Sundae on Monday

Sundae Brooch by Q. Cassetti, 2013 available on EtsyIts been a while. A busy while, nonetheless… Let me think about the news, the new ideas, the state of the state. The Federation of Farmers Market meeting was very nice and homespun. I liked meeting and seeing the range of people, their engagement, and the vitality in the room.  It wasn’t a huge group, but lots of interest in all that was said. I had the pleasure of meeting the Executive Director of the Niagara Frontier Growers Market and the President of the Board of the Ithaca Farmers Market. The takeaway from that experience as that we should absolutely embrace the dynamics of a small market and truly own it, build into it…and keep it the personal experience that it is today. Bigger is okay, but not for our little community. What we can do for our community is provide a gathering space around food, eating and locally made objects.. We can provide a platform for local music, local performers, local arts. We can provide a neighborhood approach to “why not” type of entertainment and gathering from dish to pass suppers, to fundraising auctions, to the craziness of my friend Deb’s Soap Box Derby. We can revel in Local, Locavore, and in each other. We can use the farmers market to create new bonds beyond the church, the schools, and the community groups. We can continue to weave those ribbons of connection between people…to build and support each other. This is something we do well here in our little Village…and if we are deliberate about this activity, think of the strength we ill all have in each other.

I was prodded to join the Chamber of Commerce. Kicking and complaining…saying no…no…no…and then, surprisingly, I attended and am enchanted. It was such a bright group of action oriented people that being at the table to represent the Farmers Market was a pleasure. The Chamber and the Market both have literature distribution issues, so we are going to create a job and share the expenses etc. There you go! Reason one to go to the Chamber, share the wealth and get stuff done. So, more on that.

We had a very engaging Farmers Market meeting last week. The librarian at the Middle School attended and spoke about partnering with us to do some programming with him around a Middle School “read” to a community read…The book is SeedFolks…and it is about the power of planting to help draw people and communities together. Of course, we are on it…and interestingly, after an email to a variety of community groups, we have traction with them. So, we are going to meet this week to get this thing rolling. The day one of this activity is April 26 to roll through a month, so there is not a ton of time, but it should be fun to see what can happen. It was very rewarding to make a few calls and write an email or two and see the energy that is being put towards this thing. Not much more than that, but should be very cool to see what happens. I am feeling this.

Off topic entirely, Squarespace (the entity I author this blog with) has a site for visual people to create more visually inspired pages (Squarespace 6) along with a way to post retail pages /create a store which is linked to Stripe (a company that can do the financial transactions). Lets just put it this way, my mind is a whirl on this.

Kitty is home for Spring Break. It is great to have time with her. I taught her how to needlepoint yesterday and gave her a kit which I must admit, given how she is absolutely voracious…it will be done before the week is out. This is a great thing as with all the bus travelling she does, this will keep her hands busy during that down time. She had a group over last night to eat snack food and celebrate the Saint who chased snakes out of Ireland….I wonder if he wore green loafers much like the pope?

Market meanderings.

Toivo at the Trumansburg Farmers Market, Q. Cassetti 2012Trumansburg, New York is a community of 1500 people in the Village and 4500 in the Town of Ulysses. Trumansburg is a very collaborative and creative place where lutiers, financiers, farmers, teachers, carpenters all meet at the local coffee shop to klatch and plan. Trumansburg is a project kind of place. We give money, but what we love more than anything is a dish to pass, a community build, a project we can make happen. We have an annual music festival, The GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance, which for over 20 years has brought the world to our hamlet—and we have embraced that spirit of community and power that comes on the local level. This spirit leaks into pretty much anything that happens here, including our Farmers Market.

Our little farmers market sits on a small, triangular village park on Main Street in Trumansburg, New York. It is a young market that started under the big willow tree with several farmers who came together to sell produce and food to the local populace. There was interest and this little market grew. Grew so much that a grant was applied for, and funds were raised by the community to build a pair of roofed pavillions and a bandstand in this little park to formalize this market and move it forward. A local architect and community team designed these structures and over a 4 month period, built it over a series of weekends as a community build. There were people of every shape and size building our market with lunches brought in from local restaurants and families who wanted to contribute. It was truly a remarkable moment which for me fully defined what we were capable of as a village. It was sheer positive energy directed at making something wonderful that would enhance our life on this little Main Steet place.

