mind body planet

We have once again reached the fall everyone and the harvesting season has really begun. In just two short months all of the farmer’s markets will be slowing down or closing entirely. Our CSA’s will be puttering to a stop here around the same time and then we will be on our own to try and figure out how to make our food choices work and believe me you do have some options. For those of you out there whop don’t know already, you also have one other option to store up some food for the winter that you are currently able to find at the markets or in your CSA box.

Canning is a practice that I tout till the ends of the earth because it as gotten me through years of winter. When I was a kid it was normal part of every week that on sunday nights the whole family would can whatever produce we had left over because mondays were the farmer’s market days and we would survive off that food for the week ahead. Canning is a way to store food for yourself at home that will certainly last you all winter long and will definitely save you some money in the long run. It will take a small investment at first but it is well worth the pocket change from your student loans.

The art of canning begins with a trip to the store. In any supermarket you can find, in the isle with the plastic bags, ball jars. These jars come in all sizes from a pint all the way up to a two gallon jug. For most canning purposes you will need either the pint or the quart jars. The smaller jars are for things like jams and jellies and the larger jars are for your staples like tomatoes and pickles. When you have the jars the next thing to get will be a pot large enough to fit about six to ten jars or so. The pot doesn’t need to have a lid but it helps. You will also need some type of tongs and there are some that are made specifically for this purpose. Now you are ready to get to canning.

At this point I won’t go too much in to the actual process of canning because the process varies for every kind of food you wish to can. Here I would recommend that you go ahead and buy a book on canning. There are plenty of resources for this and even I still go out of a book to keep myself focused on the way the process is supposed to go.

Ithaca Farmer’s Market(2)

Yesterday I was talking to you all about the farmer’s market, or trying to at least, here in Ithaca, New York. The main farmer’s market here is held every Saturday in the morning until around two or three when everyone starts to really thin out and go home with their produce and things. I got a chance to go to the market here for the first time yesterday and I must tell you that it made our markets here look kind of funny and like small children trying to do something greater than their means. Though our own local markets are doing well on their own, I can only hope that with the current developments in the minds of people around this country, that the organization and sense of community at home will grow.

After our chores in the morning, which today included picking the melons that were ripe and the beans that were so crispy, we had piled in to the vehicles. Off down the road in our veggie cars, we drove through downtown Ithaca and on to the market. When we pulled n to the parking lot there were almost no spaces left anywhere. When we finally got two they were not in sight of each other. The first thing that I noticed about this market was that it had it’s own building. This was not like back home where it is a converted parking lot or a street that has been closed for a few hours. No this was a huge wooden structure with a big farmer’s market sign on the front. It looked like it could have been a nice sized strip mall if it were all closed up and made of concrete or something.

The farmer’s market was just amazing on the inside. There were booths for everything. It would be like if you were to gather up all of the various vendors from around our town’s markets and put them in one place, then add another twenty or thirty unique booths. I got lunch at this organic Cambodian booth and I bought enough local Organic produce to fill up my big cooler on wheels. The thing that blew me away the most though above all else about this market was that it as a whole was devoted and committed to being a no waste market. At each entrance there were two cans for waste. One bin was for compost and one bin was for recyclables and there was a sign over each one showing what should go inside of them. Then there was a small can just for coffee cup lids which are a unique type of recyclable plastic. I mean this was like a conservationist’s dream. I certainly recommend that all of you out there take time and check this market out.

Ithaca Farmer’s Market

Good evening all. I am back at the computer tonight after a long and wonderful day here in Ithaca. If you didn’t read form yesterday, I got here two nights ago to an intentional community that my friends are a part of. I’m staying here until the 23^rd so I may have lots of different things to tell you about. Expect plenty of inspired entries since I am surrounded by a very amazing community of people. Today our itinerary was basically just one item. I wanted more than anything to see the famous Ithaca farmer’s market.

This morning there were some chores to get done before we could do anything else. I was more than happy to help out with some tasks since I want to eventually live in a community like this and because I am staying here for free. My task for the morning was to collect up the eggs that had been laid in the hours before we got up. So around seven I went out in to the yard between the garden and the woods where there is some flat grass and I collected about thirty eggs. These chickens are grass fed and totally free range so their eggs are significantly larger and of better quality than normal eggs that you would find in any supermarket. There were no duck eggs but we had plenty of eggs for my friend Jamie to make her amazing eggs Ranchero. She made them with onions, green peppers, and garlic from the garden as well as salsa that another housemate made this morning.

After breakfast we all pilled in to the car which is another topic which I might need to discuss at length. My friends Jamie and McKenzie who used to live here in town before they graduated, bought a new car about a year ago. The car they found on Craigslist and it was like a dream come true. It was a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta that had been converted to run on vegetable oil. Every week they used to pick up oil from shops around town and then just filter it at night in their back yard. Then they simply pour the oil in their car and go. They go through a tank of gas about once every month or so when they have been driving a lot. This summer though they have only put in one tank of gas and just a lot of vegetable oil. The van that the others took is also powered by vegetable oil and they actually converted it here themselves at the house when they all moved here. The process I hear is not hard if you have a mechanic on hand and so I think that this is where we should be moving if we want to really becoming independent of oil consumption.

I just realized I have made a bit of a mistake and took too much time going off on my little veggie oil tangent and I have run out of time for the day. I will continue this story tomorrow and maybe I will have some new things to talk about as well and keep me from the topic even longer.

I am lucky enough that the college I have chosen is right in the middle of a nice farm belt.  There aren’t too many of them that are interested in local foods movements and Organic growing.  Most of the farmers are much more traditional in their loyalties and in their own corporate sponsorships.  Around here though there are a nice selection of farms that specialize in such progressive and sustainable farming.  Because of these farms there is also an almost daily selection of farmer’s markets around if you have a way to get their and mouths to feed. I usually go to a farmer’s market five days out of the week with the exception of wednesdays and sundays which are apparently rest days for the farmers to maintain work back at the farm and rest a little bit.  These farmer’s markets are not only relics of a past economic structure that we had in this country and others still have today, but they are a sign of growing acceptance of the fact that we need to be stewards and not only consumers.

Many farms around here also participate in programs known as CSA’s for short.  These programs are called community supported Agriculture and within the last decade or so they have been blowing up in popularity and sheer numbers.  Basically what a CSA is is a way for the farmer to get community support for their farm while the people paying get seasonal food that was picked that day fresh.  Every January these farms start taking money and make up a big list that they limit to make sure everyone is going to get what they pay for. Then they take that money and invest it in the basics of the farm and the whole things cycles back around. I don’t know personally, but I would imagine that in a system like this the farmer’s are not making that much money, but really they are doing something that is so much more important than that. By setting up a system like this they are essentially bringing all of the economic growth and support that would have gone to already prolific farmers in areas like California or Florida and bringing it back to our town.  This also helps us to minimize how much energy is being expended to get us our food.  Instead of flying strawberries from across the country, I get about ten pounds of them in the early summer. 

Today is Tuesday and in this context this is like the perfect storm of a day for my style of food.  On this day I have a farmer’s market a block from my apartment and I pick up my CSA about three blocks past that.  Today I came home with corn, blueberries, lettuces, potatoes, and onions.  All of the food is so fresh and delicious that it makes dishes taste totally different that if I were to make them with even Organic grocery store foods. This is the aesthetic payoff of the local foods movement, but the implication are much larger than that. These are just two of the more practical support structures that most people can access on a daily basis for making change in the world around them. Go out and find one or both of these today and make your difference.