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).

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.

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)

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.

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.

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!

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?

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.

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

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...

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