Good morning to everyone at the inaugural BioCities event, How Food Systems Shape Cities: Ecological and Economic Perspectives!

The panel discussions at this event focus on issues affecting only more of us each day, as people across the world push further into urban environments. More than half of the human population now live in cities.

We’re happy to be on today’s menu put together by our friends at Whole Foods Market + Neuman’s!

This past Friday and Saturday Irving Farm got the chance to connect and reconnect with some of our favorite farmers, chefs, and agronomists at the Just Food Conference in Manhattan.

1,000 members of the local food movement, including our friends from the Stone Barns Center, gathered to learn more about each other’s interests and initiatives… and, of course, to drink a lot of coffee! Tickets for the event sold out, and the morning crowds kept Jake Leonti (Director of Wholesale) and Miguel Rios (barista at 56 Seventh Ave) busy serving coffee faster than they could brew it.

Special shout out to Organic Valley; pairing their great milk from NY dairy farms with our coffee made a great combination! We’re happy to have had the opportunity to be a sponsor and to have had Dan Streetman (Director of Coffee) participate as a workshop panelist.

Third Place for Irving Farm in the Brewer’s Cup at the Northeast Regional Barista Competition! Go Tamara!

Last weekend, Irving Farm was involved with this year’s Northeast Regional Barista Competition.  Every year it is a gathering of the best baristas from New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Maryland.  At the event there are two competitions.  The Barista Competition, and the Brewer’s Cup.  This year from Irving Farm our Director of Education Tamara Vigil competed in both competitions and took Third Place in the Brewer’s Cup! 

It’s been a busy fall for us at Irving Farm so far. We’ve already participated in a couple of big harvest festivals with our friends from the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture and the Union Square Partnership. After four years participating in the Stone Barns Harvest Fest and more than a decade at the Harvest in the Square, the events just keep getting better! We’re looking forward to next year’s events already!

If you missed us at the Stone Barns Harvest Fest at the beginning of the month, you might not have heard the news: aside from serving up some delicious El Salvador Everest, we also gave a sneak peek of our new holiday gift boxes. Take a look at the goods for yourselves in the slideshow above, and look out for the November 01 release date at irvingfarm.com.

We’ve also got an exciting lineup of new coffees that we’ve started releasing just this month! If you think the first coffee we introduced from Capucas was good, then you’d better stay tuned for more details on what else the town has to offer! These are choice coffees from the individuals producers in the cooperative who won top spots in the annual Capucas microlots competition. The first of five winning coffees is now available at irvingfarm.com and at our cafes in Manhattan. Try it, and let us know what you think!

So, last week, Michelle O. rolled through the Stone Barns Center with her entourage of UN VIPs. Tomorrow, we roll through with our, ummm… hmmm… our coffee crew?

The First Lady might be a tough act to follow—for us, as well as for all the other vendors participating in the Stone Barns Center 7th Annual Harvest Fest. But after a successful night at the @USqPartnership’s 15th Annual Harvest in the Square, last Tuesday,  we’re just gonna do our thing, like it ain’t no thang. You know.

As I see it, MO was just prepping the place for our appearance tomorrow. I guess you could think of it as the Mighty Michelle O. and Friends opening for the Stone Barns Center Harvest Fest 2010… Yeah, that’s it.

So, now you know: if you can, get out of the city. Come see us tomorrow. We’ll be offering two of our Reserve Select coffees, Tanzania Hope Project and El Salvador Cerro las Ranas, both in 8-ounce whole bean packages and as single cup pour-over brewed with Beehouse drippers. We’ll also be selling some merch.

It’s gonna be quite the event. I mean, Michelle O(MG)bama opened for us. It’s kind of a big deal.

In other stats today, the best way to ensure fidelity: financial interdependence..?

A study by a Cornell sociologist shows that men who earn less than their partners are twice as likely to cheat than are women who earn less than their partners. The author concludes that relationships in which both partners have similar earnings are the least likely to suffer from the appeal of “Bonafied” lovers.

From the report, it seems the study focused on heterosexual relationships, but I’d like to see if the same tends to hold true in other relationships.

Also, most interestingly, the study concludes that attending the free Chromeo concert at the Williamsburg Waterfront Park on August 22nd has 0% likelihood of improving a couple’s relationship in the long run. ”But,” the author says, “a free Chromeo concert could give you that spark you need to get by for another week or so.”

JK about the last paragraph’s “conclusions”… but seriously, go to the concert. It’s Chromeo. It’s free.

[NPR, via NYMag]