This guest post is brought to you by Leann of Dinner at the Osbornes fame. Is that not the cutest baby ever? Maybe I’m partial because it could totally be either one of my guys before the hair came in and after they quit crying all the time.
What I love about this post is Leann trying to figure out what is right for her. There are so many degrees and this journey is all about baby steps. You don’t need to jump in 150% and then realize it was too much too fast and not sustainable for you and your lifestyle. You need to decide what is right for you so that your changes are based on personal convictions and permanent.
Eating food that you grew and canned sounds nice in the winter but that might mean you neglect your family all summer gardening and putting it up. You need to assess everything along the way.
Where does your food come from?
Although I’m just starting to really figure out what changes I want to make in our diet and how we view food, I come by it naturally. My mother and grandmother gardened, u-picked, and canned produce from the start of the season to the very end for many years.
We kids spent many a summer day picking in the mornings. My grandparents were farmers and grew strawberries, beans, and corn, among other things. Grandma kept a large garden. Mom took us u-picking for whatever was being advertised in the paper that week. In the afternoons, we were recruited to help in the kitchen. I remember doing quite a bit of complaining and trying to get out of this work, so it is hard to say how much help we actually were. But to this day, I can belly up to the sink and peel and core an apple faster than anyone else I know. Try me.
My grandmother was a meticulous person, some might say picky or even cross, but she did everything very well. She made the best pickles and relish. But much of that knowledge is gone now because I didn’t listen and write it down. I would have liked to have had the zucchini relish recipe. She made the best pickles. When I smell fresh dill, I think back to those days and wish I had paid closer attention. Perhaps my step children will remember these things about me after I’m gone and perhaps they will listen and remember how to do it.
So I do know where food comes from. Do you? As part of my quest to get back to those roots, I’ve been exploring local produce markets. The one I like the best closes during the winter. My local area, Vancouver, WA, has two year-round produce only markets that I know of – Diane’s Produce and Gateway Produce. I shop at both of them.
I like the idea of locally owned produce markets because I believe in small business owners, being one myself. I believe that we add value to the local economy, jobs, prosperity. When you deal with local business owners, your money stays in the community. The prices at these local produce stores tend to be much lower, too, giving extra value for frugal shoppers.
Both Diane’s and Gateway buy some of their product directly from the local farmers, but some of it comes from local wholesalers. So, although they reduce the huge mechanism of wholesaling food that the big chain groceries use, there is still the middle man for some of this food. You have to decide what is important to you, make conscious decisions and question the Matrix. This is what my family is doing. Deciding what our values about food really are and making conscious decisions. What we do may be slightly different from what you decide, but we have made a conscious decision.
It is for all of these reasons that I am asking more frequently, “where did this come from?” I’m realizing that it is important. I go home and tell those I cook for where their food came from. It is an important topic in my house right now.
In the case of farm direct food Diane buys, she told me that some farmers deliver their crop to her. Of course, this is truer in the summer with freshly harvested crops. The day I spoke to her about this she had some apples that were farm direct and others that went through a wholesaler in Hood River, Oregon, which I consider local to me. Apples are a big crop in my area. On the other hand, the 15 lb sack of potatoes I bought were packaged and wholesaled through Sherwood, OR, again local, but we don’t know where they were grown. So whether you are really decreasing distance from grower or resources spent to get to market isn’t clear. I also bought an 8 lb sack of carrots, along with a few Fugi apples for us to eat during the week.
The apples were remarkable less expensive than local grocery store prices. I noticed they also had a few slight blemishes. Our society’s demand for perfect looking produce has created waste and extra expense. When you pick a tree of apples, some of them have blemishes. In my grandmother’s words, “just cut that off.”
But, for me, given my alternatives in late winter, I chose to buy from a locally owned market. And when spring rolls around, I am ramping up to can and freeze much more of the local produce that is around in season. Husband has been encouraging and supportive. The others are giving me that deer-in-the-headlight look. We’ll see how I do.
What do I do with the produce I buy at Diane’s? Well, you’ll have to come to my blog and find out. In some cases, I’m just finding out myself.
