Pick Your Own Strawberries, be sure to call first to make sure there are strawberries

CALL FIRST, the season started early, there may be no more strawberries, ask about other berries


The Berry Patch, Stephentown, NY (518) 733-1234
Pick your own strawberries, closing soon, call first
Thursday - Sunday, 9 AM - 3 PM

Green River Farm, Williamstown (413) 458-2470

Ioka Valley Farm, Hancock (413) 738-5915
Pick your own strawberries
Saturday - Sunday, 9 AM - 3 PM
Monday - Friday, 9 AM - 12:30 PM
Tuesday & Thursday, 4 - 5:30 PM
Strawberries will be done after this weekend - but get ready for blueberries!

Lakeview Orchard, Lanesboro (413) 448-6009
Pick your own raspberries, currants and sweet and tart cherries beginning on
Friday, June 25
Open Tuesday - Sunday 9 - 4

Noble's Tweenbrook Farm, Pittsfield (413) 443-2210

Windy Hill Farm, Great Barrington (413) 298-3217
Pick your own blueberries will begin within the next two weeks - call for information!
Monday - Sunday, 9 AM - 4 PM

Michael Pollan interviewed in the Financial Times

Lunch with the FT: Michael Pollan

By Simon Schama

"...One part of Michael Pollan is in awe at what agribusiness has achieved: the delivery of low-cost food on an unprecedented scale. But the better part of him is appalled. “What’s happened is Walmartism: the reverse of Fordism,” he says. “Ford raised the pay of his assembly line workers so they would buy his cars. Walmart pays low wages, knowing workers can always get bad, cheap food.” The result is a burger and jumbo-sized cola addicted population. No one is better than Pollan at giving the devil its due, conjuring the unmistakable, almost narcotically addictive “fry-fragrance” to which junk food junkies helplessly gravitate. It is, he thinks a kind of ersatz “home”: some imagined smell of childish security in that oily-crunchy, burgery squishy provision – as if fast food momma was one gigantic American tit on which the infantilised masses of America placidly suck.

"Anyone who has read Pollan’s coda to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, called “A Perfect Meal”, knows he is not just a historian and prophet of food but a hell of a cook too. So I ask him about the paradox of our time in which the obsessions of food – celebrity chefs, food columns in every paper and magazine, the marketing of gourmet kitchens – has somehow coincided with people cooking less not more. Television cooking we both think has became a kind of manic gameshow, in which star turns of charismatic rage and an emphasis on feverish speed has made it harder, not easier, for family cooks to transfer what they see to their own kitchens.

"The one exception to the bleak outlook is the rise and rise of local farmers’ markets, and what Pollan calls “Big Organic” stores such as Whole Foods Market where accurate source labelling is crucial to shopping decisions. From his perch in Berkeley he is under no illusion that somehow this salutary revolution is going to reach the mass of American people in recessionary times, but Pollan is tired of hearing from the better off that the reason the hired help defrosts yet another pizza, or lugs the kids off to a Happy Meal – while the gourmet trophy Viking stove goes begging – is shortage of time. The average amount of time spent on cooking, eating and cleaning up a meal, he says, is 31 minutes; the average daily non-professional time at a computer two hours, and in front of a television three hours..."

Read more

Restaurant Week Sunday June 6 - 10, 2010

Each Berkshire Grown Restaurant Week Member card entitles a Berkshire Grown member to two meals, each for the crazy price of $25.10 per person ($50.20 for two people, plus please give a generous tip based on the value of the meal).

You can join Berkshire Grown at a participating restaurant.

Dine out during Berkshire Grown Restaurant Week at one of these fabulous restaurants:

allium Restaurant
Baba Louie's
Brix
Cafe Reva
Caffe Pomo D'oro
Castle Street Café
Chez Nous
Gala Restaurant and Bar
Gramercy Bistro
John Andrews Restaurant
La Terrazza at Gateways Inn
Mezze Bistro + Bar
Route 7 Grill
Sloane's Tavern at Cranwell Resort
Stagecoach Tavern
Swiss Hutte
The Old Inn on the Green
The Red Lion Inn
The Williams Inn
Wheatleigh

Remember to call ahead to find out when the restaurants are open and what they are serving and tip generously"!