The Forecaster has published an update on the effort to allow the sale of raw milk and hard cider at the Farmers Market.

Customers at the city’s farmers markets may soon be able to buy unpasteurized local milk, hard cider, beer and wine to go with their fresh vegetables, meats and baked goods.

City Councilors John Anton and Cheryl Leeman are sponsoring an amendment to the city’s rules that would allow licensed market vendors to add fermented beverages, raw milk and raw milk products, such as cheese, to their wares.

Today’s Maine Sunday Telegram reports on the 37-acre hydroponic greenhouse/aquaculture operation being planned in Windham.

One of three huge hydroponic greenhouses would stretch 2,000 feet from this spot — a distance longer than two Eiffel Towers laid end to end. There are plans for fish ponds and unique renewable energy elements that will make it extremely efficient.

By 2013, Sebago Farms should be selling hydroponic vegetables and coldwater fish throughout the Northeast.

The January issue of Down East magazine includes a review of Miyake,

What impresses most about Miyake’s creations is his mastery of a wide range of techniques and the quality of the ingredients. This isn’t your standard fish. It glistens. The spicy tuna roll combines tender tuna with creamy avocado slices, topped with seared yellowtail, toasted almonds, plum paste, and radish sprouts. The combination of color, texture, and flavors makes you rethink sushi.

as well as articles about bootleggers,

Mark’s applejack — that’s what distilled hard cider becomes — is the best I’ve ever tasted. Better than apple brandy that’s been aged twelve years. Better than imported Calvados at forty bucks a bottle. It’s dry, robust, and carries spicy hints of the fruit it was made from as well as the smoky flavors of the autumn harvest. When I first tried it a couple of years ago after a leisurely lunch at a mutual friend’s house, I thought it was paradise in a bottle.

and Farming in Maine.

What’s in the middle? Not all that much, actually. Rare are the midsized producers who can send a steady supply of crops to even a handful of grocery stores. If Mainers are to follow through on their demonstrated interest in eating locally — as well as making progress on existing efforts to further develop the state’s food system — we’re going to need some of those little farms to grow a bit bigger, while keeping the bigger guys healthy and strong.

According to reports from the Press Herald and Portland Daily Sun, the Recreation and Health Subcommittee has endorsed a change that allow the sale of raw milk and hard cider at the Portland Farmers Market. The issue now must be approved by the City Council to take effect.

Raw milk and certain locally-sourced alcoholic beverages could soon be found at the Portland Farmer’s Market alongside local beets, honey and other produce.

The city council’s Health and Recreation Committee yesterday endorsed a proposal to allow fermented beverages such as beer, mead and hard cider to be sold at the twice-weekly farmer’s markets as long as they meet existing standards.

The committee also endorsed a separate measure allowing unpasteurized milk to be sold there.

The Forecaster reports on the South Portland Farmers Market and interest in moving it to a more visible and high traffic location.

Vendors say that business at the market at Thomas Knight Park, which opened for the first time on July 14, limped along after a relatively successful first month.

Rainy weather on many Thursdays hasn’t helped, they said. But according to Caitlin Jordan, business manager of Alewive’s Brook Farm in Cape Elizabeth and head of the South Portland Farmers Market Association, the less-than-stellar turnout has one root cause.

“Like any business,” she said, “it’s location, location, location.”

The Food & Dining section in today’s Press Herald reports on the challenges independent poultry farmers face in getting their birds processed.

Yeah, we could build a garage and slap something in there, but that’s really not doing it right,” Steve Hoad said. “We estimated it would take $39,000 to $55,000 to build a facility that would be reasonable and we could keep clean. Then you would also have the issue of labor.”

The Hoads ended up going to a state-inspected facility in Monmouth. When that closed earlier this year, they started taking their birds to Weston’s in West Gardiner, which is now the only poultry processing facility in the state that has on-site state inspectors.

The Saturday Portland Daily Sun included a report on the issues that forced a Cultivating Community farm stand off the sidewalk in front of Local 188.

When a farm stand in front of Local 188 disappeared this week, a sandwich board directed customers to the parking lot behind the Congress Street restaurant.

Why move a popular streetside farm stand into a little-used, little-seen parking lot? City permitting, operators of the stand said.

The Forecaster has published an update on Ocean Approved and their kelp farming operation in Casco Bay.

Dobbins said the three varieties of kelp they grow are all native to Maine. They grow in the open ocean and filter nitrogen and phosphorus – often considered pollutants – out of the water.

The plants feed entirely on nutrients from the ocean and requiring no additional food. Dobbins said the final product has more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach and more fiber than brown rice.

The Food & Wine section in today’s Press Herald includes several articles about the Fall apple season: a report on the 2011 harvest, a list of apple events across the state, a guide to finding 40+ different varieties, and an article about John Bunker and his quest for rare Maine apples,

For years, John Bunker has been traveling around Maine on “fruit explorations,” hunting down old trees in out-of-the-way orchards and abandoned farms that may have been bearing fruit for 100 years or more. He lectures around the state, always encouraging his audiences to bring in apples they’ve found in their old orchards so he can try to identify them and solve the mystery of where they originated.