That was four years ago. Today, the Market boasts a thriving community of farmers, producers, restaurants and caterers, and artisans that come together from mid May to the end of October, every Wednesday from 4-7 in the afternoon and early evening. It is dinner time, and the community turns out to do the circuit and shop, eat and meet up with friends. We have live music every week (pro-bono—but a hat is passed) and occasionally, we will have movie night after the market when we have a screen put up, and movies played with prizes, popcorn and even one evening last summer, rootbeer floats for everyone! Heaven.

We entertain, we enchant, we feed, we involve people and and, we also sell produce and sandwiches, eggs, wine, hard cider and cheese, bread, horseradish jelly and garlic scape pesto. But we need it all to move forward. The market is a three way gimbol— balancing the needs and expectations of the farmer/producer with the needs and expectations of the consumer along with the needs and expectations fo the community. As much as we would like it to be as simple as selling celery, in order for this market to have roots, we need to address all three in the most engaging, out of the box way. If we can charm and provide a treat along with educate and inform, we have a chance of sustainable success for our local food producers and eaters.

The interesting thing as I think about the market and how to talk about it—I keep reflecting on the farmers markets of my life. Growing up, my mother and I went to a farmers market in a very dicey neighborhood in Pittsburgh that must have been in a garage or something. It was an indoors market, very dark and dreary. We would go to see Mr. Kutz (from Central PA) with his red haired, apple cheeked daughters to buy eggs and chickens and occasionally something green. Somehow the green stuff always came from Giant Eagle.

The next snapshot was learning about the Ithaca Market and watching it grow. The concept that local food, or organic food would have any significant foothold was totally alien at the time. Food Co-ops and natural food stores when I was in college were grungy places that smelled odd, and the produce was less than hearty or robust. It was more about tea than it was about food, at least for me.

Moving ahead again, I was sent to the Natural Foods and Products Convention in Anaheim (1989) when I was working for Estee Lauder. I was sent to get an eyeful of what was happening in this Natural world…particularly that of the channel of beauty and cosmetics. I was sent to better understand the competition so as to be able to leverage the power of this beauty brand, the funds and product development we had, and take it to the next level from the grungy health food store to counters at  Neiman Marcus and Nordstoms. I was horrified (and delighted I was wearing my badge backwards) when I sat in on a personal products break out session , when a leading light in the natural foods store beauty business pulled out an article hinting at Estee Lauder getting into the natural products world. This woman proclaimed that those in the business had better raise their sights as the competition was just about to get bigger, and they couldnt just be natural product people…but needed to improve their marketing, their image, their brand. They could not rest happily in the dusty food coops and needed to up their game. The concept of a Whole Foods was beyond imagination.

Now, look at where we are. Whole Foods is a reality. Organic produce is available at WALMART?! People really are reading the labels. Packaging is more responsible. The CSAs are booming…and popping up everywhere…can this continue? How is going to evolve? What is the model? How can anticipate this? or should we? Can the Trumansburg Market be the incubator for these new products and farms? Can we have a lovely night of stars, and friends, food, and bags of leeks and organic eggs while supporting local agriculture and thus supporting the betterment of those around us? I think we can. We are a community of do-ers…and this seems right up our alley.

Now that I got that off my chest, I can think about the board a bit more. Thanks for your patience.

Locavore

Hardware Store Punch, Q. Cassetti, 2013Tomorrow I have the opportunity to speak to the Farmers Market Federation of New York at LaTourelle Inn and Spa about how our board works with our Market Manager. Just thinking about the points I am going to make, has forced me to think about how I have engaged in the local foods movement, and the progress that has been made in the last 18 months.

