Local food and thanks to farmers

Fresh garlic needing to be cleaned

I've been cleaning a lot of garlic, potatoes, and onions lately.

Much is destined for fresh use in the next couple of weeks, rather than storage, but preparing vegetables for either requires work - removing dirt, extra foliage and roots, sorting out for drying, taking all of the clippings out to the compost pile, etc.

I'm quite certain I didn't appreciate the effort required in producing a bag of onions in the grocery store before I started growing them myself.

Maybe they bounce down a river of clean water in industrial agriculture, but someone still needs to trim their roots and stems and remove their tops (maybe this is a subject for a web search-- Hmm... check out this article about onion cleaning procedures on a small farm).

Fresh onions are totally delicious, of course, being juicy and succulent when cooked.  Quite a different vegetable than the cured ones for long-term storage.  Ditto with garlic.  And fresh potatoes are exceptionally tasty, too.  But, it's worth considering what it takes to have a bag of red potatoes at the grocery perfectly cleaned and ready to take home. 

This is about as big as my carrots ever get.

I'm not complaining, really, but am glad for the experiences which remind me how fresh food, grown locally (or far away), ultimately depends on the folks who grow, harvest, clean, and package fruits and vegetables.

And whether we buy at a tailgate market or at a supermarket, it's well worth thinking about who grew those vegetables and how, and what it took for you to be able to put them in your shopping basket.

Cleaning a couple of bushels of small onions has reminded me to be (more) grateful for folks who grow our food.

(Here were some previous thoughts along the same subject, but focusing on greens).

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A visit home

A rainy June

A quick trip back to the Piedmont to take care of some garden things -- getting a dead white pine removed and mowing the grass -- as well as taking Woody to see our vet, found lush growth in the garden.

OK, it's good news that it's been rainy, and I was glad not to find a bunch of crispy plants. It was a bit daunting, however, to see HOW much pokeweed, Oxalis, Digitaria, Abutilon, and other weeds had popped up and grown in the vegetable beds in just a couple of weeks, not to mention volunteer redbud, sassafras, and black cherry seedlings elsewhere in the landscape. 

The front meadow is ridiculously exuberant, too;  the common milkweed, planted for monarch caterpillars, has thrived and is falling onto the driveway, and all of the other meadow plants (Solidago, Thermopsis, Helianthus hirsutus, Indian grass, etc. are huge).

Eggplant in container (surrounded by crabgrass!)

The Campsis radicans  on the trellises in front of the garage are thriving.  They were planted this spring, and have already reached the trellis tops.  Hopefully, we'll get some flowers later this summer.

But most rewarding (aside from making a start on the weeding) was harvesting new potatoes (yellow, red, and purple) and yellow and white onions from the satellite garden, along with some nice large leeks grown in a container, and ruby chard in the kitchen window block of the main vegetable garden (doing well in spite of previous problems with root-knot nematodes).

Chard (after harvesting dinner leaves)

Things are doing well in the main vegetable garden blocks following a couple of seasons of being fallow and (possibly) the beneficial nematode treatment, too.  A post later that summer after application suggested I wasn't very convinced.

Except for some fish (from the freezer), everything for dinner was harvested from the Piedmont garden this afternoon.  What fun!

And there are lots of blueberries to pick tomorrow.  And tomatoes to come here, too, as well as in the mountains.

I've added some photos to this post -- somehow, I got distracted yesterday by the weeding, and Woody's visit to the vet.  Happily, he received a clean bill of health, although he's slightly underweight -- masked by how furry he is.  He'll enjoy a bit more kibble.

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Growing vegetables

A friend of mine (CEN) said that you need to be a cook to grow vegetables. 

She's definitely right, I thought, as I was scrubbing yet more beets, onions, and leeks for part of dinner tonight.  It takes time to prepare vegetables, whether they're from the supermarket or your own garden.

I'm being a good local eater and cook (and by extension, my gardening companion is, too).  We've been diligently eating greens all spring (kale, collards, spinach, and chard) and recently have been eating beets, carrots, leeks, and onions, seasoned with home-grown garlic.  Uh, I'd like to have a bit of broccoli, but with all of these other veggies, it's hard to justify buying any!

