Learning to Eat Seasonally As a Locavore

I'll be the first to admit that I am spoiled in that I love certain "exotic" foods that need to be shipped long distances before I can enjoy them in the comfort of my own home. As a mobile society, we've become accustomed to this as well as becoming accustomed to having access to foods grown out of season year-round. Unfortunately for us Foodies, this is unsustainable and a habit we will find ourselves needing to change in the coming years.

When Jeff & I decided to simplify our existence by learning to grow the majority of our own food, we became even more acutely aware of the seasonal nature of our natural growing environment. Don't get me wrong, we both grew up with gardens & fresh-picked veggies & we're both old enough to remember grocery stores selling seasonal offerings instead of the year-round cornucopia we've all become accustomed to in the recent decades.

I plan to delve into the history of food cultivation and preservation in other posts, so I'd like to get to the point of this entry by getting right to explaining the term "locavore" for those of you who aren't familiar with the term yet.

I don't usually quote Wikipedia, but here is the definition of locavore posted there:

A locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius such as 50, 100, or 150 miles (240 km). The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to produce their own food, with the argument that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locally grown food is an environmentally friendly means of obtaining food, since supermarkets that import their food use more fossil fuels and non-renewable resources.

"Locavore" was coined by Jessica Prentice from the San Francisco Bay Area on the occasion of World Environment Day 2005 to describe and promote the practice of eating a diet consisting of food harvested from within an area most commonly bound by a 100-mile (160 km) radius. "Localvore" is sometimes also used.

The New Oxford American Dictionary chose locavore, a person who seeks out locally produced food, as its word of the year 2007.[6] The local foods movement is gaining momentum as people discover that the best-tasting and most sustainable choices are foods that are fresh, seasonal, and grown close to home. Some locavores draw inspiration from the The 100-Mile Diet or from advocates of local eating like Barbara Kingsolver whose book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle chronicles her family's attempts to eat locally. Others just follow their taste buds to farmers' markets, community supported agriculture programs, and community gardens.

A study in the 2007 Dewey Health Review revealed that a locavore diet (study included 100 individuals ages 18–55 eating local food grown within an 80-mile (130 km) radius) resulted in a 19% increase in sturdiness of bowel movement and an overall drop in sleep apnea and night terrors.

To read more about the Locavore movement, go to the Locavore web site.

PBS.com has a wonderful article on 10 Steps to Becoming a Locavore.

For those of you considering growing part of your own produce, stick around. I'll be explaining growing in all seasons for the Southeast with helpful suggestions for adapting the same to other zones.

What Big Seeds You Have!!

Winter squash is a awesome Fall comfort food, but many people throw one of the best parts out with the peel. Don't!! Seeds in most winter squash are big enough to make a yummy & fiber-filled snack.

There are plenty of instructions on the inkernet for preparing them, but I am a simplist and found that many of the instructions called for steps I find completely unnecessary. Some called for boiling the seeds in salt water before roasting, but I've always just cleaned the pulp from them and then laid them out to dry on one of my dehydrator's screens before roasting. A screen is not imperative, and seeds can be dried on a sheet of wax paper if you have nothing else.

Once the seeds have been cleaned and dried, I melt 3 tbsp butter with 2 tbsp olive oil in a small pan to each cup of seeds, then mix in the seeds and the spices of my choice. Any spice combo will work - plain salt, cajun seasoning, curry mix, pumpkin spice with brown sugar or whatever flavor you desire. Then spread the seeds in a single layer on a cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 20-40 minutes. WATCH your seeds as some cook faster than others and it only takes a minute for them to over cook.

Pull the sheet out about 15 minutes into cooking and stir the seeds so that you are sure to get even coverage.

When you hear the seeds begin to "pop" and they are a nice golden color, they're done. Let them cool, then dig in! Be careful not to eat too many in one sitting as the fiber can be overwhelming the next day. If you have more than you can eat in one or 2 sittings, store them in an air-tight container with as little airspace as possible to retain the crunch.

I Need To Rename This Blog....

... to something like The Horrible Homesteader or The Gardener Too Lazy to Blog. Seriously. Look at the last entry date.

I had good intentions at the beginning of the year, but as always, I can name a multitude of excuses for what can only be described truthfully as a self-hindering lack of discipline. I'm also easily distracted and instead of doing something productive, I find myself sucked into mindless inkernet surfing when I could be dazzling everyone with my own brilliance.

But, let it never be said that I'm a quitter.... having spent the last several weeks weaning myself from a couple of message boards I frequent for easy entertainment, I'm ready to give this blog another go. So, without delay....