In the past two years, I have provided pro bono work (some design, some consulting, some both) to: MyerFarm Distillery, Redbyrd Orchard Cidery, Good Life Farm, Sweetland Farm, Tree Gate Farm, Stone Cat Cafe, MacDonald Farm, Wide Awake Bakery, Farmer Ground Flour, Regional Access, New York Foods, The Trumansburg Farmers’ Market,  Central New York Cider Week, Forge Cellars, The Piggery to name a few. I am sure I am forgetting someone. It has been an amazing journey learning about these farmers, their farms, their livlihood, their focus and why they farm. I have learned that farmers may not all be born marketers, and that the perception that there is fairness in the world/ and in the local economy should be cultivated (to that, I believe that the market teaches us if we listen—to tune our products, product selections, and the work we do to be desirable….We just have to each listen, and hear). I have learned about the import of transportation, of distribution hubs wheither it is in the form of a weekly pick up or CSA, a pop up shop or a truck that delivers to a bigger area. I have learned about farming during a drought, and the sheer knife edge these farmers live on between the seed purchases to harvest with bugs, and water, and hail, and heat or lack thereof….defining success and financial disaster. I have learned that sometimes, just sometimes, I need to give my farmer friends a bit of rope to figure things out themselves, and in the same way, give myself permission just to take a little time and let things simmer and evolve. These are people who know about watchful waiting. They know about seasons and time. They know about light and darkness, heat and cold. These are people who will move greenhouses around on tracks to make sure their greens have the best source of light and heat to bring us delicate greens in the middle of March. These are passionate people who love deeply but because of their trust and collaborative make up, can be hurt as deeply as they love. These are people who do not mind getting dirty, working hard, and when possible, playing just as hard. They care about their apples, their greens, their flowers and boules and link it to a larger, more spiritual notion. Allison Usavage  created a lovely film about Stefan Senders and David MacGuinness’ Wide Awake Bakery and captures this spirit that seems to be an overlay to the local food scene here, here is the vimeo link>

This work sometimes can be challenging…but the film shows the reward. To be able to drink from the same cup as these hard working people is an honor. And, to try the first fresh greens of spring, to taste Eric and Devas sublime sparking cider as delicate as a bite of apple, or see tiny Melissa get her massive horses, Randi and Betsy pull together for her, or taste Stefan’s wonderful hot bread made from Greg’s flour (Farmer Ground) which was ground from Thor’s wheat….Or to try Tony’s black beans…the circle is complete. One blessing after the next—from the farmer to the consumer and back to the lovely land we live in and on. The same birds sing to my farmers as they do to me. The same rain and snow come our way. It is all right here, right now. And we all live in it for now.

What a week

Summer in Ithaca, Q. Cassetti, 2013, Adobe Illustrator Cs5Things have been a bit wild around here. My father-in-law was rushed to the hospital last Friday with a significant nosebleed. He was in the hospital for a few days—and then the process of interviews, deliveries, questionnaires, phone calls and the beginning of the “new normal” began. Hospice has begun. He has moved downstairs as his movement/mobility is challenged. He is not in pain, though breathing  is challenging. He has limited time awake and conscious with most of the time asleep. We are all trying very hard to wrap our heads around this change…and it is stressing us all out in different ways. Everyday is different—and all of our independance is challenged as Mary and Gloria need time to tend to their lives as well. This week with Rob is going to be tough as he is seriously busy and travelling, so I feel I will fill that gap as well as I can. I have set up a Caring Bridge site (a wonderful service that is private and allows a family to talk about  a family member who is sick/ailing/challenged etc to a wide community of friends—essentially making the same “phone call” over and over again…and keeping all the friends and wellwishers up to date with the status quo. I have taken this on….and I hope its been helpful for Ron and Mary’s friends. To learn more about Caring Bridge (www.caringbridge.org)

Rob has been busy moving furniture, making beds out of sofas, moving trip hazards, supporting the change next door in a broad physical way. He also has been very kind and open with his dad and mom…spending time with them and sweetening the sadness that we all have. Lightening the moment with stories and popcorn. He is such a wonderful guy.

We got an impressive amount of snow on Friday. Its been grey until today which has given us a blazing blue and white day to relish the snow bouncecard effect on the light, and the lovely blue shadows we have here on our plateau.

I am rounding the corner on a lot of projects from the candle packaging for “Bee of Life” (using one of my bee goddesses as the image and I created a hive texture and my bees as a complement and background for the paper labels) to Sagamore’s Benefit event package graphics. My big client is bending and changing, and we are bending and changing with them. I am working on box graphics and some vintage related publications for Forge Cellars, updates on the packaging and new ideas for Redbyrd Orchard Cider. The Piggery seems well on their way with new programming and promotion (their BaconFest was a huge success) with Valentines Day seatings filling up, and plans for a St. Patricks Day Sausage Fest on the horizon. Good Life Farm is ramping up for Asparaganza this spring, so we have had a meeting about that…and putting plans in place to support this event. The Farmers Market has sent out applications for vendors (I think I may be a day vendor for a few of the markets just to sell my little thises and thats along with cards)….but we will see.

