At the Table

Summer 2016 Issue

Last Updated June 01, 2016

LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

At the Table: Changing Seasons

One of the stories in this issue of Edible Jersey describes the Farminary, a new program at Princeton Theological Seminary in which theology students contemplate the links between food, ecology and God—all while helping weed the garden. The program’s director, Nate Stucky, sees lots of overlap between the skill sets of good farmers and good pastors, such as “knowing how to pay attention to the seasons, knowing how to tend to something, knowing how to persist through failure and knowing—and having reverence for—the inter-connectedness of life and death.”

I get excited about stories like this that draw connections between food and the big questions in life. In another story, two beginning chicken farmers at Voodoo Farm in Hardwick take care to slaughter their chickens in the middle of the night, when the birds are half asleep, in an attempt to end their lives as peacefully as possible. Do chickens slaughtered at the huge industrial chicken farms receive the same reverence? It’s an important question.

This issue celebrates farmers and farmers’ markets. In it you will read about efforts to make healthy produce more accessible to everyone, a young farmer juggling the challenges of managing a farm and becoming a mother, and what goes on beyond the scenes at a farmers’ market on market day. Don’t miss the listings of 2016 New Jersey farmers’ markets.

On a personal note, after more than three years as the editor at Edible Jersey, I decided recently that this will be my last issue. I’m not really going anywhere—I’m staying put in beautiful East Amwell, New Jersey, and I will continue to pursue my professional passion, which is telling stories based around food, ecology, sustainability and health. But I’m taking this opportunity to build a company of my own, Hundred Year Films, with a focus on narrative, documentary-style video production. If you’d like to keep track of what I’m up to, I hope you’ll visit me from time to time at hundredyearfilms.com, as well as at the home of my environmental webseries, The Creature Show, at creatureshow.com.

It’s been a great three years, and I’m thankful for the opportunities provided by Edible Jersey and publisher Nancy Painter, and for all the good moments I’ve been able to share with writers, photographers, the magazine’s staff, farmers, chefs, restaurateurs and you, our enthusiastic readers. I’m excited about what comes next.

See you out in the fields.

-Jared Flesher, Editor
jared@ediblejersey.com