Global
Food Heritage Project
Food
Heritage Sites:
Preserved
| Remembered | Endangered
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|Communities
Newsmakers
NM's Historic Chile
Pepper Fields Threatened by Flooding
Mobile Bay Jubilee
Cafe du Monde, New Orleans,
USA
Maritime &
Seafood Industry Museum, Biloxi, USA
Date Palm Spouts
After 2000 Years, Israel
Fulton Fish Market, New York
City, USA
Stockyards, Chicago, USA
Historic
Chile Fields of Hatch, NM flooded
Hatch floods ruin some chile
crops By Associated Press August 17, 2006
HATCH - One look at her modest
two-acre field and chile farmer Elizabeth Soto
knew her crop outlook wasn't good.
"It's gone," Soto said
Wednesday. "Completely and totally."
"Muy malo," said her
father, Refugio Zaragoza, shaking his head.
Heavy rains and breached drainage
channels combined to put the town of Hatch and
some of its valuable chile crop under several
feet of water. Residents started digging out and
draining Wednesday. (/Doña Ana County via
AP)
That's not all the bad news facing the family.
Soto's modular home shifted on its blocks after
heavy rains breached a diversion ditch north of
Hatch on Tuesday, causing flooding in the village
that is famous for its green chile.
The home probably can be repaired,
thanks to the flood insurance Soto and her husband
purchased two months ago at the insistence of
her mortgage company.
The chile crop is another matter.
Hatch is one of the nation's
leading chile producers and proclaims itself the
Chile Capital of the World. An annual chile festival
over Labor Day draws tens of thousands of tourists.
In 2004, New Mexico farmers produced
106,850 tons of chile worth more than $50 million.
Agriculture officials say the chile industry in
New Mexico contributes more than $400 million
annually to the state's economy.
So when Soto's field was submerged
under 8 feet of water, it was tough for her to
accept. Looking out from her home as the floods
hit, she recalled the work that went into the
crop and realized it had been futile.
Then she started crying.
"We are very, very, very
sentimental about our chile," Soto said.
"This is a huge part of our family life,
our culture. It means more than just money. My
mom, my dad, my husband and me have been working
so hard."
The terrain of the Hatch Valley
certainly contributed to flooding at Soto's land.
Her farm sits at one of the lowest areas, where
the crops are bordered by a pair of 8-foot levees
that acted like a dam when water began accumulating.
Elephant Butte Irrigation District
workers Demetrio Alanis, Francisco Gonzalez and
Dan Bouvet stayed up overnight to drain the field.
Their pumps chugged hour after hour, pouring water
into an irrigation channel.
When the water receded, it became
apparent to the men that the chiles were wiped
out.
"It will probably be dead
in a week," Bouvet said.
Soto's crop is ruined because
moisture isn't good for the long green chiles.
In fact, when New Mexico experiences a wet winter,
chile farmers worry about the notorious curly
top virus that can devastate the crop before it
even begins to grow.
Summer rains promote the growth
of three crop diseases: phytophthora root rot
(also known as chile wilt), powdery mildew and
bacterial spot.
And soggy fields make harvesting
nearly impossible.
Making matters worse for Soto
and her family, this year's batch was being hailed
across New Mexico as a quality crop.
"It was beautiful chile,"
Zaragoza said in Spanish. "We were so proud
of it. It had a lot of fruit."
Despite the devastation in Hatch,
there's good news for chile lovers.
While Soto's small farm was overwhelmed,
the storm that led to Tuesday's flooding didn't
make a big difference for the larger farms north
of town, or to the other chile farms across New
Mexico.
Gene Baca, president of the New
Mexico Chile Association and vice president of
Bueno Foods, said most of the state's crop is
raised in the Deming area. Hatch "is a fairly
small part of where chile is grown in New Mexico,"
he said.
"They have the name that
most people associate with chile in the state,
but there's actually not a lot of chile grown
in that area," Baca said.
John White, Doña Ana County
extension agent, said about 2,000 acres to 3,000
acres of chile are planted in the Hatch area -
about half of the 5,500 acres planted in the county.
White said all farmers can do
now - and in the future - is hope for the best.
"The weather prediction
is for more and more rain," he said. "Hatch
has a notoriety for chile, and all this rain could
drive the price up if (their chile) becomes this
object that's hard to get hold of."
Copyright 2006, The
Albuquerque Tribune.
Mobile
Bay's Jubilee
Image
source
Jubilee is the name used locally for a
natural phenomenon that occurs from time
to time on the shores of Mobile Bay, Alabama,
USA. During a jubilee, blue crabs, shrimp, flounder,
stingray, and eels swarm toward the shore in such
numbers that the shallow water near land seems
to boil with life.
Photo: Roy
M. Thigpen, Jr
People living near the shore
rush down to the water with washtubs, gigs and
nets, and gather a bountiful -- and easily reaped
-- harvest of seafood. As jubilees only happen
on warm summer nights, often in the early pre-dawn
hours, the event takes on the aspect of a joyous
community beach party.
Visit our exhibit
on this food heritage site.
New
Orleans French Market &
Cafe du Monde: Original French Market Coffee Stand
One of the oldest continuously
operated markets and cafes in USA New
Orleans, Louisiana
These two landmark food heritage
sites are independent operations sharing the same
building. With the unfolding story of New Orleans'
plight, we present a summary of why we consider
New Orleans to be a unique global food heritage
site.
Below is a brief history of the
French Market taken from the Cafe du Monde website.
You can read all the history by clicking
here.
The location of the French Market
and of New Orleans dates back to the Choctaw Indians,
before the Europeans settled the New World. The
Choctaw Indians used this natural Mississippi
river levee location to trade their wares to the
river traffic.