Creatively, I am a bit shot. I wish I had the zing going on that the Advent work had, but given the changeability of the moment, I am just happy to make little creature doodles in my notebook and focus on the work at hand (teasing out a content review of a website for one) to make psychic room for the extra stuff. I have also decided to spend time learning new things, so I am trying to do a few Lynda.com tutorials during the day to keep my head in the game…and learn something that can make me more productive etc. Plus, I love my digital tools….and the more I learn, the more fun it gets.

Wow.

Alex Cassetti, June 21, 2012, Graduate, Charles O. Dickerson HS, Q. Cassetti, 2012Simply madness. I have been at it so much that I havent had a chance to say hello. I am so sorry for being such a deliquent, but these things happen as I am sure you know. Running and running. Work and filling in the gaps with driving, going to the grocery store, and trying to keep up with all the extras that are out there.

There have been family health issues (large scale under our roof) and of course layered on it was a visit from Kitty, and a graduation for our boy, Alex. Graduation was great. Alex was so happy, just plain bursting with it—and the relief and joy in the recieving of his diploma was palpable. It is a real smile you see in this perfect picture of a graduate. He was delighted to have accomplished this, delighted to be with his friends and family, and delighted to move on. So, the moving on has started and we have pencilled in his Orientation, his  tests and prework, his doctor’s paperwork, moving the transcripts etc. We are moving the show from Trumansburg to Hempstead, LI.

The tenor guitar is ordered and should be here by the end of the week. He is tickled pink with the idea that I got him the guitar versus the watch he kept telling us he needed to recieve (somehow that is all wrapped up in his “old fashioned boy” thing he has in this mind). The “old fashioned boy” was a thing he did as a kid, where he would wear antique newspaper boy hats, type on a manual typewriter, carry a pad around his neck to keep notes on, and want to wear vests and ties. He has this idea that being  the “old fashioned boy” (his term) was somehow befitting breeding and intelligence. Same thing with the watch. He told us that if we gave him a watch for graduation, he could wear it when he got married and then he could say that he got it from his parents at his HS.graduation. I say phooey on that stuff. Get a tenor guitar, learn to play it and tune it a zillion ways and be happy. Then you can play your guitar at your wedding and say “This is what I got for my HS graduation, and look at what I can do!” . And my old fashioned boy grins, smiles and prods me for when it will deliver. I expect a song!

Kitty and Kira, June 21, 2012, Q. Cassetti.Kitty was talking a mile a minute about everything that she has processed for the past three weeks. Lets put it this way, FIT has been amazing money well spent. She is revelling in sewing, and puzzled and inspired by the draping course she is taking. She gets it…and is pushing herself to try new things, go beyond what is being assigned in class. She is delighted by slopes, grades of muslin, all the measurements and dimensions one needs to add or subtract, the import of a puffed sleeve….and so on. She is puzzled by “real girls”, what they do for fun, the need to curl their hair, zebra patterns and high heel decorations, hot pink and nail decals. She is puzzled by the club scene, by the inability for people to see the world as she does—and the pronounced focus she has on gender identities and roles that Hampshire so happily celebrates. It is a bit unnerving for her, but as part of a balanced education, she is getting a whole lot of something from the polar extreme of the Pioneer Valley.

I have to go. I have some driving to do to get Alex and Elly to a graduation party. Then its Farmers Market (#3) and we have people to see, photos to take, Kimchi and mustard to buy. Then, hopefully, it will be a glorious time in the later evening lakeside with the fat bumblebees, magenta sweetpeas, and a blazing sunset. Tomorrow, my friends.

