Ava Chin is the “Urban Forager” columnist for the New York Times’ City Room—which appears online every other Saturday, and also in the Sunday Metropolitan section. She has written for about food, arts and culture for the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, the Village Voice, BUST, SPIN, VIBE, and Martha Stewart online (with an early incarnation of the “Urban Forager” in the New York Times Local). She recently contributed a piece on the pleasures of urban foraging in the May issue of Saveur.
She has appeared on WNYC’s “All Things Considered” with Amy Eddings, discussing ginkgoes and wineberries.
Ava is the editor of Split:Stories From a Generation Raised on Divorce (McGraw-Hill, 2002) a collection of nonfiction essays about growing up in a divorced family, which Booklist called a “brave and insightful collection.” She earned an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and a PhD from the University of Southern California. She is an associate professor at the College of Staten Island-CUNY where she teaches Creative Nonfiction and Journalism.
A native New Yorker, Ava forages throughout the five boroughs and the tri-state area, and lectures on edible weeds. She is currently working on a memoir for Simon & Schuster.
Hi Ava, have you done a series on foraging for seeds? Our new website, SeedLiving, may also be of interest to you. SeedLiving has been called “one of the most potentially vibrant, versatile and engaging websites for buying, selling and swapping seeds.” (TreeHugger)
My family recently built this site instead of putting solar panels on our house. SeedLiving has been developed during a time of rising crop prices, Monsanto buying more and more seed companies, and a flourish of small organic farms getting a lot of attention and doing great work.
SeedLiving is a brand new international online venue for buying, selling and swapping open pollinated seeds and live plants. Users may choose to sell or swap within their own regions. The fees for using the site are pay-what-you-can.
If users would like to give your seeds away for free but have the postage paid, they may put them on SeedLiving’s Trading Table. We are also looking for bloggers to post gardening news & tips for their growing area.
At some point in the future, we hope that everyone with access to the internet will be able to make a living or supplement their income from open pollinated, untreated seeds and live plants, while, at the same time, promoting and enhancing biodiversity on our planet.
Please help us spread the word!
Anna-Monique West
http://www.seedliving.com
TreeHugger
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/09/seed-swapping-flourish-online.php
On facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/SeedLiving/122524504451093?ref=sgm
Just read your article in NYT about Crabapples. I am a member of a community garden in Kensington, Brooklyn that has a few trees. We have the larger sized and the smaller cherry sized as well. I have taken them and have been producing my own wine. It’s great and though it would be interesting for you to hear about another use for the fruit. Mike
Ava: I have enjoyed reading your excellent columns in the NYT and was wondering if you were familiar with my recently published book, Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast (Cornell University Press). If not, I can send you a review copy. take care, Peter
Fantastic. Maybe next year I can come out to your community garden and see your trees. I’m curious about how you liked your wine from last season…
Ava, I have a question: I collected 2 large zip-lock bags of freshly fallen acorns (from both red & white oak) last fall up in Harriman State Park, only to be very disappointed to find out that over 80% of them contained worms / grubs. Do you have any tips on harvesting acorns that would help avoid this issue? PS: I’m a huge fan of your column.
Thanks, EW. It’s always disappointing to find worm-infested acorns when you’re collecting for food.
A nice, fresh acorn should:
a) be smooth and without holes (even a single, tiny hole is a sign a critter has gotten to it)
b) have a nice weight to it. If it’s too light there’s a good chance it’s been eaten.
In fact, I can usually tell a good acorn as soon as I have it in hand because of the weight. It makes collecting a lot easier. Good luck this season, and thanks for the nice words of support!