Happy thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy thanksgiving, everyone.

Please remember all the farmers who have worked so hard so you can have that wonderful food on your tables.

Also, here is a message from the state Agriculture Commissioner, Richard Ball:

“The Thanksgiving holiday is a special time for my family as I’m sure it is for all of you and your families. Today, when we gather around the table with loved ones and reflect on what we are grateful for, it is my hope that we, as New Yorkers, also pause to celebrate the vibrant agricultural community in our state, the local foods that will be before us, and recognize the hard work and contributions of our farmers and farmworkers.

  

With nearly 36,000 farms in New York, agriculture is at the heart of the state’s economy.  Our farmers are a proud part of the one percent of the population that feeds the remaining 99 percent.  

Just last year, New York’s nearly 5,000 dairy farms and 618,000 cows produced more than 14.1 billion pounds of milk, and over 1,600 vineyards and 400 wineries produced over 200 million bottles of wine.  

New York’s farmers are top producers of a wide variety of agricultural products in the country -- from squash, corn and apples to maple and farm based beverages to horticulture and nursery products — all the great things that we incorporate into our holiday gatherings and that bring families together.

So, tomorrow, and throughout this holiday season, I encourage everyone to give thanks for the bounty of crops New York’s growers produce for our state and for our strong agribusiness community that together works to bring healthy, high-quality foods and beverages to New Yorkers in every corner of the state.”

New York Harvester Comes to New York State Fair

So how does this sound to you?

Every day can be Thanksgiving when you try the newest food craze at this year's New York State Fair.

The sandwich, called The New York Harvester, is Thanksgiving, deep fried into a sandwich that weighs two pounds.

 

The creator of this madness is Jim Hasbrouck, who operates the famous Fried Specialties booths at the Fair and whose heart-stopping Defibrillator was last year's craziest new food and won national attention.  But enough about the cook; what's in the sandwich?

 

• Deep-fried turkey
• Deep-fried mashed potatoes
• Deep-fried stuffing
• Cranberry sauce
• Cheese sauce
• Bacon - deep-fried, of course
• All of it stacked between two slices of sourdough bread and every ounce of it made with New York products

 

"I spent the winter working on this," said Hasbrouck, the Wayne County resident who tours the nation selling deep-fried fun at many fairs and festivals.  "I went through a lot of food to get this just right, and it's good.  Crazy good."

 

"This is one of the fun reasons people wait all year for the Fair.  They want to taste something they've never tasted before.  As for me, I can't wait to dig in to one of these.  Who doesn't love Thanksgiving dinner?" said Troy Waffner, Acting Fair Director.

 

Hasbrouck also plans to bring back The Defibrillator, the mega-burger that featured a deep-fried Angus burger patty, deep-fried pickles, deep-fried cheese curds, deep-fried bacon, and cheddar cheese, stuffed between two grilled cheese sandwiches.  

 

The sandwich was one of several fun Fair foods featured on the Cooking Channel show "Carnival Eats" earlier this year.

 

The New York Harvester is the first of several wild new food choices to be announced in the coming weeks.  The fair's annual surveys of fairgoers have consistently shown that food is the number one item on their agendas.  

 

Fair officials have been diversifying food choices gradually each year, adding healthy options such as the wildly successful vegan food stand in the International Building and embracing more ethnic foods. 

 

Of course, the fair is known for its signature products - the cup of perfectly chilled white or chocolate milk in the Dairy Products building and the $1 baked potato with all the fixings in the Horticulture Building.  

 

The sausage sandwich with peppers and onion has been a staple of the fair for decades.

 

The New York State Fair this year runs from Aug. 25 to Sept. 5.  

Taste NY Thanksgiving Photo Contest Underway

A special Taste NY Thanksgiving photo contest to promote New York’s food and beverage producers and the agricultural industry is on now through Dec. 1.

The contest encourages New Yorkers to submit photos of their favorite Thanksgiving dish, beverage or entire holiday meal made with New York products and ingredients to the website at http://offerpop.com/hashtag/gallery/17504/submit or post to Instagram and Twitter using the hashtag #TasteNYThanks. 

Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, Agriculture and Markets Commissioner Richard Ball, New York State Chief Digital Officer and Deputy Secretary for Technology Rachel Haot, and distinguished culinary experts from the New York Wine and Culinary Center and The Culinary Institute of America will judge the entries and select five winners.

 

The contest started Nov. 20 and runs through midnight Dec.1. All entries will be judged on the overall appeal of the finished product, quality of the image, and representation of the New York-produced or sourced ingredient or food or beverage.  