Frosty, Swirly

Ice Cream Sign at Trimmer’s Ice Cream Stand, Trumansburg, NY, Q. Cassetti 2012Blistering hot here for another day. Our little Farmers’ Market was a bit wilted and hot…but we still had a nice crowd drinking a lot of lemonade, buying radishes, brooms and all sorts of other things.  Alan, Rob and I had a good meeting about the Market Manager building that is being designed to possibly be the “Community Build” project during the GrassRoots Festival of Music and Art in July. The plan is to have a space for our manager to be available along with providing a space for kids to have a space to sell fruit etc. during our market. It will have a bulletin board, a clock, a slide (!) a place for a Gott water cooler with a cone dispenser.  There is storage and a way for us to hide the park’s electric box…making the current installation go away (a little eyesore). The aesthetic is vertical siding/ metal roof very much in the vernacular farm structures being built today…so it feels “of the farm” which suits the market very well. The foot print is small (10’x 10’ or so…How fun is that?

I have the fan pointed at the top of my head and I am feeling a bit better today than yesterday with the heat and still hot air. Shady Grove is laying as quietly as possible under the window…just trying to keep her furry black self cool. Alex and friends are swimming in ponds and then hiding in our backroom huddling around with video games, and eating large quantities of food (read cold pizza).

Hot Glass Soft Serve:

I am thinking of soft serve. Twisty lovely cones that I plan to make with my friends on the GlassLab stage. Soft Serve and cupcakes in glass…all one color, and some decorated. Roses and sprinkles, diptop and wrappers. I took a ton of sign pictures (a real favorite of mine). Don’t you love the one on the right? I love how unfriendly and severe, almost engraved—this confection appears. Its all about linework with a bit of color poked behind it. This is pretty evocative of Circus Posters, right? The sheer simplicity of this illustration prods me to work on this idea that runs in parallel with the amazing big blue gummybear, and the cobalt dunny from the Kid Robot team. July 1st is the day I get to try this out on Governors Island. It should be fun.

People in the tintype

Lincoln study, Q. Cassetti, 2012, Adobe Illustrator CS5Yesterday was a gorgeous day. Ditto for today. The Farmers’ Market was fabulous with all sorts of great things to buy—with Meg having black cherry tomatoe plants, and all sorts of elegant currant plants from Daring Drake. We had a massage therapist…and two more people wanted to throw in with us to our delight. Food/catering was selling out to my happiness…and hope that we can continue to drive folks to the market to gather, eat and spend their money of produce, wine, cider, plants and goodies. This is our second shot and I feel real energy around what is happening, the help of the board, and the direction we can point this. I got some great shots and will share with you. I love it when people just “give” you the picture…and I was given quite a few last night. We need more…and we will get them. By the end of the season, we will have imagery to really sell the market!

The big RFP is done. Will deliver tomorrow.  Little projects are moving. The images for the StoneCat have been framed (thanks to Nigel). My cabochons are en route. The market is beginning to stand up on its little shaky legs…and we are going week to week to see what and how it evolves. I am getting things fixed, delivered, and ordered. And! My dies came from Accucut…so it means my diecutter should be here soon! Hello! How exciting is that?

Did you ever notice how big Abe Lincoln’s ears are? HUGE. I saw a life mask , and life casting of his hands at the Fenimore in Cooperstown and was dumbstruck at how odd and overlarge they were…but the facial casting did not get to the ears. Now with this study kicking off a series, I am stunned by his ears…and his amazing assymetrical face. Chasing down info on Lincoln has thrown me back on the amazing photography of Matthew Brady. Brady portrays these civil war era people as the living, breathing people that they were…not shining them up, but just as is…and somehow he captures the individuals essence through a sensitive vision. There is so much humanity peeking out of those sepia images that if you were to just change the fashion, they might be the person on the street passing you by on the way to Starbucks.

I also unwittingly surfaced a whole lot of stuff about the hypothesis that Lincoln might have been gay. It started with my poking around Wikipedia…and then it went on. This is all supported, academic studies…and so it changes the discussion around him. Our first gay president? Interesting. This was not the sort of stuff we addressed way back at Ellis School on Presidents Day. Whole new world.

Rob is home from his travels. It is wonderful to have with us. He is reconsidering his travel for this week. We would love to have him around a bit more!

