Last week Tom Hughes, the co-founder of The FOOD Museum, stopped by the farm to see what he would find. Tom and his wife Meredith Sayles created the online project to collect, preserve, exhibit and explain the history and social significance of the world’s most important foods, and bring artifacts and programs to audiences of all ages.
Visitors of the online museum can explore food heritage and history from Jewish cuisine in New York City to the oyster trade in early 1900’s through videos, photographs, and text.
If you are looking for a good book related to food, you can browse their book section which has reviews and descriptions of several books that explore food, culture and memory. Further reading may be found through their blog section.
In addition to the FOOD Museum, Tom and Meredith have worked on exhibitions for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History called “Seeds of Change” among other exhibitions focused on potatoes for the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington D.C. and the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa, Ontario.
On his surprise visit, Tom received the grand tour from Farmer Al. They visited the compost, the bee gardens, toured the packing shed and kitchen, and of course, the orchard and vegetable gardens. They spent about four hours together talking agriculture, food, and history.
We hope you’ll check out Tom and Meredith’s work and browse around the FOOD Museum at www.foodmuseum.com. Who knows, you might even see something about our farm on there one day soon!