Support Your Local Farmer

I know people are concerned about what they consider to be the food crisis. I know they're worried that the government's subsidizing of farmers growing corn for ethanol will mean more food shortages for us, since the farmers will then grow corn for ethanol and not for food. But there is another way to look at that. Maybe instead of a problem, this can be a chance to improve our whole food system and take it in a more sustainable direction.

If you want good, healthy food grown sustainably and in season, consider supporting your local small farmers. You know the ones I mean--the ones who sell their produce at farmers' markets and through CSA's. Quite frankly, the food is amazing. I haven't bought produce other than certain items that aren't grown locally (like mushrooms) from a big box store in months. I've grown lettuce, kale, spinach, beets and beet greens, snow peas, michili, and radishes all in my tiny backyard garden. Lamb's quarters have provided themselves for free, as have sunflowers. I've purchased supplementary spinach, kale, bok choy, lettuce, green onions, green garlic, carrots and potatoes from local small farmers since the farmer's markets opened in late April/early May. I've found no-spray local strawberries and put up jam, and tomorrow I'm going after blueberries. My family has eaten fantastic sausage, pork chops and more from that same farm. My own apple tree in the backyard is laden with apples, and a friend's family has a tree full of cherries. Another friend has grapes she doesn't want, as I've mentioned before, and I've also purchased a grapevine of my own. The food is available, and it's wonderful. It's not that hard to do this. It just takes an open mind and a commitment to quality. The local farmers are wonderful people I would never have met if I hadn't decided to get out of the big-box rat race. If I help support them I'm also helping myself to better food and ultimately, better health. (For one thing, I'm not worried about getting a tomato contaminated with E-Coli. Last year it was spinach, this year it's tomatoes. What next?) In the wake of GMO's, E-Coli, and food labeling problems, supporting my local farmers sounds like a win-win to me.

Greens

Spinach season is officially over in my garden; I'm just waiting for the seed heads to mature and then I'll pull up the plants and save the seeds for the next planting. Most of the wild lambs' quarters are in the same boat. They're towering over the planter boxes, so I need to go ahead and clear them out, freeze or use whatever leaves I want to use, and make sure there's seed either for them to re-seed themselves for next year or for me to do it. The beauty of lambs' quarters is that they are slower to bolt and grow beautifully in this climate, which gives them a slightly longer season than spinach. The leaves are smaller than spinach leaves, though, so it's a trade-off. Or it would be, if I'd deliberately planted lambs quarters instead of spinach or kale. The fact that they planted themselves is actually pretty great. They're by far the most prevalent weed in my garden, just by dint of my pulling all the others and leaving the lambs quarters mostly alone. I mean...why eradicate something that's perfectly edible? If you don't want it in the garden, just let it get big enough to put out some nice tender leaves and then pull it and eat it. Seems like a shame to waste perfectly good food when so many people out there are so worried about the perceived "scarcity" of food nowadays. Food's all around us, people. It's just that we might have to give up our dependence on corn and actually eat some greens.

With spinach and lettuce season going out, kale, collards and chard are definitely coming in. I've also got some wonderful heirloom snow peas--those are the edible pods--and they're right in their prime, with blossoms coming on all over. Looks like it won't be terribly long before my largest broccoli starts to form heads, and I have one green cabbage that looks like it might actually form a head. If it does, it'll be my first successful standard variety cabbage. The michili is done. I pulled the last of the plants a couple of days ago, we stir-fried half of it and I have half in a bag in the fridge. So we got several meals from the michili I planted way back in February, though I'm still not sure whether I'll plant it again next year. Darned tasty, but spiky little monsters! Huge leaves though, which with a family of four is always a plus.

Bean plants are looking good in the three north fence beds, so I expect good things from them later. The thing is that even with all the various heirloom veggies I put in this year, I'm still a little stymied for options right now. Lately it's "Would you like greens for dinner, or greens?" "Oh, by the way, do you want greens with that?" If it weren't for grains and animal proteins, I think dinners might be a truly daunting experience. Thank goodness for the berries becoming ripe! Variety is good whenever possible, even on a mostly locavore diet. I only know so many ways to cook greens, and I'm really looking to expand my repertoire. Obviously I need to go buy Deborah Madison's Greens cookbook. Don't get me wrong; I'm very grateful for the success of the greens and for the food they're providing for me and my family. I'm sure I'll miss them terribly come winter when the only greens we have are frozen or canned.

In a Jam

Strawberry jam, to be exact. The no-spray farm down the road from us opened its gates for U-pick strawberry season. Tuesday, we and a couple of friends went down there and picked strawberries all morning. Imagine being able to pick fresh, sweet, ripe strawberries right from the plant and pop them in your mouth without having to worry about what might have been sprayed on them. That's exactly what we did; in fact, I think my younger daughter ate more than she put in her tray. The farmer jokingly said, "If you don't come back with hands and mouth stained red, we'll send you out again." My daughter didn't need to be sent back out; that's for sure. Our family spent a great morning picking strawberries together, and somewhere during the process my teenager said, "We should make this a family tradition." I tell you, folks--when a teenager wants to create a family tradition, it's time to sit up and take notice!

