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By purchasing food from a local family farm, we ensure that they continue to exist and are not swallowed up by commercial enterprises or developers. You get great food and help to save precious farmland. Eating local helps you play a part in restoring the quality of our food supply. A new, more sustainable system is thriving because farmers are working with their customers and producing food in a more traditional way. Caring for the land and the food becomes second nature. I shop for local and organic first and work my way down the list to commercially produced food when I have no other option.
Organic food is more than just for our health and the health of the planet. I have discovered in my own research that organic food is, in fact, more nutrient-dense than commercially produced varieties.
There are many reasons to eat according to the 5 Seasons Diet plan, regardless of where you live. Eating seasonally is what nature intended. It is an eating. Even with all the benefits, adopting a diet that more closely reflects the seasons can be a challenge when imported strawberries and.
Since the demand for organic produce has risen so dramatically, more farmers are growing it and the prices are becoming much more competitive. Our demand for better food yielded great results. However, circumstances and availability may drive the way you buy fresh fruit and vegetables. In the end, armed with information, you can make the best choices for your health.
In the end, marketing and subsidies, corruption and greed, special interests and bottom lines, force us to do the best we can. We can make informed choices, eschewing products we know do not serve our health and demand better from the people growing, producing, and manufacturing the food we eat. Want to learn to love your veggies? When corn is in season, we cut it off the cob and freeze it on cookie sheets, then crumple it into plastic bags. When we need some, we just open the bag in the freezer and scoop out what we want. We also have a pantry.
We can to quarts of food per year. When tomatoes are rolling in from the garden, we make juice and can tomatoes.
We also make salsa, ketchup and tomato paste. Each year, we buy bushels of apples from an orchard and make our own applesauce. When grapes ripen in late September, we can our own juice concentrate. We cut it with half water to drink. The elderberries along the river are great for making jelly, so we reserve grape juice for drinking.
When cabbages are ready, we have a couple of gallon crocks for making sauerkraut. Later in the season, when cucumbers are pouring in, we reuse the crocks for making pickles. My wife, Teresa, makes fantastic sweet pickles. Our basement serves as a root cellar for fall vegetables and root crops. In November, the basement is full of butternut squash, sweet potatoes, white potatoes and cushaw squash. We lay mulch over late carrots in the garden and they become sweeter and sweeter as winter progresses. Whenever we want some, we get a handful fresh out of the ground.
Our laying hens are only really productive for two years. At the end of that time, we dress them and cook them in a huge roasting pan. We pick the meat off, cut it up into bite-size chunks, and either can it or freeze it. That precooked, ready-to-go canned or frozen meat is about as handy as it gets.
We all choose our routines. To learn more about eating with the seasons, read " Tips for Local and Seasonal Eating. Adapted from Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: Joel Salatin is the author of numerous books about farming, including You Can Farm! He can be contacted through his Polyface Farms website. Sit in on dozens of practical workshops from the leading authorities on natural health, organic gardening, real food and more! Freshly picked produce has the optimal flavor — crispy, fragrant, juicy and colorful. Those summer heirloom tomatoes make all other tomatoes seem inferior.
You can eat it like an apple; raw, warm from the sun and straight from the vine.
Plants get their nourishment from the sun and soil. The plant has had more sun exposure, which means it will have higher levels of antioxidants! Studies have also found that the level of iodine and beta-carotene in milk is higher in the summer than in the winter months — ice cream anyone? Simply supply and demand. Seasonal food is much cheaper to produce for the farmers who would rather sell their products for a lower price, than not at all.
Cash in on the seasonal bounty. Seasonal produce can grow without too much added human assistance i. We know how these toxic compounds can contaminate the water and soil and also our health. Getting to know where your food is coming from, who is growing your food and how they do it also makes you feel more connected to that whole process.
Together we are more powerful and big change can happen. Eating seasonally also forces you to cook more -- and there really is nothing better you could do for your health. When you start to take back control of what you put in to your body, which oil you choose to cook with, how much sugar you add to your food etc, you are consciously making better choices for your health.
Cooking is also a great activity to do with your kids, family and friends. And, what better way to show your love?