I do buy fresh mushrooms (shitake and button) and the occasional hot-house red pepper (I always feel a bit guilty, but hey, they're terribly healthy.

It's an interesting conundrum, in a time we can buy almost anything we want (vegetable or fruit), in the global marketplace. And it's also a 'get real' thought as many of us try to eat more 'local' food.

This was an interesting graphic from Roger Doiron at Kitchen Gardening International about the disconnect between what we grow to eat (modelled after the White House kitchen garden) and what we subsidize as tax-payers in the US.

From Kitchen Gardening International (Roger Doiron)

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Growing your own food

To grow everything you eat (or drink) would be (and is) a formidable task, and we've got centuries of world trade routes to underscore the interest in tea, coffee, sugar, and spices for centuries, as well as the currently active shipping of produce, meat, seafood, and frozen goods around the world, in a global marketplace.

Not to mention bananas, the cheapest fruit available in my supermarket today, but certainly not local or necessarily sustainably grown. 

But, my gardening companion enjoys having a banana each morning with his cereal, and it's hard to think of a reason (in the grand scheme of things) why I shouldn't indulge his habit.  OK, maybe I shouldn't support the small-scale (or big scale companies) that produce bananas throughout the tropical world, but ...

I had a delightful time at a Locavore potluck yesterday evening, but was amazed at how few folks had homegrown veggies in their dishes -- for example, lettuce, greens, or peas (or early strawberries) to offer as their dish to share. 

There was quite a bit of asparagus, which I hope (mostly) came from backyard beds, but one dish was labeled Chinese asparagus.  Hmm.  What I've seen in the markets lately has been from Mexico, before that Peru.

And it was a bit disappointing to see contributions of cantaloupe and blueberries and an attractive pepper, onion, and tomato salad --NOT local, or regional around here at this time of the year.

My vegetable garden (and the gardens I monitor) are overflowing with lettuces, mature purple mustards, overwintered chard, spinach, arugula, sugar snap peas, snow peas, newly sown chard, etc. 

Geez, I'm in a greens glut currently.  It's a good thing that they're good for you, and stir-fried with onions and garlic, are quite delicious.  And good as leftovers for breakfast (with local eggs) and with lunch, too!

My message was to start growing more veggies!  They're easy, delicious, and good to eat.

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Eating local

We're eating lots of home-grown greens currently, with the excellent addition of frozen tomatoes and beans from last summer.  I'm fortunate to have a lovely source of local eggs via the CAFE (Clemson Area Food Network) -- the Baird Family Farm.

Their mixed eggs are lovely and delicious.  And I'm glad to be able to buy locally-raised goat meat from Billy's Boer Meat Goat Farm, too.

But an invitation to a discussion about growing food (I didn't manage to get to it) has me thinking a bit.  Yes, local is definitely good and we want to encourage small scale farmers and provide a market for them, and it MAY become more urgent as fuel costs rise, etc.

But, as a traveler, I also appreciate that small farmers in other parts of the world are sustained through the global trade in food.  I don't buy asparagus out of season from Mexico or Peru (big agriculture, I think) or tomatoes out of season either from any source, but why not support Mexican grown hot-house peppers (vs Holland or BC grown) or organic frozen veggies grown in Asia?

Small farmers everywhere need our support, to be sure.

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Local food

We've been experiencing an upsurge of interest in local food for several years now.

Surrounding our small college town, in spite of Clemson being home to the land-grant institution in our state, we don't have many small farms anymore. 

But hopefully, increased demand will encourage increased production.

These were local eggs that I purchased through a fledgling organization supporting local farmers (CAFE-Clemson Area Food Exchange).  I wish I had the time to keep chickens myself, but I'm glad to support folks that can.  These are actually a lovely variety of colors which doesn't show up in this (quickly taken, non-flash) photo!