Onward to the day.

weekend antics

Asparaganza 2012, Good Life Farm, Interlaken NYFarmer Melissa, Asparaganza, Good Life Farm, 2012It was a perfect weekend capped off by great music at Felicias (Rockwood Ferry) and a gentle spring evening party, Asparaganza, at Good Life Farm. Asparaganza was at Good Life with a brilliant cloudless blue sky, happy people, delicious things to try and buy along with music, games, tours of the farm and new friends and old. RedByrd Orchard Cider had it inaugural tasting (and indeed we tasted it!) along with Crooked Carrot, The Piggery, Cayuga Creamery (asparagas ice cream, ginger ice cream as a bow to Good Life’s prides), and Red Newt Bistro. There were farmstands and Toivo playing their happy music which was a perfect fit to a glorious afternoon. It was so wonderful to see these local producers, Melissa and Garrett and their friends in the context of the haven their farm is….with the geese and big draft horses in the background. Mike from Double E (Mushroom CSA) was making mushroom logs for folks to take home to grow their own mushrooms, there were games…and tons of balls and fun things for the teensy people who gamboled amongst all the larger ones. The energy of this event was so positive, so encouraging, so reflective of this emerging community that I just wanted to hug each and every producer for the gifts that they give us generously. We never really see the whole picture, just the perfect radish, apple, blade of grain or sunflower and not the work, love, and prayers that go into creating this amazing thing.  Maybe this little valentine will help communicate that.

New website for the Trumansburg Farmers Market! Took me about 4 hours to do…and I have a bit more to do (authoring some content) but at least we are up and running so the rackcards now point to something real. Here is the site> www.tburgfarmersmarket.com

I got plugged into some phenomenal new web based tools this weekend that I am so excited about I could sing at the top of my lungs. First one is IFTTT (if this [] then that[]). I know. It doesnt make much sense. What IFTTT does is link the social media venues you may be using, to leverage your messaging to the other outlets you support. Once creates or uses already created recipes to make your content work harder for you. An example is “If This” Facebook entry “then that” sent to Twitter. If an image is dropped into Dropbox, send the same image to Flickr….and so on…mixing feeds,Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, DropBox etc. It is amazing one stop shop where usually I have had to go into the mechanisms/the account information to try to network the content from one place to the other. Now it is so much easier and not so technical. Give it a try, its free.

The second geeky delight is Evernote. Evernote is a way to collect information, images, links, notes etc. to push folks to be more productive and less paper driven. Your Evernote is sync’ed between your computer, phone and IPad…so you can have your files ready and at hand whenever you want them as long as you can get a connection. You can share ‘notebooks” with people you invite…or you can keep them private or even not shared as long as its on your desktop. You can tag your entries, sort them a bunch of different ways…Worth seeing. Their customer support and videos are great (reminds me of Squarespace, a company that has that nailed). Plus, there is a community of users out there who are actively involved in moving Evernote ahead with cool plug-ins, ebooks, and forums. It is free to try, and if you choose to do the upgrade, its not going to break the bank. I am so in love with the productivity aspect of Evernote, I am worried that I could waste time being organized…but if it helps to get the work done…no worries.

Thanks to the prod of Evernote, I am knocking things off my list…and adding new. More to talk about later. 

going local

Tomatoes, Q. Cassetti, 2012, Adobe Illustrator CS5I am having some mandatory stuff done to the car, so I am sitting in the fabulous Maguire waiting room with the light streaming in the windows with wifi and all sorts of “we love our customers” amenities getting ready to dive on the pile of email. So, to delay that inevitability, I figured a quick entry would be in order.

I am heads down on a bunch of branding related projects for my big client with some coming easily and others, not so…It is so hard to think about regulating certain design elements/ treatments for really trained designers and quite another for a less sophisticated group that is often the group my client likes to hire. This same group needs to be “creative” for the sake of creativity and not to better reinforce the messaging and desires of the client. This type of creative agency feels that their voice leads the conversation versus reflects that of the desires of the entity hiring them…and maybe because of untrained people on the client’s end, they can easily assume this position. However, it hurts me as the end product, the image of the company is often dinged and damaged because of all this maverick creativity—without any respect to the big horizon. So should we cramp the style and creativity of the lesser designers to try and corral them into a standard…or respect them to follow the current standards (which they do not) and have to wrestle them to  comply each and every project they are involved in? If I ruled the universe, this particular universe, I would have a few good agencies—ones that know what is needed , who do follow standards and understand their import. I would have a very tight standard (IBM of the 70s, Siemens, Apple Computer) and with very tight grids, image direction, type sizes and standards. I would regulate and reinforce. This is not impossible…but sometimes things have to be autocratic in order to create a unified vision. But this is the ideal condition.

