Nadia Knows Gardens

BUY LOCAL- BUY FRESH

04 Jan 2010 15 Comments

by nadiaqh in Books, Garden Fruits, Living Healthy, Vegetable/ Herb Garden Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, buy fresh, buy in season produce, buy local, farmer's market, organic gardening, seasonal fruit

Eating In Season Fruits

BUY LOCAL – BUY FRESH – BUY LOCAL – BUY FRESH

Buying fresh, local and in-season fruits and vegetables has become one of my more recent goals. Last month I read Barbara Kingsolver’s book  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Good Life, which described aspects of farming in America and how produce is transported from the fields, then to the grocer, and finally to our dinner tables. This book along with other sources inspired me to make buying local one of my New Year’s Resolutions. Although some book reviews described Animal, Vegetable, Miracle as sounding “preachy”, it seemed to me that it was more of a goldmine of information on a subject that is not often on the evening news or the cover of magazines.

These reprinted excerpts from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are specific quotes on this issue of “why buy local?”. Read the entire book for more and other very in-depth information on organic gardening, sustainable gardens, recipes from the garden, commercial poultry factories, etc., etc.  You will most likely learn more than you wanted to know, or as it was in my case, I was quite surprised at how much I knew nothing about.

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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle : A Year of Good Life : “Quotes” by Barbara Kingsolver

- “Eating home-cooked meals from whole, in-season ingredients obtained from the most local source available is eating well, in every sense. Good for the habitat, good for the body.”

- “Waiting for foods to come into season means tasting them when they’re good, but waiting is also part of most value equations.”

- “Find your nearest farmer’s markets and local producers on the USDA Web site:

www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets

www.localharvest.org

www.csacenter.org.”

- “Most standard vegetable varieties sold in stores have been bred for uniform appearance, mechanized harvest, convenience of packaging and tolerance for hard travel. None of these can be mistaken, in practice, for actual flavor.”

- “Transporting fragile produce dates back to the early twentieth century when a few entrepreneurs tried shipping lettuce and artichokes, iced down in boxcars, from California eastward over the mountains as a midwinter novelty….in just a few decades the out-of-season vegetable moved from the novelty status to such an ordinary item, most North Americans now don’t know what Out-Of-Season means.”

- “Concentrating on local foods means thinking of fruit invariably as the product of an orchard, and a winter squash as a fruit of an early winter farm. It’s a strategy  that will keep grocery money in the neighborhood, where it gets recycled into your own school system and local businesses… it’s a win-win strategy for anyone with taste buds. “

- “Organic gardening nurtures and sustains the soil vs. depleting it with pesticides and herbicides.”

- “Locally grown is a denomination whose meaning is incorruptible. Sparing the transportation fuel, packaging, and unhealthy additives is a compelling part of the story.”

- “The increased availability of local food in any area is a direct function of the demand from local consumers… First: in grocery stores, when the cashier asks if you found everything you were looking for, you could say, “Not really, I was looking for  local produce.” The smaller the store, the more open a grocer may be to your request.”

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On December 22nd I went to my local grocer and in the produce section picked up a cellophane “microwave-able” bag of green beans from (how many states away?) Ohio. I asked the produce manager standing nearby if he had any “local” green beans available. He advised me to come back on the 24th for a new shipment of fresh green beans saying: “green beans need to be fresh for the holidays and you don’t want them to be more than a few days old”. I asked him why they had this substandard microwave-able brand from Ohio if they could also provide local and fresh green beans? He replied, “people just want it fast and easy.”

I waited and bought the local fresh beans a few days later and they were worth it.

* Link to another garden blog I just discovered: 1greengeneration that supports local community building and organic gardening.

Thank you for visiting my garden blog: www.nadiaknows.com                      Creating-Growing-Learning