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Organic red peppers, local food, and other conundrums

Colorful peppers are a good thing; they're full of nutrients and low in calories, in addition to being tasty. The hothouse peppers available in the supermarket from the Netherlands, Canada, and Mexico are tasty, but bear a burden of energy costs, food miles, etc. Balancing nutrition and one's ecological footprint isn't always easy.

In our warm summer climate, we can grow lots of nice peppers, spicy anchos and poblanos, as well as mild Italian roasting peppers, pimentos, and 'pizza' peppers. What we (at least I) can't grow well is large, juicy 'bell' peppers, whether green, red, orange, or yellow.

This time of year, my home-grown frozen peppers add a nice kick to sauces and stir-fries, but they're pretty meager compared to what's available in the market. These seem to be a product of pampered greenhouses, kept at optimal temperatures, with abundant moisture and nutrients through the growing season.

So I was interested to see frozen organic pepper slices for sale at a modest cost in one of our local supermarkets.

They're nothing but peppers, unlike one of my favorite frozen vegetables 'Pepper Stir-Fry' from Birdseye,, which includes onions, too (cheaper, of course).

OK, these are village-grown, organic, all peppers, about $2.25 US dollars (roughly equivalent to the Birdseye product on sale). So what's the story?

They're grown in a Chinese organic vegetable village (certified). Hmm.

We visited a very interesting organic vegetable village in Southern Vietnam last winter -- a remarkable place. Maybe this village is similar? Who knows?

But, perhaps the trade-off isn't so difficult after all. Supporting organic vegetables grown in China certainly can't hurt, but I'm thinking why can't I buy nice frozen peppers grown closer to home?

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Local and sustainable food

I'm itching to get back out into the garden. It's time. I've been at meetings two days in a row where local food has been a subject. One was a city environmental committee and the other was an information meeting about our Clemson University Student Organic Farm.

Local food (and sustainability, however defined) are growing interests, even here in a relatively small, reasonably conservative, college town in the Southern U.S. This is a good thing. Our town is quite progressive, actually, and we're often a model for other small communities in our region.

Growing food isn't easy. It takes time and effort. And growing sustainably and organic means taking care of the soil, balancing energy inputs and outputs, and replenishing nutrients that are harvested (and consumed). My friends who are permaculture fans are on the right track, to be sure. We have LOTS of land in our cities and suburban areas that's 'wasted' on grass or on ornamental trees and shrubs that don't support wildlife.

I'm a great advocate of greening our community landscapes, adding plants (trees, shrubs, and perennials) that add both ecological (wildlife) value as well as providing food resources. Why shouldn't we plant persimmons or pecans, for example, in public parks and open spaces? Or use vacant land for community gardens?

At home, we've transformed much of our former lawn into wildlife habitat (with mostly native plants) and grow lots of vegetables in our organic vegetable garden. But this wouldn't sustain us without chickens, perhaps pigs, and a concerted effort to convert a LOT more lawn to vegetable gardens devoted to calorie crops (potatoes and corn are the most sensible crops for us, if we really had to be serious about it).

I don't really think that our big ag food system will collapse anytime soon, but it's definitely worth focusing on local food and supporting local producers.

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Red cabbage

A spring cabbage from a past garden

Chopping up a (store-bought) red cabbage to add to a vegetable mix this evening had me wondering about where it had been grown. A traditional cool-season crop, cabbage requires cool weather and a long growing season to mature.

Was this a freshly-harvested cabbage from somewhere in coastal California? Or somewhere in Florida? Imported from Mexico? Or was it a refrigerated stored cabbage, thanks to the modern equivalent of a root cellar?

Hard to know, since a quick search revealed only that California and Florida were likely sources of fresh cabbage in the US this time of year.

In our normally mild winter climate in South Carolina, most cabbages (and their relatives) do quite nicely planted in the fall (or early spring), but we'd harvest heads in early summer. In colder winter climates (think the Northeastern US or Northern Europe), you'd be able to harvest in fall and store through the winter.

But cabbages of various sorts are grown around the world, and I'm remembering seeing some sort of cabbages in most of the local markets that we've visited, whether in Asia, Europe, or South America. I've posted these images before - totally enormous cabbages grown in the mountains of Northern Vietnam.

