the
Sopris Carbondale’s
weekly, non-profit newspaper
Sun
Volume 2, Number 31 | September 23, 2010
Red McClure potato joins list of foods worth fighting for By David Frey Sopris Sun Correspondent Carbondale’s hometown potato has made it onto the ark. The Ark of Taste, that is. The Slow Food movement, which works to preserve local foods and flavors, has added the Red McClure to its list of some 200 foods from across the country deemed delicious and endangered and worth fighting to protect. The Red McClure, which was developed in Carbondale a century ago, joins an exclusive list that includes Olympia oysters from the Pacific coast, the true red cranberry from Maine, and handmade filé (the sassafras powder at the heart of Louisiana gumbo.) “The Ark of Taste is the only thing like it in the world,” said Tom Passavant, co-chairman of Slow Food Roaring Fork, which has worked to bring the Red McClure back from the brink of extinction and into commercial production. It’s a select list of foods that are not only in danger of disappearing from the menu altogether. They’re also tasty and deemed worth fighting to preserve. “We know the potato is good,” Passavant said. “It’s fresh. It’s local. It tastes good. But you never know how a national group that is used to tasting more esoteric things is going to react to a potato.” They liked it. Earlier this month, the Slow Food USA Biodiversity Committee voted unanimously to add the Red McClure to the U.S. Ark of Taste. At a special tasting in Madison, Wis., tasters “were extremely enthusiastic,” Emily Vaughn, a member of the Biodiversity Committee, wrote in a letter to Marie Louise Ryan, the local potato project coordinator. It’s been a big couple of years for the Red McClure, which had all but disappeared for the past half-century. Last spring, Slow Food Roaring Fork distributed nearly 2,000 pounds of Red McClure seed potatoes, almost the entire existing supply in the world, to commercial farmers and home gardeners. Eagle Crest, Planted Earth and Colorado Rocky Mountain School nurseries bought them to sell to home gardeners. Western Slope commercial farmers, including Silt farmer Buddy Black, Sustainable Settings, Osage Gardens and Borden Farm, bought them to sell to consumers. They’ll be popping up at Potato Day, in farmer’s markets and in restaurants like Six89, where they grew a few of the spuds themselves, and Hestia, where they’re asking for a supply.
Swimming into fall. Canada geese such as this one sometimes paddle about in the small pond on County Road 100. There were 50 to 75 other geese on the sidelines earlier in the week, checking out this goose’s technique. Photo by Jane Bachrach
RED MCCLURE page 16
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