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Plant Chat: Diana Dyer, MS, RD

Sharon Palmer

Diana Dyer, MS, RD is an award-winning dietitian whose work has spanned the health care spectrum, first focusing on critical care nutrition, then nutrition and cancer survivorship, and now health and wellness after starting an organic farm in 2009. Diana’s book A Dietitian’s Cancer Story has been in print since 1997, with proceeds still donated to The American Institute for Cancer Research to fund research focused on optimizing cancer survivorship. Her three blogs DianaDyer.com, 365DaysOfKale.com, and CancerVictoryGardens.com have thousands of daily viewers. Diana’s days are spent working on the Dyer Family Organic Farm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she and her husband grow 40+ varieties of garlic to nourish the health of their local community, indeed living their farm’s vision statement of “Shaping our future from the ground up”.

You have long been known for your work in cancer and nutrition; can you tell us how that morphed into an interest in farming?

Farming is actually a long-held interest. My husband and I came close to dropping out of our respective graduate degree programs back in the mid-70’s to start an organic farm near Madison, WI. Short story, we didn’t do that, but everywhere we have lived since then, we dug up our yard for an extensive garden or used a community garden if our yard was too shady. Segueing from personal gardening to becoming commercial farmers in 2009 was truly a big leap, but my husband and I both felt a professional responsibility to move from practicing within the treatment end of the health care spectrum to being at the far other end, i.e., focusing purely on wellness and disease prevention. How better to do that than by growing healthy food in healthy soil to feed our own community, which brought us back to our first dream as a newly married couple!

What is it like to work on a farm?

I tell the students working with us who are participating in the School to Farm Program (established in 2010 by the Hunger & Environmental Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) that there is NO typical day! No two days are alike, as morning plans fly out the window when the weather changes unexpectedly or a new situation just crops up that needs immediate attention (examples – something not fun like a tractor malfunction that needs swift trouble-shooting and repairs or having a chef unexpectedly showing up on the farm, which can be harried but is typically fun!). However, in a nutshell, working on a farm has reinforced that planning, flexibility, patience, creativity, and both systems-thinking and long-term thinking are critical to meeting established goals. In addition, know that whatever standards or desires we had for “control” on our farm are long-gone, as Mother Nature is ultimately in charge of our business!

Tell us what it was like to meet the organic certification standards?

Meeting the organic certification standards for the USDA is not difficult, i.e., it is not rocket science. 🙂 However, it requires (1) detailed record keeping and making a plan for keeping those records (plus sticking to it) along with (2) developing a written plan for the use of the land on your farm, two activities that all careful farmers would be doing anyway. Understanding the expectations for certification simply helped us get all of that information organized so that we could present everything to an inspector in a meaningful way.

What are some examples of produce we can find on your farm?

We grow 40+ varieties of garlic that are all different. They must grow well for us, and they each have a story to tell, i.e. each variety adds something unique in the way of flavors, usage, or storage ability. We are frequently auditioning new varieties, and each new variety has to grow well for us in our climate and our soil type (each new variety has 3-4 years to do that), each has to add something unique to what we offer, and lastly, our customers need to say “Wow!” to the flavor. Without the “Wow!” based on taste, a new variety gets voted out of our soil!

From our garlic crop (cloves planted in October with the bulbs harvested during July), we sell green garlic (similar to green onions) in the early spring to our CSA (community-supported agriculture) members plus local chefs. During late spring, we sell garlic scapes  (curly ‘flower stems’ that are edible when young and tender) from the hard-neck garlic varieties. We sell these at three local farmers markets (marketing them by variety so people can taste the differences between the varieties, which is a preview of how different each of our garlic varieties will also taste), and finally, after harvesting our crop during July, we sell our garlic bulbs (heads) starting in August. We sell garlic heads individually by variety and by size. As value-added products, we sell garlic gift boxes, garlic sampler bags, “Bag O’Cloves”, garlic braids, and powdered garlic. We also sell our garlic to local restaurants and local food producers like The Brinery, which made a wildly popular sauerkraut using our garlic, so popular in fact that The Brinery is doubling production of that sauerkraut this year.