The early European settlers came by boat to this
location to sell produce and dairy products. The
City of New Orleans was established on this location
of the Mississippi River in 1718 by Jean Baptiste
LeMoyne.
The first French Market building was put up by
the Spanish in 1771. This building was
destroyed by a hurricane in 1812.
The following year it was replaced
by the building which now houses the Cafe Du Monde.
Back then it was known as The Butcher's Hall..
In the 1930's the Works Progress Administration
renovated and added to the French Market buildings.
The French Market now comprises of seven buildings
anchored at the Jackson Square end by the Cafe
Du Monde and on the other end by the Farmers and
Flea Market sheds.
From Cafe du Monde scrapbook. Click
here for more photos.
The Global Food Heritage Project
salutes the owners of Cafe du Monde for preserving
their cafe's history and consider it to be a model
for other food heritage businesses.
Here's a powdered sugar-covered
look at Cafe du Monde's basic products. Click
here for histories of their famous chicory
coffee and beignets.
Generations have peered into the beignet operation
located around the river side from the public
seating area.The father of these kids recalled
his parents bringing him to these windows. The
busy beignet makers acknowledge bystanders by
tossing wet bits of dough and flour at the window.
Notice the beignet fry cooker in the rear and
the beignet dough-cutting wheel in the foreground.
Many of Cafe du Monde's employees are Vietnamese-Americans.
By the way, click
here for a brief summary of the on-going debate
as to whether NOLA's "French Quarter"
is really French or Spanish.
Seafood
Industry Museum, Biloxi, Mississippi, USA
Destroyed by Hurricane
Katrina
Here are views of this remarkable regional
food museum...
that preserves the story of Biloxi's famed
but threatened seafood traditions.
Visit
the museum's website.
The museum features an exhibit on hurricanes
that have struck the Mississippi Gulf coast. Click
here to see some photos of a local landmark,
Baricev's Seafood Harbour restaurant, destroyed
by Hurricane Betsy (September 1965), rebuilt and
destroyed again by Hurricane Camille (August,
1969).
Seed
of extinct date palm
sprouts after 2,000 years
- Matthew Kalman, San Francisco Chronicle Foreign
Service
Sunday, June 12, 2005<www.sfgate.com>
Kibbutz Ketura, Israel -- It has
five leaves, stands 14 inches high and is nicknamed
Methuselah. It looks like an ordinary date palm
seedling, but for UCLA- educated botanist Elaine
Solowey, it is a piece of history brought back
to life.
Planted on Jan. 25, the seedling
growing in the black pot in Solowey's nursery
on this kibbutz in Israel's Arava desert is 2,000
years old -- more than twice as old as the 900-year-old
biblical character who lent his name to the young
tree. It is the oldest seed ever known to produce
a viable young tree. Click
here to read full report.
Fulton
Fish Market
"The
smoky riverbank dawn, the racket the fishmongers
make, the sea-weedy smell, the sight of this
plentifulness always gives me a feeling of well
being and sometimes they elate me."
--writer
Joseph Mitchell
After
over 180 years of flashing knives and flying scales,
New York's Fulton Fish Market is headed out of
Brooklyn and into the Bronx, at Hunt's Point.
The state-of-the-art indoor facility will certainly
be more comfortable for both vendors and buyers---and
the fish will be well-refrigerated, not tossed
on mounds of ice.
Evidently
the market began in the early 1800's as a site
for the sale of meat, veg, as well as fish.
"The
Fulton ferry then was a hub of activity, and the
site was chosen because of its convenience to
the ferry and for the benefit of Long Island farmers
who said they could provide the public with vegetables
at four to six cents less per bag by saving the
cost of carting to the so-called Fly Market.
When
the market opened (sometime after 1815) it was
the most spacious and costly edifice of its kind
in the country. It carried a wide variety of meats,
including display of exceptional quality."
By
1824 the market became entirely given over to
fish. The catch that used to come into South Street
by boat to the market's first permanent structure
built in 1869 has long been trucked to the market.
The
FOOD Museum has dubbed Fulton Fish Market's original
location a Global Food HeritageSite. This describes
a place integral to the history of food, and one
that could either be devoted to a museum about
such history, or at the very least honored by
a plaque. Many such places, large and small, exist
around the country, and many are in danger of
evaporating along with their valuable stories
of food.
Union
Stockyards
http://chicago101.freeservers.com/index/stockyards/stockyards.html
If
the fish are moving, the animals of Chicago's
Packing district are almost gone. One small operation
remains, devoted to the Kosher and Muslin slaughter
of lamb and veal, about 1200 lambs a day, and
300 calves a week. According to the Washington
post's Kari Lydersen, Chiappetti's Lamb and Veal
has been the only slaughterhouse in town since
the 475 acre Chicago Union Stockyards closed 35
years ago. The company is moving to an industrial
park about a mile from its present location.
Developed
in 1865 along with the railroad that made it all
possible, the stockyards once shipped fresh meat
up, down and across the U.S. The Chicago-style
slaughter of animals evidently caused a light
bulb to gleam over the head of Henry Ford. "The
Chicago stockyards are widely credited with providing
the inspiration for industrial assembly lines.
The slaughter process was known as a "disassembly
line." It is said that Henry Ford observed
it and reversed the process to put cars together,
instead of taking cows apart. "
The
Chicago Union Stockyards area is already becoming
an up-market, martini-bar-filled, condo area but
it, too, deserves recognition as a Global Food
Heritage Site.
Sources:
Union
Stockyards
Slaughterhouse
to the World
Fulton
Fish Market photos
Fulton
Fish Market thrives
Single subject
Culinary arts museums
Food origin heritage sites
Agricultural heritage sites
Virtual food museums
