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Briarpatch Community Fund Supports Eating Locally

I have been a member of the Briarpatch Cooperative (located in Grass Valley, California) for several years and have been delighted to see them focus on local foods in the past two years, putting together special fliers, tagging the products, and even encouraging people to participate in Eat Local challenges.  I work for a small community-based non-profit organization in Camptonville about 30 miles north of Grass Valley.  We have a Family Resource Center on the grounds of our local elementary school, and offer an early childhood program.  Together, we share a school garden based on the Edible Schoolyard principles, and the elementary school actually has a School Wellness Plan that includes offering organic and locally raised foods!

We are lucky to be located in the Sierra foothills, high enough to be in the conifer belt, but low enough to have a good growing season.  However, most of my neighbors only grow a summer garden, and when the frosts hit ( as they did early last weekend), everyone folds up for the winter, waiting until the following spring to get growing again.  I decided to turn to the Briarpatch Community Fund to apply for grant funding this fall, as I wanted our organization to host a special program encouraging greater food self-sufficiency.  I was delighted when they awarded us with a grant, even though I had only a month to quickly assemble and promote the program, which we held on Tuesday night.  Drawing upon the wisdom of our community, we were able to contact a few special people and plan for an educational evening based on the Twilight School model we have used since 1997.

Twilight School always starts with a free or low-cost community meal.

The first half of our evening program was a demonstration by our local nurserywoman, Jessi Wilcox of Rebel Ridge Organics, on what to plant in the fall (broccoli, cabbage, hardy greens, garlic and onions, flowering bulbs, cover crops incuding fava beans... the list is probably longer than you thought).  She also showed how to create hoop tunnels and use floating row covers to protect crops, extending your fall harvest or getting an early start in the spring.

Jessi highly favors using cover crops, and spent a lot of time describing the benefits; the biggest one that stuck in my mind was that you would be replenishing the soil for the next season.  She also recommended using rice straw (readily available in our part of California) to cover the beds, so that the beneficial microfauna would stay in your garden over the winter rather than migrating elsewhere.

Then, Robyn Martin of Olala Farms spent the remainder of the evening delighting us with stories of her 35 years of preserving food for her family of six while living mainly without electricity.  She covered using a root cellar (and reminded us not to mix the onions with the apples) and drying foods using recycled sheer curtains to keep the flies away.  She delved into salt brining, and explained that our Sierra Nevada soils are mineral deficient, especially of iodine.  Robyn swears by Celtic sea salt for making these brines, though most of us would need to decide to exempt that from our local food choices, since her experience has shown that there are more minerals and longer-keeping brined foods by using this source of salt over choosing other forms of sea salt.

Robyn also explained what lactic fermentation is and how those foods differ from brined ones, as well as detailed how to choose, pick and pack your foods for best preservation.  Here, Robyn (left) discusses a canning dilemma with young mother, Jessica.

I feel particularly fortunate to live in a community where there is a strong interest in self-sufficiency and re-learning the old food preservation skills, where there are people like Robyn who have the wisdom to share and Jessi who is making new scientific information available, and for a cooperative such as Briarpatch for supporting us!

Community canning centers during WWII and today

By Marc

The "Of Course I Can" poster was created by the U.S. War Food Administration in 1944 as part of the nationwide victory garden program. Victory gardens made an important contribution to the home-front effort by producing a significant amount of food (approximately 40 percent of the vegetables consumed in 1943) and by providing a way to contribute to the war effort for those who could not fight on the battlefield.  The book "Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity" by Amy Bentley contains a chapter examining victory gardening and canning during the war, gender politics, and how the nation responded to the call to do their part in the war by gardening and canning.

The best eat-local cookbooks

by Jamie S.

To begin to integrate local eating into your day-to-day life, you need to do a little research: Where do your nearby market gardeners sell their wares? Are there buying clubs? Community-supported agriculture plans? Farmers’ markets? How can you get hold of meat, seafood, eggs, and grains that are grown or caught sustainably in your area? Who has apples and strawberries in season?

This is a learning process, and--let’s be honest--it takes a while. Luckily, one discovery usually leads to another. Over the course of about two years, we’ve slowly become intuitive local shoppers. Honestly, we don’t notice anymore that we do it; we just have a different set of desires and values when it comes to buying food.

But for many would-be local eaters, cooking local food is just as challenging as finding it. So many of us are used to the effortlessness of convenience foods. Those of us who love to cook may tend to go to the grocery store with a list of items we need for certain recipes. Eating local requires you to start from the other end of the equation: This is what I have--now, what in the world do I do with it?

Preserving a peck of pears with panache

By Marc

I was fortunate to receive a gift of twelve pounds of a pears from Cookie Crumb and Cranky a few weeks ago (which was just a small fraction of their trees' amazing output this year, as noted here).  Unlike some backyard fruit trees (like my plum trees), the fruit was actually delicious on its own, and I suppose I could have eaten a few each day until they were gone.  But with the farmers market full of summer fruit, it would be foolish to binge on pears for a week.  So, of course, I turned much of the gift into preserves.

[The beautiful photo to the right was taken by Jen Maiser, not me]

Canning with the Ethicurean

by Jen Maiser

Our friends at The Ethicurean have a couple of posts talking about their efforts with canning and preserving.  The observations are interesting, and will be helpful when I try my hand at canning later this month.

Time to Put Up or Shut Up
Putting up with your Friends

Summer Freeze

by Expat Chef

This September, the Eat Local Challenge is offering a whole range of ways to participate in the ELC September Challenge. With so many ways to participate, we can all join in the experience.

One of the ways to participate this year is to leahrn how to preserve your locally grown food for winter. It’s easy enough to do for many foods. You don’t even have to buy special equipment or learn to can. You just need a bit of time and freezer space.

I decided to try this approach this year after watching a friend of mine struggle with the vegetable side dishes for a 100-mile diet Thanksgiving. There's not much around for fresh veggies in late November other than sweet potatoes. What I do not use on the Thanksgiving table can easily be added to the turkey leftovers for a Turkey and Vegetable Soup, perfect for those chilly late fall days.

Local plum jam

(Editor note:  This September, the Eat Local Challenge blog will be hosting an international, month-long eat local challenge in association with the Locavores.  This particular challenge will have a special focus of preserving, canning, and putting food up for the winter.  Stay tuned to this site in the next few days for more information. Meanwhile, this first post from Marc discusses making plum jam at home.)

By Marc

The grounds around my apartment have two plum trees that become heavy with fruit in the mid-summer.  The first few years I lived here, I didn't do anything with them except perhaps eat a few, only to rediscover that they are almost all pit and skin.  But last year my upstairs neighbor taught me how to make plum jam, so this summer I was sure to spend part of each weekend on a ladder harvesting as many plums as I could, even creating a strange contraption called "the depluminator" to pick fruit growing on high boughs beyond my reach.

Jam or jelly can be a fantastic way to preserve the bounty of local summer fruit.  A significant non-local component, however, is often required in the form of large quantities of sugar.  Much of the sugar sold here comes from the tropics, often produced by ill-treated workers on ill-treated lands.  Sugar beets are another source of white sugar, with California produces only about 6 percent of the U.S. crop (most comes from Minnesota and North Dakota). (An episode of the Deconstructing Dinner radio program goes into great detail about sugar, stevia and honey).