Farmers’ Market among “Top 10 farmers markets in U.S.”

File photo: Mark Guttridge, of Ollin Farms, at right, passes on a bag of fresh spinach to Steve Toon on the first Wednesday night of the Boulder Farmers' Market in 2010. Toon from Golden, works in Boulder and considers going to the market his hobby. | Paul Aiken / Camera
This via Top 10 farmers markets in U.S. | Gadling.com:
4. Boulder Farmers Market, Colorado
Regional farmers prove that a short growing season can still be spectacular in the form of red sunchokes, fingerling potatoes, maroon heirloom carrots, and peaches to die for from Morton's Orchards. A kaleidoscope of cut flowers and an adjoining prepared food section make this bustling market a colorful-and delicious- community hot spot.
What do you think — is #4 good enough?
Raw milk controversy foams up in Boulder County

Bill Campbell, of the Billy Goat Dairy of Longmont, prepares to milk his goats on Thursday | Daily Camera
Raw Milk — you know the kind that’s fresh from the cow (or goat), not pasteurized, and according to proponents super rich and nutritious — may have made 24 people sick in Boulder County.
Officials think the sickness is related to goat milk from Billy Goat Dairy in Longmont. In all, there are a couple of raw milk dairies in Longmont, a couple in Boulder and one in Erie.
Some food safety experts say that raw milk is dangerous (and that pasteurization was one of the great health breakthroughs). But raw milk lovers say it’s no more dangerous (if the dairy is clean) than other foods. (After all, didn’t hamburgers and spinach give people e-coli?)
Read more about the problem at DailyCamera.com, and tell us what you think below.
Vegetarian recipe: I choo-choo-choose chorizo tomato taco soup
There’s really no better way to save money on food than a slow cooker, and I’m a firm believer that crock pots can result in food with a lot of flavor and heft. Combine that with a desire to cut way, way back on meat consumption for environmental reasons (boy, I’ve come a long way) and you’ve got yourself an easy urban challenge: What’s the tastiest thing I can make in the magic money-saving machine? Read more
How to make a solar cooker at home
A solar cooker is a simple way to use and understand a resource Boulder has in abundance: sunlight. Simple cookers require such basic household items as Elmer’s glue, cardboard, aluminum foil and a glass jar, and can be assembled in as little as two to three hours.
The Boulder company Willow Way, run by Zia Parker, offers a solar oven construction class taught by Jeff Graef.
“One thing that’s good about it is it’s a slow cooker,” Graef said. “You basically don’t have to watch it. You can throw in the food, go out and do some errands, come back and it will be cooked.”
“You can cook a pretty good variety of things, but things that take a long time to cook are more challenging,” he said. “The easiest things to cook are fruits and vegetables.
While a solar cooker might not be able to produce enough heat to cook everything on the dinner table, it could be a fun and energy efficient way to gain more understanding of the power of the sun.
Read more about how to make a solar cooker at the Camera.
-Mikaila Altenbern
Community Food Share, Sister Carmen Center, others want to make fresh food more accessible

Bert Nett (front), John Spencer (back left) and Jane Spencer (right) plant squash seeds at an Earth's Table garden in Boulder | CAMERA/Mark Leffingwell
If there’s one thing the United States isn’t known for, it’s eating well. We’ve got a heck of a reputation for junk food out there.
For some people, it’s because there are six-packs of tiny powdered donuts in the vending machine down the hall (damn you) and they have a problem/are weak-willed*. For others, it’s simply because they can’t afford to eat fresh vegetables day in and day out.
Community Food Share, Sister Carmen Center and others in our community want to help with that second reason so, for one, they’ve set up a plot they call Earth’s Table, where veggies are grown for those in need. Read more
Plants stolen from school’s educational veggie garden
How do you get the lamest street-cred ever? You steal plants from an elementary school’s educational vegetable garden.
The Smith Renaissance School of the Arts, located in northeast Denver, got plant-burgled recently, but is rising above it.
Two weeks ago, on a Friday, the students planted the seedlings and others that were donated. The following Monday, the plants were gone.
“One student wondered if it was a clever rabbit,” said Lindsay McNicholas, the school’s resource advocate. “It was deflating. We had just planted them. We didnt even make it 72 hours.”
Read the rest of the story at The Denver Post. Or check out photos of the students replanting the Smith Renaissance School of the Arts vegetable garden.
Boulder spring plant sales: it’s on!
Carol O’Meara, gardening columnist and host of stellar gardening in Colorado tips videos, pulled together a list of Denver/Boulder-area plant sales, and here are the Boulder ones: Read more
Composting workshop this Saturday
Looking to start composting? Get a bin and a workshop for $50 to kick it off this year — clear your Saturday schedule and roll up your sleeves. Read more
Colorado square-foot gardener answers beginner’s questions
A great post for veggie garden daydreamers over at Jacqueline’s Journey. Go check it out and find at least one nugget of information that’ll make your local veggie garden better this year!
7. What are good crops to grow for Colorado’s climate? Colorado has cool, wet springs and hot, dry summers which is pretty annoying to the vegetable gardener. Cool weather crops like lettuce and radish will do great if you get them going early enough but by the time late June’s heat and lack of humidity come along they will require intensive watering and may even stop producing edible leaves. I found that Collards and Kale are cool weather crops that also do very well during the summer months. Other excellent crops are raspberries, onions, garlic, chives, shallots, tomatoes, tomatillos, potatoes, and squash.
8.What was the most difficult thing for you to grow? I have had particular problems growing peppers, eggplant, and okra. These plants require steady warm temperatures or they will drop their flowers and/or fruit or not grow. Depending on your Colorado micro-climate these plants may work great for you or may never get enough heat to be productive.
Found via Tall Tara!
Edible gardening book: R.J. Ruppenthal’s “Fresh Food from Small Spaces”
Wow — I just found out that a great book for the urban gardener, “Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting,” is on Google Books!
Some of it, anyway. R.J. Ruppenthal is somebody who graciously sent content to me when I worked at HuffPost Green (like this great post on how to grow strawberries) and his book is just great. I own a copy of it, and I recommend folks buy it if they’re into the idea of growing food in their small spaces, but hey — want to try a little under half of the book for free? Here are 76 pages of it (link here for larger version):
And of course no post about a Chelsea Green book would be complete without thanking my friend Jesse for introducing me to a lot of their materials when he was a Web and publishing genius there. Now he’s a Web and publishing genius on his own. (Hire him.)







