Photo credit:
Marisa McClellan
We've all been told that eating local is the way to go and is sometimes even better than eating organic. But how can you sustain a somewhat local diet in the depths of winter, when the farmers markets have closed and the abundance of summer tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers is but a distant memory?
While eating a totally local diet during winter (at least without some major summertime preparation) is a challenge, you can begin to incorporate a few locally grown or produced elements in your diet.
Here's how:
Target a Few Items
It’s February and you’re having trouble finding any local vegetables, outside of a few withered potatoes at your local produce stand. Don’t beat yourself up over the California salad mix you tossed into your cart (we all understand how the appeal of vibrant greens during these frigid, grey days can be irresistible). Instead, focus your energy on the local things you can get.
Here in Pennsylvania, while local winter veggies are scarce, I can still get locally raised beef, pork and poultry. Eggs from happy, regional chickens are available (although admittedly, they can be a little pricier now than they are during their summer peak) and honey from bees in Delaware (no more than an hour’s drive from home) is available all year round.
The key to finding these local edibles is talking to people and thinking outside of the conventional grocery store box. Often, your next-door neighbor will know someone who happens to keep a beehive in their backyard. A quick phone call can yield a quart jar of honey in exchange for a few dollars. Are some of the other parents at your child’s school talking about going in together to buy half a cow? Find out if you can get in on the share.
Join a Buying Club
Another way to keep the flow of local products coming during winter is to join a buying club. Buying clubs allow you to order meat, eggs, poultry, grains and other items (it varies widely from club to club). There is often a minimum purchase level required, but it’s rarely more than $25 or $30. Some buying clubs make individual deliveries, while others drop off the entire club’s order at a single spot and ask that members pick up during a two or three hour window. It’s a terrific way to stay stocked up on local foods, while supporting farmers during their leanest time of the year.
If there aren’t any buying clubs in your area, but the idea of participating in something like that intrigues you, reach out to a local farmer to see if they’d be willing to help you start one. Often, all it takes is a few people to build a groundswell of support for something like this to begin. A good starting point when looking for a local farmer or buying club is the website Local Harvest. They keep an exhaustive database of CSA programs, farm stands and markets, cooperative grocery stores and farmers for every region of the country.
Grow Salad Greens
If you can’t find local eggs, and there’s not a buying club to join in your area, but you still want to have some local foods in your diet during the depths of winter, consider starting a little indoor garden. You can start growing salad greens in your living room window with nothing more than a seed packet and a couple of pots. If you don’t have a nice sunny spot, a 40-watt fluorescent bulb in an old lamp makes for a perfect grow light.
Find a warm corner to set up your indoor garden. If you keep your home really chilly during the cool months, loosely cover your pots with some clear plastic just after planting the seeds, until they start to sprout. Old produce bags work really well for this, just make sure to poke a few small ventilation holes in the plastic. If you’re using the grow light, skip the plastic and just position the lamp about two inches above the top of the soil. As the plants start to sprout, move the lamp back a bit, so as not to damage the tender growth.
Soon you’ll have fresh young greens to add to your meals!
Plan Ahead and Use Your Freezer
If you’re really committed to eating more local foods throughout the year, it’s important to plan ahead. Instead of just indulging in the farmers’ market bounty during July, August and September, make a point of preserving some of that goodness for the cold months. You don’t have to buy a bunch of equipment or become an expert canner to make sure you have a stash of local treats and staples. It can be as easy as clearing out your freezer and investing in a couple of boxes of freezer bags.
For instance, when I was growing up, every fall my mother would make several large batches of apple sauce when the apples were in season. After the sauce cooled, she’d ladle it into quart-sized zip top bags and stack them neatly in a corner of the freezer. She make between 15 and 20 bags, so we’d have homemade apple sauce as a component of our meal at least once a week January through March. When we tired of eating it plain, she stirred it into oatmeal for breakfast or baked it into muffins, in place of oil.
You can do the same thing with tomatoes. Simply cook them down (I'm a fan of oven-roasting), let them cool, portion it out into bags and stack them in the freezer. Just remember that you should always clearly date and label anything you preserve in the freezer. You may think you’ll remember everything you tuck away, but two months later, you’ll be staring at that unidentifiable bag, wondering what it is and how long it’s been there.
