Buy Local and Save Money

Have you noticed the new signs for some of the produce in your grocery store? The ones that say, "Locally Grown?" I was at Publix yesterday and for the second time noticed a sign that said just that, and underneath it were green beans, zucchini and yellow squash all grown in Redland, Florida (a well-established farming area in Miami-Dade county), just 1 county south of me, less than 100 miles away.

Buying local really does make sense in a lot of ways. One, you get fresher produce because it didn't have to travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to get to you. Two, because it's fresher, it tastes better and it's healthier. Three, you've helped out the environment because you've cut down on the carbon emissions the traveling to market took. And four, you've helped support local businesses--a really good thing, especially in today's economy.

And speaking of today's economy, if you shop at local farmer's markets, you will actually save money. I stopped in at Southwest Ranches Farmer's Market, my local organic farmer's market, and you wouldn't believe the prices--75 cents a pound for big organic onions (the non-organic onions at the grocery store cost between $1.29 and $1.39 a pound); organic sweet potatoes were $1 each (at the grocery store, the non-organic sweet potatoes run $1 a pound); red creamer potatoes and baking potatoes were 59 cents a pound (at the grocery store, they run $1 a pound). Pickings were a little bit slim, but, remember, it's planting season here in south Florida, not harvesting season, and they still had a decent selection--oranges, pears, apples, limes, lemons, stunning scallions, lettuce, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, herbs, homemade salsa, zucchini, yellow squash, butternut squash, hubbard squash, cucumbers, the end-of-season tomatoes, etc. The owners of Southwest Ranches Farmer's Market even install edible yards for your home, as well as selling an assortment of vegetable plant seedlings, many of which you can see growing right there on the property.

If you want to find your local farmer's markets and other locally-produced food, take a peek at Local Harvest and Slow Food. Both have extensive listings.

So shop local, save money and eat healthy!

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Renewal

We had an extremely hot summer. So hot, in fact, that I didn't go out and putz around in the yard. Every time my thoughts drifted toward gardening, self-preservation intervened and my sensible self said "No, Ara. Anything you attempt to grow will burn up in the heat. You will burn up in the heat. There's no point in this." So I didn't.

Even the month of October was unseasonably hot (don't quote me, but I think we had 2 weeks straight that the feels-like temperature stayed in the high 90s/low 100s). It's usually the month south Florida gardeners plant tomatoes, but anyone I know who planted tomatoes in October have tomatoes not doing much because those poor little 'maters were just too hot. So I'm hoping it was a good thing and not just laziness on my part that I waited.

Looking down hill toward front gate in Middleton, Tennessee

Same view, closer - Middleton, Tennessee

Cabin - Middleton, Tennessee

My husband and I just got back from a wonderful 2-week vacation in Middleton, Tennessee at my mother-in-law's 176-acre farm. We got an RV this year to make travel with the puppies easier (just try cramming 3 dachschunds, 2 adults and 2 or 3 suitcases into a Prius for a 2000-mile trip). Not green you might think? Not so. Even though RVs use more gasoline than today's cars (we got 10 miles to the gallon during this trip, which is actually pretty good for RVs), they cut down tremendously on the carbon emmission domino effect that takes place when you drive via car or fly. Think about it. When you stop at a hotel or a restaurant, you set off a flurry of carbon emmission activity. We even successfully avoided using the RV generator. Though I stayed connected to work via my laptop, I was able to utilize this little 2-outlet gizmo for electricity that we got a few years back that plugs into the cigarette lighter. We're hoping in the next couple years to be able to get some solar panels for our electrical source so that we can always avoid using the generator in our RV travels.

Before we left, I was already thinking about what needed to be done to get the garden going again (obsessively watching the 100-Mile Challenge) and hopefully making it more productive than last year on our return. And while in Tennessee, I reconnected via Facebook with Lucy Owsley-Goodman, an old high school friend, who owns Boulder Belt Eco-Farm with her husband, Eugene, in Eaton, Ohio. Together, they have created a wonderfully-productive sustainable farm that provides a CSA farm-share program, a produce market, sustainable farming education, and produce at local farmer's markets. I'm quite sure I've left out a good number of the things they do, so I apologize in advance. If you want to learn more about sustainable living and farming, Lucy's Boulder Belt Blog is required reading. I started at the beginning and am currently somewhere in 2006. Lucy and Eugene have become my new idols; they give meaning to the kabbalistic term "tikkun," the idea that the world is profoundly broken and can be fixed only by human activity.

Boulder Belt Eco-Farm at Farmer's Market

Boulder Belt Eco-Farm

Mickey (hubby) and I were busy all weekend. I made 3 loaves of honey-wheat bread and a batch of chicken stock. Then we made it to Home Depot to pick up PVC to attempt to make some mini-hoop houses (described in the Boulder Belt Blog) which should help make the garden more productive this year (I ordered the row cover material from Gardener's Supply while in Tennessee), bought a new upright freezer to be able to have room to put up some produce, and picked up some organic cedar mulch at Pop's Nursery to start reducing the grass in the back yard in the paths between our raised organic garden beds.

Okay. I'm getting too windy here, so I'll stop for now. More soon. I promise.

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