Localvore Endeavors

What have I been up to lately?
Wrapping my head around becoming a Mod Pioneer. This has nothing to do with Quadrophenia or white lipstick.

Last year at Thanksgiving my friend K and I attempted (the week OF Thanksgiving) to try to make it a 100 mile meal. Which means, that all ingredients come from within 100 miles. We did all right, and I think about 80% of our meals came from local growers. This year I'm shooting for 100%. I've got my turkey ordered early this year instead of relying on the frozen bird we sometimes get from G's work (the day before Tday).

After doing my head in with the notion of our entire infrastructure collapsing in Into The Forest, I next happened upon Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle. In this book, Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from Tuscon to Virginia (I think it's Virginia, at any rate, Appalachian). Their intent is to grow or buy everything they eat locally.
When you sit down to think about it, this means no more exotic fruit. No kiwi, pineapples, bananas, etc. A lot of things are scratched off their menu. Or at least until the time is right to grow things like strawberries on their own.

WHY do this to yourself and your family? Well conventional farming practices by mega farms are atrocious. We won't even go into factory meat conditions. Ack.
"Certified Organic" has lost a lot of credibility as the government has twisted and turned the standards for this certification and made it very expensive to obtain.

The next best thing is to support your local farmer, who chances are, grows things organically anyway, but forgos certification because it's just too much paperwork and money. You're not wasting thousands of dollars in gas to get your food shipped to you from far away places and as a result, your food is fresher and in season for you, in your cycle of the year.

The past few weeks I've been going to different farmer's markets to stock up for Thanksgiving. I've got a lot of potatoes and sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, onions, garlic,cheese, sausage,honey,delicious sweet carrots, a load of apples that I turned into many bags of frozen applesauce. I've been taking in our collards from the garden and freezing those. We have 4 brussel sprout plants still out there, still growing.
I've been making sandwich loaf bread instead of buying loaves. We eat a lot of bread here, and we all like it fresher anyway. I've got a recipe we like, that I've been tweaking with different flour, grains, etc. King Arthur Flour has a great website and has baking pans that make me drool

We've also started a home delivery service with a local dairy farm. We've been getting half and half, milk, butter, ice cream, etc delivered once a week. The prices are comparable to that from a store, but the milk is in glass, not plastic, so it tastes like milk and not like the jug it came in.
I'm always up for extremist challenges. Here goes another one. I'm figuring out a better way to garden, to pack more into our garden with better yields. I'm trying to figure out how many onions we'd eat over the winter, how much garlic, tomatoes, fresh greens in spring, broccoli, and so on.
I'm afraid we're not ready to do without coffee, tea or olive oil. Or exotic spices for that matter. I cook a lot of Indian food, but I have a lot of spices to last a long time. The other hard things to get is sugar and flour. There are mills, but I don't know where they get their grain from.

We'll see how well I do with this. Last couple of years have been a wash for the garden. Between working a couple part time jobs and doing midwifery, ooo, and let's not forget being a Mama and wife, my cooking has definitely been more fast and convenient. Good, as in Trader Joe's not-a-lot-of-crap in the ingredient list, but definitely quick.

So far, G and the kids haven't complained about the food served them. I don't think anyone has noticed much. We've got our own chickens coming out our ears, and the farmer's market veggies are so fresh and good that mealtime has been lots of yumms. Let's see how we are in January and February though. Back at Trader Joe's I'm sure.
At least until the garden starts producing something.