Those lucky enough to have secured a share in Bunker’s rare apple CSA this year will be picking up 7 different apple varieties today: Charette, Garden Royal, Milton, September Ruby, St. Lawrence, Wealthy and Whitney Crab.

Also in today’s Food & Wine section is an article about wine service and wine lists at Portland restaurants,

Today, I’ll use reader comments in order to explore some challenges to the health of our little wine culture here in southern Maine.

My hope is that you’ll come away from the following remarks feeling that you’re not alone, and that your own curiosity and investment in wine will be most highly rewarded if you actively push your friends, restaurant servers and retailers to treat wine less as a passively traded commodity and more as a pathway to rich experience.

and an interview with a vegan who is running in the Maine Marathon.

Because she follows a vegan diet and is training to run the Oct. 2 Maine Marathon, Angela May Bell of Portland occasionally gets questions from concerned friends who worry she’s not getting enough protein. It turns out her whole foods, plant-based diet gives her plenty of protein, but comes up a bit short on the extra carbs long-distance runners need.

Today’s Portland Daily Sun reports on a proposed modification to the city ordinance on keeping chickens that would reduce the setback and property line buffer requirements.

Marshall said the initial ordinance that passed in 2009 was amended to include more restrictive setbacks. But now that the program has proven to be noncontroversial, he said it was time to revisit those regulations.

“From what I have been able to find, there have not been many issues” involving chickens, he said yesterday in a phone interview. “I feel as though it’s appropriate now to move forward and allow people who live in more densely-populated areas” to have chickens.

This Week’s edition of the Portland Phoenix includes a guide to cheap eats in Portland for the newspaper’s annual student guide,

We know you’re dirt poor. Those textbooks are outrageously expensive and you’re forced to divvy out your remaining dollars on cheap beer and illegal substances. We’ve all been there. However, we wanted to remind you that there are places you can afford to eat in Portland that won’t bankrupt you (any more than those student loans will when you graduate). We even helped you with the math and organized it by how many dollars you have in your pocket. So, give up your tray and check out these places.

and a feature article about Maine’s wild blueberry industry.

Whether scooped by hand-held rakes or gathered mechanically by tractors, Maine’s blueberry crop is expected to be down a bit from the recent annual average of 83 million pounds. All told, Maine accounts for nearly all of America’s wild blueberry production, and is second to Michigan (which grows cultivated varieties) in terms of overall blueberry production in America. The US grows more blueberries than any other country in the world; Canada ranks second.

Today’s Press Herald reports on efforts to bring the Monday Farmers Market back to life,

Farmers on the wait list said they won’t come on Mondays because no customers attend. They can’t afford to take time from planting and harvesting to travel downtown and not sell anything. Likewise, customers won’t come on Mondays because no farmers attend.

It’s a self-defeating cycle, but a group of immigrant farmers will soon try to revive the Monday market. Dawud Ummah, president of the Center for African-American Heritage, is coordinating the effort.

an article about tequila featuring staff from Zapoteca,

For a lot of people, sitting in front of a line of three shots of tequila might conjure some flashbacks involving a pinch of salt, a lemon wedge and a pounding headache. But the shots that come in a flight of tequila at Zapoteca, a new Mexican restaurant and tequileria in Portland, are meant to be sipped and savored like a fine single malt Scotch, not downed in one gulp by a drunken college student.

and an article about the macrobiotic diet and the macrobiotic cooking classes at Five Season Cooking School,

The school is run by Lisa Silverman, and it hosts frequent visits from well-known macrobiotic teachers.

Next week, Jessica Porter, a former Portland resident and author of “The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics,” will teach a class at the school. At the end of September, internationally acclaimed macrobiotic educator Warren Kramer will come to the school to offer a lecture and teach a class.

Today’s Press Herald includes an article about a South Portland resident who replaced her lawn with a large vegetable garden. Produce from the garden is “distributed among four soup kitchen sites and 42 agencies in Cumberland County.”

[Liberty] Bryer teamed up with Wayside Soup Kitchen to plant a 2,000-square-foot community garden in her yard on Edwards Street, in the Meetinghouse Hill neighborhood.

“That has been part of my hope and intent, that people would realize, yes, they can grow for themselves and for other people,” she said.

For the latest installment of the Press Herald Maine at Work series, reporter Ray Routhier learns how to rake wild blueberries at Hart’s Clary Hill Farm near Union.

Powers runs a blueberry farm that his wife’s family started in the 1930s. The land had originally been a sheep farm, but is now turning out one of Maine’s most iconic crops — wild blueberries.

The challenges to growing blueberries begin with the fact that they are wild, Powers tells me. You don’t plant them, you can’t decide where they’ll grow. This makes weeding or treating them with herbicides tricky. And it makes picking them — on rocky hillsides for instance — tricky as well.

The Out on a Limb rare apple CSA run by John Bunker and Cammy Watts is back for a third season. Sign up to receive ” 20 or more varieties of rare, interesting and highly flavored apples that have a wide range of uses, appearances, histories and tastes”. Participants get 5 pick-ups of ¼ bushel each for $120. For more information or to sign-up email john.p.bunker@gmail.com.