Myer Farm Distillers sign, Q. Cassetti, 2012I am finishing up the Myer Farm Distillers labelling as part of the branding we are doing.Myer Farm is quite an operation as its field to flask. This family farm grows organic grain and have been for quite a while—and have been selling it to the first local distillery, Finger Lakes Distilling and has broken ground, ordered the equipment from Europe and is going into business themselves. I presented a series of approaches to their brand and was surprised and pleased that they picked an approach that I think of as Scandanavian (though where that comes from is beyond me). It is a sheaf of barley drawn simply/ with a bow to woodcut images of grain with the head of the grain, and a dagger-y calligraphic stem. The font is Futura because of the beautiful sharp M-s and the nice weight shift. The colors are taken from the design of their building. The labels have illustrations referencing the main ingredient of the liquor—and a strong, consistent type treatment that is differentiated by colorway. The client selected some really great bottle profiles…so as this comes to the close for now, I am getting pretty psyched as it will look great. What a nice add to the wine region and the “beer trail” in these robust Finger Lakes.

Next on the horizon is a farm who has been an organic farm since the 70s making all sorts of pickles and the like.They have a fabulous reputation and they got ‘the goods”. So being able to package a great product should be excellent. I am busy looking at labels and gathering some competititive information to start our adventure too.

Meet some of the competition:

Brooklyn Brine Company> 
McClure Pickles 
Sarabeth’s Jams 
Hawthorn Farms 
Blue Hill Farm
Rick’s Picks 

NYTimes: “Don’t Mock the Artisanal Pickle Makers” by /Adam Davidson, 02/15/2012

Apt. 11D: “Katherine Boo and Artisanal Pickle Makers”

The Pickle Freak Blog

I am fascinated by the whole local foods movement here, but as a point/counterpoint to the wild activity in the local foods movement in Brooklyn. I am constantly stunned when visiting NYC or shopping the foody day on Fab.com to see the pickles, jams, coffee, cheese etc. that are being elegantly produced and sold from folks packed in on Long Island. Surely we could take this on with our access to space, to amazing produce and people who know how to do this sort of thing. Surely, this is a way to use the produce as it ripens and is picked in addition to putting it fresh on people’s plates around here. We can drive people to our farmers markets, to the farm stands, to the CSAs but there are only so many people here (even if we trained them up to like veggies)—that after market products seem like a great way to add money to the farmer’s pockets while producing high quality organic canned produce.

Crooked Carrot is doing this on a small scale. I fully applaud their work and food. But we need more…and we need a way to help Crooked Carrot scale up (if they want to do that) in a way that they can be successful.  I like how imaginative Crooked Carrot is—and by being a share holder, I am given things I might not buy on my own (pickled Kohlrabi as one which we finished off in two sittings). It is a luxury to try these things, but I cannot be helpful to anyone if I am not educated about the CSA, CSK, CSG models. Clever and resourceful Melissa Madden of Good Life Farm has a gorgeous spring CSA that is a delight. The focus of her CSA are greens—cooking greens, raw greens etc. which depending on the part of the less than dependable Spring, she supplements with canned goods from her farm (canned and preserved by Crooked Carrot) and or amazing sprouts (I never thought I would say that) from Dancing Turtle. Melissa uses the produce from the summer before the add to her unpredictable mix..and as a recipient, every CSA pick-up is Christmas morning as I never fully grasp what she has told us was coming each week until it is put in my bag!

So, where is all of this chatty meandering going? Its all about taking in the horizon of the local foods scene and better understanding it and how I can help move the needle for the farmers, for the region, for the eaters out there. If the NYTimes is on it…we need to be ahead of it.  It’s fun to participate as its part of the education—both as an illustrator/designer but also in my role with the Trumansburg Farmers Market where we circle on details I never had thought about…but trying to keep in balance the desires of the farmers and the hopes of the consumers. Very thin blade there.