Just in time for the fresh-food abundance that comes with summer and farmers' markets and pick-your-own adventures, the folks at SPACE Gallery and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) will host their second Food+Farm extravaganza this week.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | May 6, 2009
Just in time for the fresh-food abundance that comes with summer and farmers' markets and pick-your-own adventures, the folks at SPACE Gallery and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA) will host their second Food+Farm extravaganza this week. The four-day event highlights sustainable and healthy food production.
"Food+Farm seems to dovetail nicely with what seems to be some of the current ideas surfacing in the media," SPACE's Jon Courtney writes in an e-mail, referencing the cost of food, the creation of a White House "victory garden" (an idea conceived by Scarborough resident Roger Doiron of Kitchen Gardeners International, who spoke at last year's Food+Farm event and who will be leading a workshop on Sunday), and the origins of swine flu.
The line-up this year includes a conversation with sustainable lobsterman and fisheries expert Ted Ames, a Mainer who helped revolutionize the fishing industry and received the first-ever MacArthur "Genius" grant awarded to a fisherman; an urban gardening fair at the Boyd Street Farm on the corner of Cumberland Avenue and Franklin Arterial; a day-long series of MOFGA-run workshops to teach skills like chicken-raising, vermicomposting (worms!), beekeeping, and canning; a discussion with "eco-chef" Bryant Terry (for $10 extra, the Local Sprouts Cooperative will prepare a meal of Terry's recipes, including citrus collards with raisins and black-eyed pea fritters); and screenings of Cecily Pingree's short film, Fishing Voices, as well as the feature documentary Food Inc. (Read more about the film on page 37.)
"This year's hands-on components have a special focus on urban and small-space food production," Courtney says, which makes sense for most of Portland's population. If it goes well, he says, "Food+Farm will most likely be an annual event at SPACE." See a schedule of events at space538.org.
Related:
Dismembers only, Escaping the life, Rock of wages, More
- Dismembers only
In a survival horror game, the setting is everything. Dead Space has a good one.
- Escaping the life
Like the drug dealers in The Wire or accounts of illegal trafficking of any form, the current and former teenage prostitutes in David Schisgall's documentary Very Young Girls don't often refer to their trade as a job.
- Rock of wages
Huak are the rare local band who, in the two-plus years they've been playing regular gigs, sound bolder and more self-possessed every time you see them.
- Uncovering the imagination
More than meaningless scraps of paper, discarded objects, or misplaced keepsakes, Found items are stories in themselves.
- Food unfarmed
Following in the Peabody Award-winning footsteps of Aaron Wolf's congenial, informative documentary King Corn, Robert Kenner's omnibus agri-doc Food, Inc . offers a bleaker portrait of America's food economy at this year's Food+Farm event series, centered at SPACE Gallery from May 7 to 10.
- Music Seen: All over
Last week we spent five of six nights out on the town. If anyone ever complains that we don't have enough venues or shows to attend we beg to differ.
- Music Seen: Ocean and Pontiak
The day after Ocean's predictably under-attended (30-40 people) Cinco de Mayo performance at SPACE, a friend who also attended asked what I thought. "So loud," I said. "So slow," he responded. It wasn't hard to catch the reverence in both reactions.
- Put your skirt on
Portland's aggressive new frontgal can hit all the notes while she hits you in the face.
- Last call
One of the big topics of social conversation in Portland last week was the anonymous Portland Point blog's ruthless, somewhat self-negating takedown of the Honey Clouds' May 23 CD-release show.
- Greetings and salutations
The film, a decidedly unlikely crowd-pleaser, has had a charmed year so far. It won a Special Jury Award upon its world premiere at Austin, Texas's SXSW Film Festival, and an Audience Award at the prestigious Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in North Carolina, becoming something of a "little documentary that could" on the festival circuit.
- Gods of rock
SPACE Gallery will be awfully loud Thursday, with the CD release of Sun Gods in Exile's Black Light, White Lines, supported by Ogre and the debut of Murcielago. Last Friday's L'Animaux Tryst showcase and this show are sonic polar opposites on the SPACE spectrum, but good for them for giving some boot-stomping guitar-rock a chance.
- Less

Topics:
This Just In
, Culture and Lifestyle, Food and Cooking, Foods, More
, Culture and Lifestyle, Food and Cooking, Foods, Organic Foods, Jon Courtney, Roger Doiron, Gardeners Association, Franklin Arterial, Space, Space, Less