A Food Magazine about People.

Lion’s mane mushrooms are a great meat alternative; here, they fill in for seafood in a preparation like crab cakes.
Recipe courtesy of Rich Life Farm and Fungi

Down a gravel road in Cincinnati’s Wooden Shoe Hollow, the West Side area once home to greenhouses established by German immigrants, three women farmers joined forces as Mustard Seed Farm. There, Marykate Glenn, Lindsey Melling, and Becky Richey—who have varying backgrounds in farming through the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms program, Turner Farm, and the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association—focus on what Glenn calls “good food grown well.”

Wilmington’s academic farm is nationally recognized for its opportunities for hands-on learning, and its size enables more intimate connections than larger universities. Thanks to social media outreach to new audiences interested in agriscience, the farm contributes to increasing enrollment at Wilmington.

The food industry isn’t new to Sean Redden, managing partner of Redden Fine Meats. He started working in restaurants at age 15 and spent more than 25 years working as a chef before pivoting into restaurant sales. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit and uncertainty surged everywhere, especially in the restaurant industry, he knew it was time for a new adventure. In the heart of downtown Madeira, a historic train station built in 1860 sat vacant…

The Little Miami Scenic Trail. one of the county’s original “rail to trail” projects, has never been more vibrant. But it and others are currently under threat from political forces.

You might not know that the Little Miami Scenic Trail, which wends across five counties from Springfield, OH, to Cincinnati, is the nation’s fourth longest paved walking and biking trail. And you might not know there’s a 486-foot elevation drop along its 78 mostly wooded miles along the grade of an early Ohio steam railroad that followed its namesake river.

We might never have known the Little Miami Scenic Trail (LMST) at all. In the 1970s and ’80s, an era of rail consolidation that left this and thousands of other railroad lines fallow, the conservation organization known today as the Little Miami Conservancy spearheaded a campaign to secure federal funding for this early “rail-trail.”

The organization brought a Federal Bureau of Outdoor Recreation leader to Ohio for a helicopter ride and canoe trip along the river—and coaxed $1 million out of $5 million budgeted federally for the newly born Rails to Trails initiative. The bipartisan Ohio General Assembly approved a $1 million match, and in 1984, the first 13.5 miles of asphalt were laid…