The summer was productive in that the garden grew, we harvested more than we could eat and I spent an inordinate amount of time canning food. I love my FIL, but this summer is the last that I will try to garden his way... his way being if you plow enough Earth and plant as many plants as you can, you're bound to get a bountiful harvest. I "get it" in that he and the old-timers do that because they weren't taught or didn't learn other ways to cultivate, but it's exceedingly labor intensive and in a good year, the harvest can be more than I can handle.

My goal for my garden has been for Jeff & I to eat fresh veggies year round. Certainly, if Eliot Coleman can grow year round in Maine, there's no reason why I can't do the same in Georgia. And if we are eating fresh year round, there seems to be little need to preserve & can enough to get through more than a couple of months.

So, after spending the summer gauging harvest vs. the ability to eat ratios and observing how my newly placed raised beds handled the Georgia weeds and summer, I'm completely revamping the garden.

Ask any real gardener/farmer if they are "done" with their garden and the reply should be, "a garden is always a work in progress."

I also read a LOT this summer. Now mind you, I'm no stranger to gardening, but I had barely gotten my feet wet in this red clay Georgia soil before I went full time with the poster business, so I'm learning all over again what does and does not work. Georgia dirt is very unlike Mississippi dirt in every way.... and this area seems to be the very worst/best for growing weeds and hosting bothersome bugs. That means that extra attention must be spent on soil amendments and pest control. Oh, did I mention that we also seem to deal with drought conditions during the most crucial part of the growing season?

As I read about the different approaches to growing, I found one in particular that "spoke" to me. It's called Permaculture and it employs methods that make sense for my needs and the area. There's a lot more to it than what I'm about to discuss, but you have to start somewhere and that "somewhere" for me is sheet mulching.

Sheet mulching is tits for planning new beds or garden spaces. Basically it takes you laying out the area to be used and then aerating the soil with a fork. The idea is not to disturb the soil too much, so if there is grass or weeds already there, cut them back, aerate, then add soil amendments, green mulch and dirt in the bottom layers, then use cardboard or newsprint to completely block out the area so that no weeds or grass will grow through. On top of that, add another layer of soil or mulch and then a layer of straw at least 8" deep on top of that. In a year or so, the layers will mulch down with the help of beneficial worms and insects and you'll be left with a weed free, tillable bed ready to plant.

Unless you have chickens, this works like an effing charm. Not only does it create a very plant-friendly environment with less back-breaking work, but it looks good while you wait.

I'll add some photos of a couple of beds I have done already when I get the chance. Jeff is off on his 2 week Sabbatical, so I am hastily trying to get as much done in the garden as I can before he returns.

Planting Like Crazy

I know I need to be keeping records on what I'm planting and when, but I'm really bad about keeping records. Since I'm planting and trying so many new ways of getting my plants to produce, it only makes sense to keep track.

Today I planted the second cherry tree in the raised beds I'm prepping. The Burmuda grass is proving to be a pain in my ass in each of the beds I'm creating, but I am determined to eradicate it as I go.

The temporary raised beds I have created in the front garden seem to be doing well, but I have reservations on them as they are shallow and have cardboard in the bottom of them to prevent weed growth. I'd like for my raised beds to be "bottomless" with the top dressings being the main growth area, but also allowing the roots of the plants to go deeper. We'll see how these do this year and go from there.

I've got a lot of seed from the last time I planted a garden and I'm planting all of those to see if any are still viable.

I'm looking to get as many "perennial" vegetables planted as possible in the next year and will be searching those varieties out as I can get them.

Updates to follow soon.....

The Spring Trifecta

Another busy day outside for me yesterday. Got the foundation for my Compost Tumbler put in and filled with sand and gravel. I still need a couple of bags more of the gravel, but it felt good to get that done so I can start making compost.

I'm trying very hard to keep my tools picked up and to use the bags of soil, mulch and claybuster I have laying around so the yard doesn't look like white trash lives here. I tend to get scattered while I'm working on things and am easily distracted from one task to another. In fact, I can't find either little hand shovel I've used in the last 2 days despite their red handles. Great. I don't do Easter Egg hunts, I do garden tool hunts. Maybe if someone could make a Clapper attachment for the smaller tools....

Anyway, I thought I would empty the last 2 bags of pine bark mulch left over from last year, only to discover (the hard way of course) that one bag had become a big plastic-enclosed ant farm. When I dumped it out, it looked like the mulch was moving. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was not the mulch moving, but a colony of very pissed off fire ants. I managed to get away with only one sting, but not without acknowledging these little buggers are not intimidated by size. The phrase "ants in your pants" didn't just come from nowhere, ya know.

