www.eatlocalchallenge.com

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!

Lazy Locavores?

 

Produce grown, harvested and photographed by Jennifer BB

by Jennifer BB

For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.  Call them lazy locavores--city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. (Kim Severson, NYT)

Okay--first, let's applaud those who are willing to put a premium on eating locally grown food.  And for those who subscribe to Community Supported Agriculture shares or who "cow pool" to obtain fresh produce and pastured-raised beef--this is only a great help (key to survival, even) for small, local farmers.  But is it even possible to have a bounty of fruits and vegetables growing in your own backyard and NOT want to get your hands dirty?

I've been nursing a blog post for the past couple of weeks and the first sentence waxes poetic about the joy of watching the tomatoes slowly grow on my vines, picking early Sungolds and chewing on baby Swiss chard as I pull stray weeds from my raised beds.  It just takes a few minutes--about as long as it takes the water to boil for my morning tea.  I can't imagine paying someone else to do it--even if I could afford it. 

But perhaps it is like the small steps it takes to get people eating real food--I can't knock those kitchen centers you can go to to prepare a weeks worth of meals if it gets families eating balanced meals at the table on a regular basis.  I can only hope that those who have room to grow their own food but pay others to tend it, will soon discover the delight of sowing, weeding, tending, and eventually harvesting food their own hands have touched.  Check out  the full story in The New York Times here.

Saving the Harvest — for Generations to Come

by Expat Chef

A couple weeks ago we went to pick up our CSA bag. Part of the week's harvest included an small melon with a light green rind. It smelled crisp and citrus. I can't even remember the name of it. As we placed it in the car, the farmer said, "Hey, be sure to save the seeds on this for me. They cost me a dollar each."

He gave my husband instructions on how to save the seeds. When my husband cut into the melon, the texture and flavor were just like the smell. It was a very interesting fruit. He did as the farmer asked, and saved the seeds. When he counted them, he said, "You know, there's like $150 in here." The next week we returned the seeds to our farmer, keeping a few to try and plant ourselves.

Eating the Lawn

by Heather C.

Here in Ohio it seemed impossible to participate in the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge.  The farmer's markets in my area don't open until July.  We are still about a month away from the frost-free date for planting.  About the only thing growing here is grass.  Then I remembered a scene from my childhood.  My neighbor, who was a botany professor, always used to go outside and pick greens from his lawn for a salad.  It used to freak me out as a kid to eat plants that I "knew" were weeds.  But now I pay good money for gourmet salad greens so maybe it is time to reinvestigate eating the lawn.

On Growing Vegetables as Ornamentals

By Marc

Although I have been growing herbs for years, the early Eat Local Challenge excitement of the Spring inspired me to plant numerous vegetables in my backyard and on my patio.  One of my purchases was a scarlet runner bean plant.   Its small size---a height of 4 inches and just a few leaves---and my inexperience with vegetable gardening led me to I put it into a container with a volume of roughly 4 gallons.  In the next few weeks, the plant tried to tell me I had made a mistake:  it grew at a shocking rate, with the runner vine seemingly climbing a foot per day.  But I didn't listen. 

Local food: the afterlife

by Suzanne Miller

Since joining the Eat Local Challenge last year, I’ve focused on growing, harvesting and eating local food.  The fun stuff.

But not all the food I buy or grow ends up on my plate.  I cut off carrot tops, cull the cauliflower and peel the potato.  And then…?

Recently my Eatwell CSA newsletter talked about the farm’s compost, which is made from food waste gathered in the Bay Area.  This snippet caught my eye:

“Keeping food waste out of the dumps is very important.  In the dump, food waste decomposes and produces methane, a greenhouse gas.”

I emailed Eatwell and asked what I should do with my scraps.  The answer?  A stern “Compost! And if you fail, try, try again!”

My husband looked with unease as I hauled out white 5-gallon buckets for my annual “what the hell” compost attempt.

But this time, I decided to do something different:  bokashi, or “effective micro-organism” compost.

Harvesting Herbs

By Sarah Irani

We have a rosemary bush planted beneath the dryer vent. The warm, carbon-dioxide filled air keeps it green and growing all year. What started as a little seedling has grown to gigantic proportions. It has been encroaching upon our front door, so I decided to harvest it. It is impossible for one to eat this much rosemary. So, I dried it and in the coffee grinder turned it into a rich, green powder that I can use to season poultry and give away to culinary-minded foodie friends.   

I have also begun harvesting the lemon balm and mint that is growing out of control!  I hung an old hat-rack up in the kitchen to act as an herb-drying rack. It is working out nicely! When mixed with chamomile, catnip and a dollop of honey this herb combination makes a lovely tea.

Field trip report #3: Honey extraction class

by Jamie S.

This spring my significant other and I took a beekeeping class at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.

Concurrent with the beginning of the class, we bought two packages of bees from a huge south Georgia apiary that shall remain nameless. Early on, we could tell something was amiss. It was peak nectar flow, and the hives were surrounded by blackberry and tulip poplar blossoms; yet we never saw the bees outside the hive. They languished, drinking copious amounts of the sugar water we fed them, yet failing to draw out any comb or (in the case of the queens) lay any eggs. So of course, when the bees came to the end of their natural lifespans--about 40 days--there were none to replace them. Whammo, we were out of business.

Honey, I love you

by Julie Cummins

If I had been born with teeth, they all would have been sweet. My sugar preference (read: addiction) could have started in-utero; my mom is as madly in love with sweets as I am, if not more. It certainly started early, as seen in this photo of me at 1 1/2, in the process of sucking down my first ice cream cone.

So when I took on the Eat Local Challenge, my biggest concern was how I would fare without sugar. Would I have nagging cravings? Would I be grouchy and irritable? Would life seem empty and meaningless?

Fortunately, we humans plunder a delicious sweetener from thousands of fuzzy, winged, hardworking little ladies: bees. Thank heaven and earth for honey. Honey is one product that is available locally almost anywhere. And one thing I have in common with Winnie the Pooh is my opinion on honey and how far I'll go to get it.

Not everyone is a gardener

by Jasmine

I am not a gardener. I have dabbled in gardening and failed miserably. The year that I rented a garden plot in Burlington, Vermont’s Intervale had to be one of the most humbling experiences in my brief gardening career. The garden plot comes marked out and with the soil freshly turned by the blades of a rototiller (or more likely a tractor). I bought seeds and seedlings. I marked out rows. I planned companion plantings. I tried to plan succession planting but a little math soon led me to see that 70 days from the end of the season was only three weeks after the beginning of the season. This is where the adventure began.