In Issue #28

Hoosier Thoughts

It’s hard to believe that spring is already here, especially after such a bitter cold winter, but I welcome it with open arms. Our spring issue focuses on foraging and farming, two things I am personally excited to learn more about these days. Indiana is so full of opportunities to dig deep in your backyard for luscious ingredients like Indiana’s caviar—the morels—and garlic greens, ramps, fiddlehead ferns and countless other wild-growing plants that will tease your palate.

Then there is the art of food. This year our issues will take a new look into food + art + nature, diving into unique experiences. This time our “Edible Culture” department delivers four bright and shining stars of Instagram, with whom we are connected in only what we can say is the Kevin Bacon six degrees of separation. Each has been instrumental in linking us with their foodie community—a collection of must-follow influencers and brilliant talents.

Spring is about rebirth, resurgence and new beginnings. You will see that on the pages of our issues this year in our storytelling, our photography and our efforts to be deeply involved within the sustainable food community. If you are not yet familiar with Edible Communities, you should be. It’s a network of nearly 100 locally owned and edited publications (including Edible Indy) all across the United States and Canada, each telling the hyper-local story of food and social food justice in its own area. Together, we capture 1.5 million readers each season, making us collectively the fifth-most-read food magazine(s) in the world. The only way to fight the fight for local food is to have a voice. Help us be that voice in Indiana. Help us tell your story, of your fight, your solution. Email me directly at jennifer@edibleindy.com.

Cheers to new beginnings.

Hoosier Hugs,

- Jennifer & Jeff Rubenstein

Letter from the Editor

A dairy farmer recently shared a staggering statistic with me: 27 million acres of U.S. farmland is owned by other countries around the world. A large percentage of the land is forest, a source for timber, but now when I look out at farmland across the Midwest I can’t help but wonder to whom it belongs. Yet when were we even given permission to use the term “our land”? When springtime emerges you suddenly see in living color the life all around that depends on the plants, water, wind and sunlight as much as we do.

The monarch butterflies remind us of that, migrating up from Mexico to feast on the milkweed, although Chef Daniel Orr from FARMbloomington in Bloomington, Indiana, likes the milkweed, too. Farmer Donald Cottee reminds us of that when he tells the story of his great-great-grandfather’s life as a slave-turned-landowner in Indiana. Cottee’s story is a remarkable testament to the memory, fortitude and forgiveness required to maintain farmland for food, health, family and the monarchs, no matter how difficult. And the Hoosier Young Farmers Coalition, a member of the National Young Farmers Coalition, most likely shares in Cottee’s call to hold on to the land with their efforts to increase engagement among young farmers in Indiana. 

We want to thank Donald Cottee and his family for their work and for sharing their story with us on these pages. One story among many, like one monarch among many, that has withstood loss, tragedy and alienation in a place called home not by just one family but by many.

Eat Well, Love Well, Live Well,

- Colleen