I left the ants so they could clear out before I went back to spread the the mulch and turned my attention to putting together the frame for the Compost Tumbler base. I took pictures between cussing the drill and my fat fingers and will post that process in the next blog. After I completed getting the base frame level and the Weedblock put in, I took the wheel barrow back over to where I had unceremoniously dropped the bags of sand and gravel Tuesday. As I moved the top bag, I saw a little black bug scurry out from under it. Upon closer inspection, I could see I was not mistaken to drop the bag and scream... it was indeed the dreaded Black Widow.

As I stood there scratching the spots of poison ivy I got from trying to eliminate that from the woods this past weekend, the thought occurred to me that farming/gardening is hazardous! Besides the 3 things I've encountered the last few days, there's also thorned brambles, snakes, hornets, wasps, and other biting stinging creatures out there. Wear gloves and be aware of where you're sticking your hands or what you're standing in or on.

A Quick Update... if Annie Will Let Me.....

Annie Cat is being especially affectionate, certainly because she can see I'm trying to type. Cats are like that, you know.

I've been trying to write every morning... with some success. Obviously I'm not finishing each session or there would be an entry a day as I planned. What's the problem? Well, it's certainly not writer's block because I have more to write about than I had realized. It's the organization of the thoughts and actions and process that seems to be gumming up the works!

I am admittedly awful at anything relating to organization. If the drugs for ADHD were better, I might even look into that, but for now, I'm just trying to teach myself to deal.

I have been taking pictures of the areas I'll be putting the first raised beds into and I've purchased the lumber for 4 beds and the area for the Compost tumbler. The four beds in question will be for the cherry trees I've yet to get into the ground... which should have been done already but, refer to above paragraph.

Jeff went to Athens today to pick up my now fixed MacBook so I can go back to my native Mac interface instead of this PC. As I switch back over, I'll get the photos downloaded from the camera so I can put them on the blog to illustrate the process with these first beds.

I called and got pricing on gravel, sand, and topsoil today as well. I'm going to have a load of each delivered so I can just get right to installing walkways and buffer zones around the raised beds.

Jeff's dad still doesn't quite "get" what we're doing as I was trying to explain the idea behind not having to deal with weed management and he replied, "Well if weeds won't grow in 'em (the raised beds), probably nothing else will either." I think he's going to be amazed when we finally get the beds and the accoutrements for them installed.

The little chicks are getting tail feathers... at least some of them, so I'm going to assume those are roosters since no one here actually knows how to sex them. I'm still worried Lucy Cat will find them and think we've brought her home some "fast food," but hopefully we'll get them in a roost/cottage before they become cat food.

Speaking of Lucy, she is now 11 years old. Most outdoor cats don't make it that long, but she is a wily critter. We thought she'd start slowing down in her twilight years, but her hunting skills are as keen as ever. Now the new twist is that Gracie Dog has found Lucy's "spot" where she takes her hunting trophies and has retrieved a headless bunny and a dead squirrel.

Anyway, I'm crawling off to bed early tonight so I can get up and tackle putting those beds together. The fun part is going to be trying to get some weed free soil back in them.

Til then.... Bloom where you're planted!!

Outlining My Life

Well, Spring is here and I believe even the staunchest contrarian would agree with me that there just aren't enough hours in the day. This is especially true if you didn't get to bed until 3am, but we rarely go out and it's good to sit around the fire pit with friends once in a while. Still, I'm getting a late start today.

On to the day......

Since turning my attention from the poster business to the homestead, it's become very apparent how much we've neglected in the last few years. The business is an unforgiving Mistress with her demands of time. Ultimately, it was the fact I could never find time for anything else while trying to appease unrelenting customers that forced the decision of our turning the fulfillment over to someone else. But, that's done, so let's move on....

Our house is still unfinished in its remodel, the storage building is a disaster and the studio is functional, but a mess as well. Then there is the overgrowth of poison ivy in the wooded stretch next to the house and wild brambles and hedge are growing everywhere. Jeff's dad has also left some of the areas of the property "unrefined" which has encouraged wildlife, including a breed of massive-sized rats. The property is level in very few places and in some areas, so overgrown it will take years for me to clear the fence line and refine it into a manageable property for me to maintain on my own eventually. The fences do not enclose the entire property, so we can't let the new doggie run free yet. The very front of our plat that is next to the road still has no fence as we took down the existing one to clear that area last year.

Due to all of the above, I made a decision a month or so ago to make this year an infrastructure building year and an opportunity to address some of the neglected areas. It will also allow this blog to be a chronicle of the entire process while we install our raised beds organize our lives.

I will still be working on quite a large garden, and we now have a passel of tiny peeping chicks residing in Jeff's dad's workshop, so it won't be all infrastructure. We've already got tomatoes, lettuce, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, chard, strawberries and potatoes in the ground and will have our (hopefully) last cold snap next week. I have many more plants in pots waiting to be planted after that.