The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets will announce the winners of the contest Dec.9 on the Taste NY website and social media channels, where the winners’ photographs and names will be displayed. 

The five entries that receive the highest overall scores will also win Taste NY gift baskets.

 

New York Potatoes Are A Must for Thanksgiving Dinner

An Adirondack blue potato

A can’t-do-without item on the Thanksgiving table is the potato.
 
No matter how you eat them — mashed, boiled, fried, scallopped or in a casserole — potatoes are a hearty starch filled with nutrients.
 
And yes, you can get potatoes grown in New York state.
 
There are 150 New York potato growers who grow and harvest 18,000 acres of the vegetable, mostly Upstate and on Long Island.
 
One is Jeff Hopkinson, who grows 70 acres of potatoes and seed potatoes in Williamstown, Oswego County. He finished harvesting his crop in early October and said the yield is good and the quality is “awesome.”
 
“We had a dry July and August, so I had to irrigate a lot,” he said. “But the size is good, the quality is fantastic, and there are no rotten ones. They are all nice.”
 
You can’t see much when you drive by a potato farm because all the growing takes place under the soil. Potatoes come in all sizes and different colors, such as red, white or blue. Some are better for varied types of cooking, whether it’s baking, boiling or frying.
 
And some potatoes aren’t eaten at all.
 
Hopkinson, a fourth-generation potato farmer, said he sells only about 20 percent of his 70 acres of potatoes for table stock. People come to the farm to buy them, and they are sold in some small stores. 

But the other potatoes are sold to potato farmers for seed stock, and Hopkinson said most of his go to Florida.
 
Many potato farmers in New York got involved in the seed business years ago, when it became another way to earn money. Hopkinson said that although the price of table potatoes can fluctuate wildly, seed prices are fairly stable.
 
Hopkinson is a certified seed provider — one of eight in New York state — meaning his farm undergoes about five inspections of his crop each year to ensure the potatoes used for seed are healthy and not spreading any diseases, such as the harmful potato leaf roll and potato mosaic viruses.
 
Certified seed is recognized in national and state legislation as meeting high standards for genetic purity and quality.
 
Hopkinson explained that seed potatoes don’t look any different from the vegetable that could grace a person’s plate. The difference is the inspections and care to be sure they are disease-free and that they always are kept in a cool, darkened storage area for sale later when they have begun to sprout eyes — those hard, beige tubes that grow out of the sides of potatoes. These eyes are the seeds and eventually grow into brand-new potatoes.

Here are the eight certified seed potato program participants in New York state:



** Ayers & Gillette, Pike, Wyoming County, 585-493-2394, T1ayers@yahoo.com
** Kurt Brehm, Wayland, Steuben County, 585- 315-8746
** Childstock Farms, Inc., Malone, Franklin County, 518-483-1239, rchild@childfarm.net
** Hopkinson Farms, Williamstown, Oswego County, 315-964-2221
** Andrew Pryputniewicz, Waterville, Oneida County, 315-841-8426, seedpotato@frontier.com
** Bruce H. Pryputniewicz, Sauquoit, Oneida County, 315-839-5301, bp1potato@frontiernet.net
** Tucker Farms, Inc., Gabriels, Franklin County, 518-637-1230, adkspud@hotmail.com , potatofarmer@westelcom.com , www.tuckertaters.com
** Cornell Uihlein Potato Farm, Lake Placid, Essex County, 518-523-3258, cmn5@cornell.edu , klp3@cornell.edu, uihleinfarm.pppmb.cals.cornell.edu

Potato Facts
** New York ranks 14th in the country in potato production. Idaho is first and Washington second.
** Potatoes are filled with fiber, Vitamin C and potassium, and they have no fat or cholesterol and only 100 calories per serving. The vegetable is 90 percent water.
** New York potato producers grow the vegetable for Cape Cod, Wise, Utz, Herr’s, Terrell’s and other regional potato chip companies.
** It is said that the potato chip was born in New York. In 1853, railroad magnate Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt complained that his potatoes were cut too thick and sent them back to the kitchen at a fashionable resort in Saratoga Springs. 
To spite him, chef George Crum sliced some potatoes paper-thin, fried them in hot oil, salted and served them. Vanderbilt loved his “Saratoga Crunch Chips,” and potato chips have been popular ever since.
Source: Empire State Potato Growers

For more great stories like this one, subscribe to the monthly Empire Farm & Dairy magazine by writing to the Watertown Daily Times, 260 Washington St., Watertown, NY   13601

Two New York State Farms Grow, Harvest Cranberries

As Thanksgiving approaches, New Yorkers (along with other Americans) begin thinking about the holiday feast.
 