Giant cabbages growing near Sapa, Northern Vietnam

Carrying cabbages to market

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Squash from the garden (uh, from the freezer)

I fished out a bag of frozen tromboncino squash from the chest freezer in the basement to cook as the vegetable for dinner tonight. It was quite nice. But, I really needed a flashlight to get into the freezer, as the bare bulb light down there doesn't seem to be working.

The basement (walk-in, and large, but unfinished) is not my favorite place, and quite dark, so I took the opportunity to transfer some frozen blueberries and blackberries, roasted tomatoes, and hot peppers to the 'upstairs' freezer, too. Hmm, I'd rather not have to go down there again soon...

I'm always humbled to be thinking about trying to grow more of what we eat! But, perhaps a useful step would be to make the basement a bit brighter and more welcoming -- there's an electrical connection down there, so lights are certainly possible...

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Local markets

An absence of supermarkets in Southern Vietnam (despite its rapid development) means that there's a vibrant culture of community markets, street sellers, and street food vendors. And with a cultural emphasis on fresh food, made with fresh ingredients means that food (even for travelers) is delicious.

Here are a few images from early in our trip.

Herbal remedies

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Local food

The closest thing to local is from your own garden -- there's obviously nothing fresher than harvesting just before lunch or dinner.

But in the flurry of interest in local food, my home state of South Carolina has recently launched a Palmettovore program (we're the 'Palmetto' state), encouraging purchase of SC-grown produce (fresh fruits, vegetables, and other state-made products), to accompany last-year's certified SC grown campaign.

This is a quite nice idea, but the farms of Western North Carolina (a hotbed of small, locally-oriented farmers) are within two hours of Clemson, compared to the 4-5 hrs down to the coastal plain fields that support tomatoes, soybeans, and increasingly many more crops.

I'm a member of something called Upstate SC Locally Grown Market, and dutifully try to get fresh eggs and cheese from them, along with freshly roasted coffee (uh, not locally grown). They're a new network, and are trying to connect Upstate local farmers with buyers. I'm not a good buyer for fresh veggies (I have enough of my own, thanks!), but would like to see them thrive.

In the mountains this weekend, we had a delicious dinner this evening of 'local food' - thanks to the North Asheville Tailgate Market. It's hard to beat such a dinner, even in the great local restaurants in Asheville. Fresh new potatoes, patty pan squash, Chiogga beets, beet greens, red onions, local lettuce, bluefish and shrimp from the Outer Banks, along with shitake mushrooms, were delightful with fresh garlic from home.

And isn't that the essence of local?

And I'm looking forward to returning home and harvesting young squash!

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Thinking about transplants

Um, I love to look at seed catalogs, and seeds are really CHEAP, as hobbies go. I've been cataloging mine in a spreadsheet (an uncharacteristic activity) to see what I have to grow as transplants for an upcoming Garden event to encourage people to grow some of their own vegetables.

We represent lots of partners: the SC Botanical Garden, Upstate Locavores, CU's Sustainable Ag program, CU's Home and Garden Information Center, SC Master Gardeners, and local community groups.

This will be a free event, with lots of info about how to grow vegetables (as a revived Victory Garden sort of thing). Many Americans are enthused about giving vegetable gardening a try; I'm seeing much more interest now. Hooray.

But, here's the list (uh, I did say I like seeds, right). Donating these seeds or transplants gives me the opportunity to buy more. Hmm, and I'll probably be enticed to buy transplants to support the cause, too! Not a bad thing.

What a nice list to contemplate.