Part of our goal this year is to plant as many fruit and nut trees as we can and get my raised beds built. So far we've put in 2 apple, 3 peach, 4 plum & 9 blueberry bushes and I still have 4 cherry to plant. We also plan to get a 12' x 24' greenhouse this year and then a larger one down the road. Jeff, of course, will be supporting this endeavor with income from the art studio until such time I can be in a position to start selling plant starts and other nursery items which quite likely will be a few years out.

Currently, I'm cleaning out our storage area so I can set up a woodworking shop to house the saws and other tools I'll need and I've gotten Jeff's dad to start culling out the smaller trees in the wooded area that's overgrown with the poison ivy so we can eradicate that. I've already dealt with a few bouts of the itchy rash, so I've not discounted the idea that it may take getting a goat to finish the job. I'm going to let Jimmy take a crack at it with the bush hog first.

I'm typing on a PC laptop right now while my MacBook is in the shop being fixed after the fat yellow cat slept on it and overheated it. When I get it back, I'll start adding pictures to illustrate my works in progress.

Where Do I Start?

If you had told me 20 years ago that I would rekindle a serious interest in growing gardens and raising goats, chickens and bunnies, I'd have laughed in your face. I was living life in the fast lane and enjoying every minute of it.... my social life was enviable. I sowed a lot of wild oats between 1980 and 1996 when I met my partner Jeff online and then moved away from Mississippi. But I'll tell all those stories when the telling is appropriate... right now, I'm in the mood for an introduction explaining the Domestication and Taming of Judy (me).

I'm Judy and this is my blog. I've threatened to keep a diary dozens of times over the years, failing miserably each attempt, but this one.... well, it's different. I want to log the progress of my newest venture so I have a record to reference.

As my profile states, I was born in New Orleans and then raised on the beautiful Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Most of my extended family on my Dad's side lived on the Coast stretched from Bayou la Batre, AL to Port Arthur, TX. I was blessed with a life touched by a large cast of interesting people while I lived there, some of whom I'll introduce as we go. I'll fill in details and footnotes where needed....

I suppose it really should not be a huge surprise that I have an interest in gardening and small farm animals as during the early part of my life I was exposed to both. My parents, after moving to Mississippi from Chalmette, LA after Hurricane Betsy flooded our house, rented briefly and then purchased 5 acres just down the road from the Antioch Baptist Church on Pineville Rd. Antioch Baptist was built by my Great Grandfather, William Ransom Creel, and 2 other gentlemen back around the turn of the Century and my extended family are still the primary attendees. My Granny, Ethel Alberta Creel Hilton Raley (Dad's mom & daughter of W.R. Creel), lived around the corner with my Uncle Gene. She kept me and my brother, Hal, while we were in elementary school and was an avid gardener herself. There are certain to be some good stories with her as the main character (and character she was!) in future blog posts.

On the 5 acres where my parents built the first part of our home was a small pecan orchard of 36 trees. My parents, or I should say, my Dad, bought an ol' bull (appropriately named Bully) and a stinky ol' billy goat (appropriately named Billy) to keep the pasture eaten back. As it turned out, both of these animals hated my Uncle Gene which made for some humorous stories in my young life, some of which you'll likely see down the road here as well. Dad later bought more cows to raise and we ended up with those, a small herd of goats and a garden.

Had my Mother been a bit more of a country gal than a Memphis Belle, I may have learned a lot more about domesticity while I was young, but her goal was to graduate nursing school to become an RN. Thus, I had a nanny for a couple of years before & after my brother was born while she completed school. I think my Dad would have pursued the farming a bit harder had Mom been the type to embrace the harvest, but seeing as she had to call my Granny (Dad's mother) to get her to explain how to cut up a chicken shortly after the young couple were married, canning was pretty much out of the question.

Before Mom went to school for nursing,my Dad had gotten his Chiropractic degree at Tulane University in NOLA. Shortly after being licensed in Mississippi, the Governor of MS declared chiropractics tantamount to witch-doctory, so Dad (at my Mother's urging) worked for a while at NASA and then took a job as Drill Mechanic in the offshore drilling business out of South Louisiana with a company called ODECO. He was gone a week/home a week for most of my life which made it a little difficult for him to homestead seriously.

However, the years we had a garden, cows, goats and pony (yes, I was the kid that got the pony for Christmas) was apparently enough to plant this long-dormant homesteading seed that took 30 years to sprout. But sprout it has, and this blog will be the disjointed story of the journey that has planted me on these 7 acres in North Georgia. I hope you'll join me on my adventure.

To quote Ralph Edwards, "This is your Life...."