One of the items that is paramount to the Thanksgiving table is the cranberry, that luscious burgundy fruit that is native to the swamps and bogs of the Northeast. According to history.com, it is probable the Pilgrims did have cranberries at their first Thanksgivig feast, but not in the sauce form most enjoy today.
 
Native Americans ate cranberries and used them as a natural dye, the website states. “The Pilgrims might have been familiar with cranberries by the first Thanksgiving, but they wouldn’t have made sauces and relishes with the tart orbs. That’s because the sacks of sugar that traveled across the Atlantic on the Mayflower were nearly or fully depleted by November 1621. Cooks didn’t begin boiling cranberries with sugar and using the mixture as an accompaniment for meats until about 50 years later.”
 
Nonetheless, a lot of people today wouldn’t think of putting on a Thanksgiving spread without the cranberry. In New York state, there are two cranberry farms — one in Williamstown in Oswego County and one in Brasher Falls in St. Lawrence County.
 
While they both churn out those tangy berries during each October harvest, the farm owners grow them differently.
 
Peter Paquin, owner of Deer River Cranberries in Brasher Falls, grows about 80 acres of cranberries and does wet harvesting, which means the area where the berries grow is flooded and the berries are harvested.
 
Most of the cranberries grown in the Northeast are grown and harvested from bogs, which are areas of low, soft, marshy ground usually located near wetlands. According to the website for Ocean Spray (responsible for 75 percent of the cranberries sold worldwide, says encyclopedia.com) bogs are where “cranberries love to grow.”
 
Paquin began his New York operation (he already runs some cranberry bogs in Massachusetts) in 2004 after buying a former hay and crop farm in 1999.  It took him a few years to get the ground ready, leveling the soil, digging a reservoir, putting sand in the area and then planting the cranberry plants.
 
He said the yields are good and the quality is excellent. He sells his berries to companies that freeze them and sell in stores and to some who make nutritional supplements from cranberries.
 
He also sells berries to customers who come to the farm during harvest season from Oct. 1 through Oct. 15.
 
In Williamstown, in eastern Oswego County, 180 acres of cranberries are grown in sandy, acidic fields (just right for cranberries) and are dry harvested with machines plucking the berries off the vines. You won’t find any water or bogs here.
 
“This is non-conventional upland harvesting,” said farm owner Marc Bieler.
 
The Oswego County farm — which was the first cranberry farm in New York state — is owned by Atoka Cranberry of Manseau, Quebec, the largest cranberry growing and processing company in Canada. Manseau is about 93 miles east of Montreal near Quebec City.
 
Atoka’s President Bieler bought the farm’s harvest in 2002 when the Oswego Cranberry Co. — which then owned the farm — was going out of business.
 
Then Bieler and Atoka bought the entire farm. Since then, Atoka has been dry harvesting the berries each October.
 
Wet harvested cranberries are used for processed items, such as juice or sauce. Dry harvested berries can be used for fresh sale or items such as dried cranberries. Only 2 percent of commercial cranberries are harvested using the dry method. The majority are harvested by flooding the fields and scooping up the floating berries.
 
Berries harvested in Oswego County go to the processing plant in Quebec where they are cleaned and frozen for use in juice concentrate and as sweet and dried cranberries.
 
Bieler said Atoka makes juice and concentrate for many different labels. Depending on the bid from various grocery stores, he said, people in Central and Northern New York could at one time or another be drinking cranberry juice made from Williamstown berries.
 


Cranberry Nutrition
**Cranberries are one of the most nutritious foods a person can eat.
**One cup of whole cranberries has just 46 calories, no fat, cholesterol or sodium, 18 percent of the daily requirement of fiber, 22 percent of the daily requirement of vitamin C, 5 percent of the daily requirement of vitamin B-6 and 1 percent of the daily requirements of vitamin A and magnesium.
**That cup also has just 4 grams of sugar.



   

Get Fresh Turkeys Right in New York State

Turkeys enjoy the sunshine at Violet Hill Farm in Herkimer County.

By Debra J. Groom
Empire Farm & Dairy 

New York doesn’t rank in the top 10 in turkey-producing states, but several farms here still raise and process fresh gobblers. 

Although most are small operations, they have devoted followers, take reservations for birds early in the year, and sell out quickly.
 
One such turkey producer is Mary Carpenter, who runs Violet Hill Farm in West Winfield in southern Herkimer County.
 