Vegetables for transplant:

Cucumber
Ashley Cucumber
Italian cucumber (Lungo Della Cina)
Kiwano (African Horned Cucumber)
Sweet Armenian
Armenian

Eggplant
Fairy Tale Eggplant
Millionaire Eggplant
Thai Light Green round
Thai Long Green (Elephant Tusk)
Lao Green Stripe
Lao White

Kohlrabi
Early White Vienna
Purple Vienna
Dyna Giant Purple

Okra
Hill Country Heirloom Red OKRA
Burgundy Okra

Peppers
Ancho San Martin Hybrid Pepper
Pizza Pepper
Corno Di Toro Red Pepper
Carmen Hybrid Pepper
Red Cherry (Cherry Sweet) Pepper
Carolina Wonder Bell Pepper
Ashe County Pimento Pepper
Corno di Toro Mix
Southwestern Chile Trio
Pizza My Heart (container sweet pepper)
Gambo

Summer Squash
Portofino Squash
Trombonciono Squash
Tromboncino Squash
Thai Serpent
Zucchino Rampicante (Zucca d'Albenga)
Eight-Ball Zucchini
Trombetta di Albenga
Ronde de Nice
Baby Round Zucchini
Petrowski

Winter Squash
Thai Small Pumpkin
Green striped cushaw
Chiriman
Greek Sweet Red
Thema Sander's Sweet Potato
Menina Rajada Seca

Swiss Chard
French
Golden Sunrise
Perpetual Spinach
Ruby Red
Barese
Erbette

Tomato
Big Beef Hybrid Tomato
Black Heirloom Tomato
Mortgage Lifter Tomato
Quick Pick Hybrid Tomato
Brandywine Heirloom Tomato
Super Marzano Tomato
Italian Goliath Hybrid Tomato
Big Bite Hybrid Tomato
Small Fry Hybrid Tomato
Miroma Hybrid Tomato
Sweet Chelsea Hybrid Tomato
Sweet Cluster Hybrid Tomato
Tomosa Hybrid Tomato
Fourth of July Hybrid
Tomato Heat Wave
Roma 'Pompeii'
Green Zebra
Early Girl Hybrid
Rio Grande

Tomatillo
Purple Coban
Pueblo Verde

Herbs
Profuma di Genova Basil
Cilantro Santo
Cilantro
Cilantro Slo-Bolt
Smokey Bronze Fennel
Maresilles Basil
Sweet Purple
Dill 'Mammoth'
Giante d'Italia
Sweet Curly Parsley
Borage
Thai Basil

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Preserving and storing food

A blogging friend in England mentioned that storing food is a bit of a lost art; I'm certainly guilty about not thinking (and doing) more about food security and self-sufficiency.

I've been promoting vegetable gardening as a fun, creative activity in my work; laudable, to be sure, but maybe there's more that I should focus on.

My two vegetable garden areas produce enough fresh vegetables for us to eat for six months of the year, but I'm also buying things at the supermarket, now in winter. There are greens to be harvested, to be sure, so that's good. But I'm buying potatoes, lettuce, spinach, and broccoli.

But I avoid any (long-traveled, or excessively fossil-fuel enriched) tomatoes or peppers, but I get demerits because my gardening companions loves bananas, and I buy them for him (and eat a few myself).

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Growing your own veg

I went to a Upstate Locavore meeting this evening -- the topic was a spring event to encourage people to try growing some of their own vegetables. What's encouraging to me is that many of the folks interested in this are quite new to vegetable and herb gardening (and maybe gardening in general) and, in addition, there's a thread of food security running through the conversation.

I'm all for encouraging interest and supporting individual efforts. The RHS gardens in the UK have an expansive program called 'Growing your own veg' accompanied by all sorts of useful information for beginning gardeners.

A developing New Victory Garden movement includes Kitchen Garden International's Eat The View campaign and this garden planted as part of the Slow Food convention in San Francisco, CA this fall; these represent just a 'tip' of the explosion of interest in growing food, promoting local food, and supporting local farmers and sustainable agriculture.

And whether we're able to grow some of our own food, can purchase locally, or donate some of the excess of what we grow, why not add more vegetables and fruits to our home landscapes, if we have the space?

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Growing food

Michael Pollan had an excellent piece in last Sunday's NY Times Magazine, an issue focused on food. He wrote a letter to our next president (here in the U.S., coming soon) which outlines what he needs to think about and act on.

Our 'food system' in the U.S. is definitely in need of reform, and I'm tremendously pleased to see a resurgence of interest in local food, home vegetable gardens, and 'growing your own.'

