Eat Close To Home

This is about seven kinds of wonderful. Rena at Locavorious has expanded on the idea of a CSA in some really interesting ways. First, instead of a box of fresh vegetables, these CSA shares are made of frozen fruits and vegetables. All products are sourced locally within a short distance of Ann Arbor, Michigan, from existing farms (either by contract or U-Pick). After prep and freezing, Rena stores the veggies in a commercial-quality “community freezer” until November or December. There will be four monthly pick-ups, so there’s no need to buy a freezer to be able to enjoy locally-grown, frozen foods in the middle of winter. Not to mention the labor savings for folks who don’t have the time to tramp to half a dozen U-Pick places and then process all the food!

One of the things I like most about this kind of business is that it really is helping to build an interdependent local economy that’s accessible to mainstream culture. Let’s face it; most of the current US society isn’t going to cook every meal from fresh vegetables just harvested by Farmer Joan down the road. But they might serve a side of frozen green beans harvested by Farmer Joan and frozen by Rena two months ago.

Shares run for 4 months and will probably yield a total of around 30 pounds of food. The “early bird” price for 2008-09 is $100. Sounds like a great deal to me! I’ve already signed up. See details at http://locavorious.com/Eaters.html

Are there other innovative local food businesses out there that I’ve missed? Please let me know if you know of more innovators!

June was the first month of our “carbon diet.” I hate the word diet, but I’ll use it here the same way I use it about food. This is about changing the way we use carbon, lifelong. It starts by seeing where we are now, deciding where we’d like to be, and moving there incrementally.

This month was pretty darn good, overall. I installed a clock in the shower and limited myself to 5 minutes. I thought this would be a pretty big deal for someone who loves hot water as much as I do, but it was actually not a problem. Doing this cut our hot water electric usage in half - from 180 to 90 kwh. (The water heater is on its own meter, so we can tell exactly how much we spend just heating water.) In addition, our household electric was also down, probably due to the great weather and needing neither heat nor a/c.

We drove the second car - my brother’s truck - about 30 miles. A third of that was hauling wood for winter heat and the rest was a trip to town for a last-minute work meeting and dumpster diving for pallets and sheet mulching cardboard on the way home. He’s been using our car this month to commute to work, so together we’ve gotten that gas-guzzler off the road for about 700 miles and 55 gallons of gas. And now the bad news…

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I’m a fat captain. Are you with me?

So much of the local food movement happens online - we find out about local producers at Local Harvest, we read food blogs from our area,  we compare CSAs online, we check out web sites to see if it’s worth driving to someone’s farm to pick up an order.

Have you ever run across a great farm with a horrible web site? Do you find yourself fighting the tendency to have the same perception of sloppiness and amateurishness to the farmer? Have you ever thought, “I’d totally patronize this person…if I could figure out what *state* their farm is in??” I know not everyone has the time or the skill set or the money to get a professional web site made, but man, wouldn’t it be nice if they could?

Well, perhaps they can. A web designer friend of mine, Emily at Glass Pen Web Designs, is having a special on simple, elegant web sites for market farmers, CSAs, and others who are involved with local food production. In support of local farmers, she’s reduced her usual rate for a professional web site to offer a basic package that includes:

• Four or five pages: Home, About Us, Crops, Where to buy, and an optional news/blog page.
• A sleek, sophisticated design based off either a horizontal or vertical template. You get to choose the colors and banner image (clip art or photos of your farm).
• A new or updated listing on Local Harvest, so people can find you and your site.
• Price: $400

Optional features available:

• A blog, so you can write about life on the farm, or just update your site with “what’s in season” or “what’s at the market this week” yourself through an easy web-based form ($50 for a generic blog; $100 for a customized blog that blends visually with the rest of your site)
• Additional images (in addition to the banner image) are about $25 each, depending on how much alteration they need
• You can use your own web host or Glass Pen can host the site for you for $80/year (this is a very, very good rate; many places charge $20/month)

You can contact her through this form.

Finished Earth Day prayer flags

Originally uploaded by espring4224

Suzie stitched these to a ribbon to make a true strand of prayer flags. I once saw a cedar waxwing pilfering strings to make a nest!

Potatoes and peas

Originally uploaded by espring4224

My peas and potatoes are doing quite well! For reference, I’m about 5′ 6″ and the beds have about 8″ of dirt in them. You can just barely see the orange and blue birdhouse behind the peas. These days, the parents swoop directly at your face and chatter their beaks at you if you stand this close.

(P.S. - This is my 100th post on this blog! Let’s celebrate with fresh peas!)

So, gang, I could use your help. My doctor has recommended I eat only no-sugar, low-glycemic foods for the next three months. I’d love your input on two things: recipes to cook at home, and recommendations of things I can eat out. Here’s a quick overview of the parameters, after the cut:

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Even though my garden is essentially full right now, I’ve been wondering if I can plant yet more this year. I do have some dirt leftover and could always use another bed…but what could I plant now? And the winter wheat and first spring onions and peas will be out of the garden in a few weeks…so what should I plant in the spaces they vacate?

After a bit of searching, I found a nice guide to fall vegetable gardening in Michigan (pdf) from the MSU Extension office. It has planting and harvest dates, as well as some varieties to try.

I’ll be curious to see if this works. These are mostly “cool weather crops,” and it seems odd to plant them in late July, which is anything but cool here. Perhaps some shade netting is in order. I also have a hard time imagining planting kale, as the kale in the garden will keep going strong until December - or until I eat it all, which usually happens first. Hmm, though I suppose I could plant *more* of it and then maybe it would last…

I’m still pondering a greenhouse, but I can’t bring myself to look out into my yard and see a plastic quonset hut, and other options are really too expensive. This year I’m going to see if I can do something smaller and portable, perhaps just put plastic on my screen house to convert it into a mini-greenhouse for winter.

As my sweetie and I were eating at our favorite local restaurant tonight, the manager came by. Last time I was in, I’d asked if he might look into getting grass-fed beef for their burgers, if nothing else. He sounded very interested and promised to look into it…but really, what else was he going to say? So I nudged him again this week, and was able to point out to him that Eat Local Eat Natural, which I first heard about a couple days ago, would be moving in right across the street and could supply them with locally-raised grass-fed beef. His eyes lit up and he said, “Across the street? Then we wouldn’t have to pay for shipping!”

This reminded me that the township’s Planning Council meeting, where they were discussing rezoning a parcel of land for Eat Local Eat Natural, would be meeting tonight. And that I wanted to go and voice my support, because no one spoke up for it at the last meeting. (A friend who’s up on this sort of thing tells me no one ever says anything unless it’s to complain, so that’s not much of a surprise.)

So I quickly rescheduled my evening and attended my first township meeting. What’s it like to speak to the council? What’s the quickest way to make friends in a business that you’re passionate about? Read on… Read the rest of this entry »

I recently visited a friend in Oswego, New York. I’ve been there several times and always been impressed with Ontario Orchards when we’ve shopped there for produce - they have a really nice array of locally-grown and -produced foods. But I’ve never been able to bring home any of the local fare because I never want to check luggage. (Ok, except the last time I was there I brought home 10 pounds of onions in my suitcase…)

I drove on this trip, though, so I had a whole trunk to fill with goodies. See after the cut for details of the salt potatoes, pretzels, beans, pasta, cider, and cheese I bagged. Read the rest of this entry »