Carpenter said she didn’t plan on being a farmer. She was a makeup artist working in New York City, but one day, she went to the farmers market with a friend and met a farmer named Paul Densch-Layton, who was selling meat from his farm.
 
“He and I became friends,” Carpenter said. “He was ready to bow out of the farm, and he asked me if I wanted to help him out during lambing season.”
 
As she says on the Violet Hill Farm website, “the rest is history.”
 
Mary and Paul still are a couple, are raising five children, and they’re running a farm complete with turkeys, chickens, lambs, pigs, rabbits, geese, eggs, wild mushrooms, medicinal herbs and fruits. 

Mary also sells skin-care products, soaps, lip balms, deodorants and herbal tinctures.
 
This year, she has 300 turkeys ready to go for Thanksgiving; they range in weight from 10 to 25 pounds. (To order a turkey, go to www.violethillfarm.com.)
 
Carpenter and other turkey producers in New York said this year has been challenging due to the Avian (bird) flu problem in the Midwest.
 
While the bird flu hasn’t shown up in New York, the poultry industry has taken stringent precautions to ensure the strain stays away from the Empire State. Among the precautions: prohibiting poultry shows at any county fair or at the New York State Fair this year. 
 
“Some producers had a difficult time getting poults this year,” Carpenter said.
 
A poult is a turkey only 1 or 2 days old that producers buy and then raise for the Thanksgiving or Christmas season.
 
Some farmers, such as Ortensi Farms in Richfield Springs, Otsego County, usually sell turkeys but have none this year. Burl Creek Farm in Clyde, Wayne County, has only 42 birds this year, compared with 70 last year, saidf farm owner Rachel Burley.
 
And consumers should be beware of prices this year. The bird flu and some producers not being able to get enough poults to raise have led to some prices that might be higher this year than last.
 

Number of turkeys produced and value for 2013:

Minnesota, 44 million, $747,056,000

North Carolina, 34 million, $757,435,000

Arkansas, 28 million, $372,400,000

Indiana, 17.5 million, $441,061,000

Missouri, 17 million, $361,760,000

Virginia, 15.5 million, $267,995,000

California, 13 million, $242,925,000

South Carolina, 12 million, $318,402,000

Pennsylvania, 7 million, $113,582,000

Ohio, 5.5 million, value $155,031.000

Total for 2013 – 240 million, birds produced, value of $4,839,562,000  

For more stories like this one, subscribe to Empire Farm & Dairy magazine.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. 

And please, as you count your blessings, be sure to thank the farmers who toil every day for every morsel of food you enjoyed today.

Annual Thanksgiving Shopping Basket

This is from New York Farm Bureau:

The 2013 Market Basket Survey reveals large price differences for a typical turkey dinner when comparing different regions of the state.

As always, shoppers in New York Farm Bureau’s 11 districts try to get the best prices available, as most shoppers would, but do not use promotional coupons or special deals such as “buy one-get one free.”  The shopping list includes 12 Thanksgiving food items ranging from turkey and rolls to fresh carrots and celery to whipping cream.

The 2013 Thanksgiving survey displayed considerable price variation across the state as well as within districts. The purchase of all items ranged from $19.28 in Canandaigua to $36.17 in Broome County.  No District had the highest or lowest in every category.

The moral to this story…watch the prices and you can save.  Some examples include:

Market Basket Survey Comparison	Price Range	Average Price
Frozen, Self-Basting Turkey	.88 cents to $2.59 per lb.	$1.53 per lb.
Herb-seasoned cube stuffing 14oz.	.99 cents to $2.99	$2.47
Enriched Brown & Serve Rolls 12 oz./12 per pkg.	$1.50 to $3.39	$2.31
Gallon of Whole Milk	$2.19 to $4.29	$3.53
Frozen Green Peas 16oz. pkg.	.99  cents to $2.61	$1.71
Libby’s Pumpkin Pie Mix 30oz. can	$2.29 to $3.97	$3.08
Whipping Cream ½ pint carton	.94 cents to $2.99	$1.84
Package of Fresh Cranberries	$1.98 to $5.00	$2.78

This survey is one of the responsibilities of the NYFB State Promotion and Education Committee which also participates in the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Quarterly Market Basket Survey. AFBF’s 28th annual informal national price survey of classic items found on the Thanksgiving Day dinner table indicates the average cost of this year’s feast for 10 is $49.04, a 44-cent price decrease from last year’s national average of $49.48.

More information on the national survey can be found at www.fb.org.

 

Food Safety Tips for Holiday Meals

Check out these food safety tips from the USDA. Let's be safe out there on Thanksgiving.