For even more information about eating local fods all year round, check out the Eat Local Challenge.
How to foster green biodiversity
Comments (6)Add a Comment
Inappropriate or promotional comments may be removed.
GREAT article! Though I was surprised that you didn't mention PA mushrooms. You must be able to get locally grown mushrooms in the winter. Aren't almost all of them grown in your state?
We live in NY. This winter I've been reading the produce labels and have been glad to find CT apples (Empire--my favorite!) at Trader Joes up until last week--the last bag was past it's prime, but it's nice to know they're trying. They also had PA mushrooms, and PA tomatoes and some CT grown greens--greenhouse grown so that's a compromise but I'd wager it's more environmentally sound than shipping long distance. Kale is not my favorite, but will survive in the ground for much of the winter here (USDA zone 6b/7) and can be cut as needed. In most areas I'd think that local farms might also have cabbage and root crops to hold people over until spring. Seed sprouting is another fresh produce idea that people could easily try at home. Evergreen herbs can be used all year round. Our garden has fresh (frozen on the plant) rosemary and thyme that I pick year round.
And don't forget local wine, yum! We are blessed to be near wine country and stock up in the fall.
Honestly, the reason I didn't mention mushrooms is that my fiance absolutely hates them, and so I hardly cook with them anymore (I try to ensure that he'll eat dinner with me). However, you're 100% that most of the nation's mushrooms are grown in the Kennett Square area of PA, just half an hour from Philly. I'm going to have to start seeing if I can't sneak them back into the rotation, even against his objections.
Nah, I'd wait until after the wedding... ;)
TemptressYarn, you are a very wise woman!
I remember my mom and I growing alfalfa sprouts in our cabinets -- a trick we learned from Sesame Street magazine.
There's also canning, which should be done with large batches of veggies or fruits. Nothing beats a hearty tomato sauce in winter! Or yummy preserves.
And I second the mushrooms suggestion. There are easy kits nowadays that are practically idiot-proof.
Now, to find a neighbor with honey... Great article!
re: starting seeds in cold rooms.
Soil temperature is the most important thing. Most seed catalogs sell waterproof
heat pads that can be placed under the seedling pots. They use very little power,
but focus the heat exactly where it's needed to keep the little seedling's bottoms
warm.
My little greenhouse is not heated. It stays just above freezing even in 14 degree
outside temperatures with the help of two insulated walls and a heat sink composed
of a half dozen 50 gallon black water barrels. This is quite sufficient for
wintering over herbs etc. However, for growing new greens in the winter, a heat
pad is very effective. I can get two big salads every 40 days out of a single pot
that's 6"deepx16"longx6"wide. Sow a couple of these every week. Baby spinach and
sweet japanese turnips are also 35-40 day greens that do fine in pots.
Remember, that lettuce stays sweeter if it grows fast, so make sure to feed the
potted greens.
For managing freezers - I suggest the following:
1) get a clipboard from the market. Tie a pencil to it, hook it up RIGHT NEXT to
the freezer. Write down the food items as they first go in. Check them off as they
come out.
2) freezers use power more efficiently if they are full. However, a full chest freezer can be a pain to manage, even with food sorted in boxes. We use our emergency drinking water storage jugs to fill up the freezers. These are easy to remove to make room for more goodies, or to rearrange or root through the existing food. Leave space in your water storage jugs to allow for expansion when they freeze. The extra ice will hold over the freezer longer in a power outage and you need the emergency water storage anyway. If you need the extra space in the freezer, just let the water jugs thaw til you need them again.
3) Auto defrost freezers use quite a bit more energy. In my experience, once a year defrost of an efficient chest freezer is not a big deal, and you save kws every day, and you always find stuff that should be removed and used.
4) Most new freezers have battery operated alarms that tell you if power has been disrupted. What they DON'T do, is tell you how long it was off. So, you can be away from home, return to hear the buzzer, but have no way of knowing if the power was off long enough to spoil food, then just came back on and refroze bad food.
Get one of those 'memory' thermometers that flags the lowest and highest temperatures. The non-digital ones are pretty cheap. Put it just inside the lid of the freezer. If you hear a power off alarm, you can check the internal thermometer to insure that your food never rose above 32 degrees.