In addition, we grow 8 varieties of hops for our own beer brewing and to sell to other local home brewers or food producers.  My husband also manages our six honeybee hives without any synthetic pesticides from which we sell honey (raw, unfiltered, bottled in glass), comb honey, and bees wax. We have as many loyal honey fans as garlic fans!

Lastly, our market banner says “Garlic, Garlic, Garlic, Etc!” so our customers are always asking us what else we have that day for our Etc! Our honey, eggs, extra vegetables from our family garden, flowers, flavored vinegars (chive blossom, garlic scape), herbs, and recipes are often added to our market table. My husband and I both have fun as food educators while being vendors at our local farmers markets.

Why did you choose to highlight kale in your blog, 365 Days of Kale?

I have been following the research investigating the relationship between cancer incidence and consumption of Brassica vegetables for years and years, so I had been eating and loving kale (plus all the other Brassica vegetables) before kale became the darling of the food media. I was always taking various kale recipes to potlucks, and finally, a local group of food bloggers suggested I start a kale blog. This group of supportive food lovers and writers gave me the nudge, my blog title, and even designed my blog logo. The rest was up to me! How could I say no? It’s been great fun (and a great platform for a Registered Dietitian) to focus on a group of healthy foods, writing about the content of those foods, the research about those foods, and then delicious ways to eat those foods! Since we started our farm in 2009, regretfully, not much gets posted on any of my three blogs during the growing season (March through November). However, I hope there is now enough content posted that people can find something that interests them from past postings!

What are the best tips you can share with people regarding eating a diet for optimal health?

1. Grow as much of your own food as possible. I tell my dietetic students and interns that optimal health starts with “we are what we grow” rather than the more traditional starting point of “we are what we eat”.

2. Put on your apron and COOK your own meals from simple whole food ingredients, grown yourself or purchased from those grown or produced within your local/regional foodshed. Cooking is love, not ‘drudgery’, even though the processed and fast food industries try their best to convince us that they offer (and we want/need) fast, easy, and cheap foods. Experiment. Find foods that are delicious. To reinforce that point, we highlight flavor and fun, not health benefits, when people purchase our garlic at the farmers markets. We want our customers to buy our garlic over and over again because they both love the flavors and have fun “playing with their food”.

3. Purchasing locally-grown and organically-grown food is the gold standard for promoting personal health, public (community) health, and planetary health, so prioritize your total food dollars to spend as much as possible on those foods, and I’ll repeat myself, COOK.

4. A plant-based diet will flood your body with nutrients and phytochemicals that promote
personal health. I still strive to eat 9+ servings of fruits and vegetables daily. If you eat meat (and I do now), choose to eat smaller quantities of higher nutritional quality meats. In my family, we prioritize eating animal protein from animals that have been raised locally, eating organic and appropriate feed (100% grass-fed beef for example), and also raised and slaughtered humanely.  We ask our local farmers many questions. You can do the same as you explore and enjoy new foods to eat from your local farmers that promote optimal health.

We call this “Besto-Pesto” because, very simply, it is THAT good. It is one of the most popular recipes on my kale blog.

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Kale Pesto (Vegan, Gluten-Free)


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  • Author: The Plant-Powered Dietitian

Ingredients

Scale
  • 1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes) cut into ¼-inch slices
  • 35 leaves lacinato (dinosaur) kale, tough stems removed and then slice into sideways strips
  • 1/3 cup walnuts, pecans, or pine nuts (toasting these adds a nice twist)
  • 3/4 cup olive oil
  • approx. 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese (optional)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  •  (I omitted since there is enough salt from the cheese for me)
  • black pepper to taste (I did not add any)

Instructions

  1. Place scapes, kale, and nuts in the bowl of a food processor and grind until well combined and somewhat smooth but not purely pureed.
  2. Slowly drizzle in oil and process until integrated but there is still some “chunkiness”.
  3. Transfer mix to a mixing bowl.  Add parmesan, salt and pepper to taste.

Notes

*Keeps for up to one week in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  Or transfer to an ice-cube tray and freeze to be defrosted and used one cube at a time at your leisure.  The latter approach makes scape pesto available even in mid-winter, when it’s use can make a scrumptious dish.

Nutrition

  • Serving Size: 1-1/2 cups of pesto

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