The Huz and I processed about five full flats of strawberries over the next couple of days. I think it came out to eighteen 12-oz jars of strawberry jam, plus a tiny bit extra; several dehydrator trays of strawberry fruit leather; two dehydrator loads of strawberry chips; and several bags of (cane) sugared frozen strawberries that could be used to make more jam or used for desserts, etc.

We'll be going back for a few more trays worth of strawberries before the season is over; I want more to eat fresh, plus I want to dehydrate a lot more for future use in salads and hot cereals.

Doing Without--Or Not

I had to attend a local writers/readers conference this weekend and wasn't able to go to the farmers' market on Saturday. Makes me jealous of the countries/places who have almost daily green markets. If there was a daily market, one needn't have to choose what to do on Saturday based on one's need for groceries. While the farmers' market was going on yesterday, I was attending classes and panels, and then there was a luncheon with a keynote speaker I didn't want to miss. The conference was held in the building right next to the area where the Boise farmers' market is held, so I had the feeling of being so close to the groceries I needed, yet so far away. Just outside that door were many of the vendors I've been purchasing food from since late April, and my inability to go shop with them during the limited hours they'd be there meant that my family would have to make do with less food this week.

Or not. If I had to choose a weekend to not buy market food, this was an acceptable one. Right now, my own small backyard garden has abundant heirloom lettuce in two varieties, spinach, giant chinese cabbage, kale, wild lambs quarters, and radishes. I still had two complete bunches of red romaine lettuce from the farmers' market of the previous week, one bundle of bok choy, some cilantro, green garlic, green onion, and a couple of leeks. There are also several white heirloom carrots and probably at least one onion and a couple of small potatoes left. We just recently picked up a bunch of frozen organic/free range chickens. We still have beef left. Plus, the organic farm down the road has finally opened its gates for U-pick strawberry season. My friends and I are really excited about this; we've been planning at least one outing to go pick strawberries, and they're finally ready! We'll go out and pick one day this week, then probably come back and make a bunch of strawberry jam/jelly. Looks like the Squeezo strainers will finally get some use, as will all the jelly jars I bought in preparation for this weeks ago.

I think I can manage to feed my family this week after all, despite the fact that I missed the farmers' market. Maybe I can be a writer and still eat, too.

Frozen Assets

The spinach--what hasn't bolted, that is--has gone crazy. Every few days I have more large leaves that can be harvested, though I will have to stop sometime so as to not divest the plants of all of their leaves. I have officially blanched and frozen more spinach this year than I ever have before, though the amount is still fairly small compared with the number of months one has to go without fresh spinach. But that's okay. No matter how small the amount of food I manage to harvest and process this year, it'll be more than we had in previous years.

With practice, I've gotten the steam blanch/freeze process down pretty well, and can keep going at a reasonably steady rate until it's done. Chop, steam, dunk in ice water, pack freezer container, repeat. Or rather, chop more raw spinach while the last batch is steaming, then dump newly steamed spinach in ice water, dump newly-chopped raw spinach into the steamer basket, set the three-minute timer, then start chopping again. It goes smoothly enough once you have the hang of it, and it doesn't take nearly as long as canning. However, it does require a freezer, which requires both space and electricity, so there's the trade-off. We buy green (wind) power from the power company, so I hope my use of the freezer isn't too heinous.

Saturday, I made a rushed trip to the farmers' market, and then we went out to a nearby local farm and bought some frozen whole chickens. They're raised humanely without hormones, so they should be great. The only downside is that I really prefer to just buy boneless chicken breasts, not the whole chicken. I don't like dark meat, but the rest of my family does, so we'll see how I deal. I'm angry at the large factory farms that participate in a system with such inhumane and unsanitary methods. If it were really safe, humane and sustainable to buy packaged chicken breasts, I'd much prefer that. I'm not looking forward to having to skin, butcher and de-bone whole chickens when all I really wanted was a few chicken breasts to roast in the convection oven. Using the whole chicken on a regular basis sounds like way more work than I have time for. I'll have to see whether I can find a green source for prepackaged chicken breasts to use at least part of the time, like when I'm in a huge hurry and need some meat to throw in a stir-fry fast. Actually, that's almost all of the time.

Well, I'll manage, or learn to manage. I'm astounded by how really spoiled we modern people really are, with our professionally butchered, prepackaged meats and other foods. My grandmother may not have known how to run an ATM machine or use a computer, but I'll bet she knew how to butcher her own chicken. That's more than I know, so there's one more thing my spoiled little self is going to have to learn. Tsk, tsk, what will I do?