![\"img_0954\"](\"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/img_0954-400x300.jpg\" "\\"img_0954\\"")
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When I went to the Forgotten Fruits workshop<\/a> up in Madison earlier this \u00a0year, one thing seemed sort of off. All the trees looked like this one.<\/p>\n March = not exactly peak apple season.<\/p>\n Next week, tho, RAFT<\/a> brings its apple program to Chicago just as the Pippins are starting to fall from the trees. I’m looking forward to Thursday’s workshop at the Botanic Garden<\/a>, which is led by RAFT majordomo Gary Nabhan<\/a> in conjunction with gregarious cider expert Ben Watson<\/a>. It looks like it \u00a0will revisit much of the information from the spring, with perhaps more of a focus on increasing accessibility to and availability of heirloom apple varieties in urban markets.<\/p>\n I was both inspired and utterly overwhelmed by the wealth of information presented in Madison, in particular the collective knowledge of the apple old-timers, who came from orchards across the country to put their heads together and figure out how to keep the American Summer Pearmain, the Pomme Royal Dyer, the Transcendent Crab, and a host of other gloriously named fruits alive. Sadly these men — many of them lifelong apple growers, and many of them in their 70s and 80s — will not be at the Chicago workshop. But, on the plus side perhaps this time my head will not explode.<\/p>\n Two public events bookend the workshop: On Wednesday at 2 PM Nabhan and Wisconsin orchard-keeper and apple historian Dan Bussey host a field trip<\/a> to historic Kline Creek Farm<\/a>. And on Thursday at 6 PM Nabhan and Watson get down to business with an heritage apple and cider tasting<\/a> at Southport Grocery; \u00a0proceeds benefit the excellent Chicago Rarities Orchard Project<\/a> (or “CROP”), a fledgling orchard project spearheaded by a handful of Chicago’s own fruit freaks. (One of them is also a soup freak<\/a>.) For more info on all this see the Slow Food Chicago<\/a> site.<\/p>\n All the apple action is happening in conjunction with next week’s Chef’s Collaborative National Summit<\/a>, which is convening in Chicago on Tuesday at Kendall Collge to rally the culinary troops around the theme “Bringing Sustainability to the Table.” Now, locally grown produce, snout-to-tail eating, and on-site compost may all seem like no-brainers in Chicago, where you can’t throw a fork without hitting a plate of rooftop-grown microgreens, but get outside the Mado-North Pond-Publican axis and there are still a whole lot of Sysco cans on the shelf out there. (Though I shouldn’t dis Sysco. The committment with which this industry giant — for so long the easy fall guy for all that’s wrong with the food service business — has thrown its considerable weight behind the cause<\/a> is both fascinating and heartening.) Restaurants notoriously operate on razor-thin margins, and the current economic climate is making things particularly rough and bulk buying particularly seductive. So, IMHO, any effort to bring together professionals\u00a0to try and hash out a way to run a sustainable business and stay<\/em> in business is vital, now more than ever.<\/p>\n With speakers ranging from Rick Bayless<\/a> to Fred Kirschenmann<\/a>, president of Dan Barber’s Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture<\/a> and a longtime force behind the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture<\/a> at Iowa State (ground zero for much critical research underpinning those long lines at the Green City Market — this white paper<\/a> on the disappearing “agriculture of the middle” is particularly good, if nerdy, reading) the summit looks to be a rich day and a half. There’s even a panel on local beer, wine, and spirits, a subject ever-near<\/a> and dear<\/a> to my heart.<\/p>\n It should be a busy week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I went to the Forgotten Fruits workshop up in Madison earlier this \u00a0year, one thing seemed sort of off. All the trees looked like this one. March = not exactly peak apple season. Next week, tho, RAFT brings its apple program to Chicago just as the Pippins are starting to fall from the trees. … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,194,198,197,119,193,196,101,195,100],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ben-watson","tag-chefs-collaborative-summit","tag-chicago-rarities-orchard-project","tag-crop","tag-dan-bussey","tag-forgotten-fruits","tag-fred-kirschenmann","tag-gary-paul-nabhan","tag-leopold-center-for-sustainable-agriculture","tag-raft"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":917,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions\/917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marthabayne.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}