There's a wonderful initiative (that Pollan comments on) to transform one of the White House lawns to an organic food garden, just like Eleanor Roosevelt did with a Victory Garden push.

My gardening companion and I have an acre and a half of land in our (semi)-rural small college town. In these challenging times, why shouldn't I expand my vegetable garden (with rotations) and consider having 'city' chickens, even if they might have to be in a 'chicken tractor'.

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Local foods

More than fifty varieties of bananas grown in Mto Wa Mbu, Tanzania

I went to a meeting today of a newly formed local foods group. What fun and how refreshing for folks in a conservative state (and formerly largely agricultural) in the Southern U.S. to think about how to encourage locally-grown foods. As our (previously farm and pasture land) is being gobbled up for subdivisions and development sprawl, it's a welcome trend to try to encourage promoting local producers and growers, providing an incentive to grow vegetables and fruits for local markets.

Schoolteacher carrying bananas in Amani, Tanzania

I love to 'grow my own,' of course, but I'm reluctant (so far) to get on the freezing and canning track, and my gardening companion LOVES his daily banana with cereal. I don't have the heart to explain to him about the global cost of banana production, the exposure of some farmworkers to pesticides, the risks of a single major banana variety, etc. Oh, dear, I probably at least need to always buy organic bananas or seek out the small varieties that support diversity of bananas.

Bananas, Hoi An, Vietnam
My own personal fruit passion is apples. I love apples -- and the idea of not having an apple each day after lunch is not a welcome one. I'm not keen on buying an apple from Chile or New Zealand, and we've got fabulous local apples now until early November, but that leaves a lot of open time in which I'm interested in eating apples.

But, I think I'll get a small energy-efficient freezer to start storing the growing season's bounty -- why not have roasted tomatoes for sauce, fresh-cut green beans, or onions and peppers?

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Eating more local food

I love the idea of local food (and growing my own) -- the benefits were clear in our dinner tonight, a lovely squash medley with garlic, a fresh tomato, basil, garlic and onion sauce (all homegrown) for some homemade semolina pasta, and some baked chicken.

Our regional Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (North and South Carolina, USA) has issued an eating local challenge for the coming week (July 7-13) -- for folks to try to eat locally as much as possible (more challenging here in the Southeast than in some parts of the U.S.)

The chicken was probably from somewhere regional (there are lots of chicken farms in the Carolinas), but it wasn't organic or free-range, the eggs in the pasta were from regional free-range chickens, but the wheat flour was from a midwestern source (King Arthur flour). The tarragon and thyme that flavored the chicken was homegrown. But the black pepper came from the other side of the world, and the coffee I had this morning came from South or Central America or Africa. And the 'big organic' milk I had in my coffee was certainly a mixture of milk from a variety of sources, and probably not regional at all. And the parmesan cheese we sprinkled on our pasta was American-made, but certainly not local, and the Braeburn apple that I ate after lunch was from Washington State, and the raisins and nuts in the homemade whole-grain bread in my sandwich were certainly from California, but the tomato was homegrown, but the lettuce came from California, too. The fresh mozzarella was produced by a New Jersey-based company.

For lunch, my gardening companion had leftover organic rice (probably grown in the Central Valley of California), with leftover corn (grown somewhere in the Southeast), with pesto made from roasted cherry peppers (origin unknown), homegrown garlic, balsamic vinegar from Italy, pecans from the local coop (presumably from the Southeastern U.S.), cilantro from somewhere in the U.S., and grated parmesan (maybe from Wisconsin?), and a bit of the fresh mozzarella. Hmmm. It's illuminating to be mindful of where our food comes from! I remember seeing some years ago in a Central Market in Austin, Texas garlic labeled as from Argentina, and finding it a revelation. We import garlic from Argentina? Who knew? Of course, now we're much more aware of how much food is imported from all sorts of places (I saw Chinese garlic in a local produce market).

I can't help but think that we've had world trade in food and spices for centuries, if not millenia for good reason. But eating more locally is always a good thing, and there's no reason to have out-0f season fruit flown in from South America considered as a 'staple'. Or to mindlessly buy whatever is available, just because it's there.

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