When I told my friends I’d be blogging about my CSA experience, one of them suggested a future blogging subject…”Beets Again?” When I told some neighbors about the farm, one warned me that at the end of the season it’s just “potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes.”
It’s true that Mother Nature didn’t take our desire for variety in our diets into consideration when planning harvest times in this part of the world. However, I’ve learned another advantage to belonging to the farm that has to do with lengthening the harvest season for the earlier crops. In my home garden, I get bombarded with lettuce at the beginning of the growing season. Later in the summer it’s too hot here for lettuce to grow so in the past I’d have to enjoy my fresh lettuce early in the summer and then get it from the supermarket the rest of the time. At the farm, greenhouse space is dedicated to the many varieties of lettuce that are grown there. The front and back are left open and the sides are rolled up for ventilation while an extra large sheet of a dark burlap type fabric is thrown over the top. This provides the shade necessary for the lettuce to keep growing without wilting in the sun.
Of course, enterprising humans throughout history have figured out ways to eat potatoes in the spring and strawberries in the winter via cold storage, preserves, canning, drying and freezing. I’ve explored a few of these options and plan on learning more about cold storage, particularly for my future abundance of potatoes.
Modern methods of course have evolved into buying produce from farmers in warmer climates and flying them around the world year-round. Rising fuel costs affect the price of food and this is leading to food shortages in some parts of the world. If it begins to affect our area, we’ll be stockpiled with our locally grown food.
Additionally, by making and canning our own strawberry preserves at home, we’ve made enough jam to last our family for a year for about the same price of one jar of quality store-bought organic jam. I also find that time spent with my children preserving food gives them hands-on history lessons in a way no book is able to do.
So bring on the beets and potatoes. I’m ready.
-By Guest Blogger and CSA member Gina Sampaio
If you notice a hole in the upper left-hand corner of your Farmers' Almanac, don't return it to the store! That hole isn't a defect; it's a part of history. Starting with the first edition of the Farmers' Almanac in 1818, readers used to nail holes into the corners to hang it up in their homes, barns, and outhouses (to provide both reading material and toilet paper). In 1910, the Almanac's publishers began pre-drilling holes in the corners to make it even easier for readers to keep all of that invaluable information (and paper) handy.
1 comment
i don’t really care for beets, but i guess some people do!