Trip to the local farmer's market = success!

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@thelocavorechallenge
Trip to the local farmer's market = success!
The Benefits of Shopping at a Farmer’s Market
Taste Real Flavours: The fruits and vegetables you buy at the farmers’ market are the freshest and tastiest available. Fruits are allowed to ripen in the field and brought directly to you – no long-distance shipping, no gassing to simulate the ripening process, no sitting for weeks in storage. This food is as real as it gets – food fresh from the farm.
Enjoy the Season: The food you buy at the farmers’ market is seasonal. It is fresh and delicious and reflects the truest flavours. Shopping and cooking from the farmers market helps you to reconnect with the cycles of nature in our region. As you look forward to asparagus in spring, savour sweet corn in summer, or bake pumpkins in autumn, you reconnect with the earth, the weather, and the turning of the year.
Support Family Farmers: Family farmers are becoming increasingly rare as large agribusiness farms steadily take over food production in Canada. Small family farmers have a hard time competing in the food marketplace. Buying directly from farmers gives them a better return for their produce and gives them a fighting chance in today’s globalized economy.
Protect the Environment: Food travels an average of 2500 kms to get to your plate. All this shipping uses large amounts of natural resources (especially fossil fuels), contributes greatly to pollution and creates excess trash with extra packaging. Food at the farmers’ market is transported shorter distances and grown using methods that minimize the impact on the earth.
Nourish Yourself: Much food found in grocery stores is highly processed. The fresh produce you do find is often grown using pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, and genetic modification. In many cases it has been irradiated, waxed or gassed in transit. All of these practices have potentially damaging effects on the health of those who eat these foods. In contrast, most food found at the farmers’ market is minimally processed, and many of our farmers go to great lengths to grow the most nutritious produce possible by building their soil’s fertility and giving their crops the nutrients they need to flourish in the ground and nourish those who eat them.
Discover the Spice of Life – Variety: At the Farmers’ Market you find an amazing array of produce that you don’t see in your supermarket; red carrots, a rainbow of heirloom tomatoes, green garlic, watermelon radishes and much much more. It is a wonderful opportunity to experience first hand the diversity (and biodiversity) of our planet, both cultivated and wild!
Know Where Your Food Comes From: A regular trip to a farmers’ market is one of the best ways to reconnect with where your food comes from. Farmers themselves sell their produce at the farm stands. Meeting and talking to farmers is a great opportunity to learn more about how food is grown, where it is grown, when it is grown and why!
Learn Cooking Tips, Recipes and Meal Ideas: Few grocery store cashiers or produce stockers will give you tips on how to cook the ingredients you buy, but farmers and vendors at the farmers’ market are often passionate cooks with plenty of free advice about how to cook the foods they are selling. They’ll give you ideas for what to have for supper, hand out recipes, and troubleshoot your culinary conundrums.
Connect with your Community: Wouldn’t you rather stroll amidst outdoor stalls of fresh produce on a sunny day than roll your cart around a grocery store with artificial lights and piped in music? Coming to the Farmers’ Market makes shopping a pleasure rather than a chore. The Farmers’ Market is a community gathering place – a place to meet up with friends, bring your children or just get a taste of small-town life often in the midst of a City. Come to the farmers’ market and hear the buzz in the air!
Thanks for the tips
How do you make a philosophy class that makes no sense fun? Go buy cupcakes and then study!
This cupcake is from the local cupcake shop in Brantford called LA Cupcakery. I don't know why I waited so long before checking them out but I guess better late than never.
If you live in Brantford, check them out at the link or visit the store at 128 Nelson Street.
One word to describe their cupcakes, delicious.
(If you have allergies they offer gluten free cupcakes, gluten and dairy free cupcakes, dairy free cupcakes and egg free cupcakes).
Grow Some Leeks!
What a Leek Prefers*
Season: Cool/spring
Sun: Full blast but will take partial shade
Moisture: Consistently moist - they like water
Soil Fertility: Fertile is best but they’re a good choice for leaner/unammended soil
Soil pH: Slightly acidic but don’t sweat the pH unless you’re a chemist
Other Soil Characteristics: Loose, deep, sandy (if you’ve got it)
What to Plant: Seeds or starts (transplants)
Spacing: at least 3 - 4” between plants in all directions - 12” - 18” between rows will give you room to work
Planting Depth: Sow seeds very shallow, bury your plants DEEP! I bury them up to the point where the leaves begin to separate from one another (see photo)
*Don’t let these preferences stop you from trying. These conditions are what a leek PREFERS.
How to Grow Some Leeks - Seeds, Soil Prep, Transplant, Harvest, Cooking!
(this photo post of leeks might be helpful)
Read More
Perfect time to start planting some of these bad boys.
Have you ever wondered how to track or find local food in your area? Well, look no further because there's an app for that.
What the application does, is it used your GPS location (US and Canada only) and then they pinpoint farms and farmers' markets nearest you. The top 6 features are:
1 - Browse what’s in-season and soon to come 2 - Locate farms and farmers’ markets nearest you 3 - Learn about your food and who is producing it 4 - Get details about your local farmers’ market 5 - Find recipes for local, in-season items 6 - Post what you ate locally to Facebook
Check out the link and download it to make your local food search easier
Look what I just found on SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/mark-munger/food-for-thought
Interesting radio piece that was produced for the site rethinkingfood.org. The piece discusses how our view of food has changed. The piece also discusses how these differences can be seen in the media (e.g. commercials, tv shows, etc) and why we treat our resources like commodities that need to be exploited and made to be used in the most "efficient" way possible even if it's damaging to ourselves and the environment.
So, if you have some time check out the piece. It's not too long (with a run time under 10 minutes) and leaves you thinking about some of the big questions on food production and what our current society values.
Local food is fresher food, with more nutrients intact. Also, shipping and trucking food over great distances requires a greater expenditure in fuel, thereby polluting the earth for us and our generations.
Why Should We Buy Local?
One of the easiest things to do when you need to grab a couple food items is to run to the big chain grocery store. They're readily available, they'll have what you need and some of them are open 24hrs (for those that jones for a tub of ice cream at midnight). But,did you ever take the time to think how many kilometres it took to get that food?
I know when I'm in my local Fresh Co. grocery store grabbing some things, my first thoughts aren't whether the food is local or how far it had traveled to get to the store and then to my house. The amount of energy that is used to transport the food (and then add on any extra packaging that is used during the transportation process) is crazy.
Think about this, the average carrot that you buy in the grocery store travels about 2800 km by the time it gets to your dinner table. The easiest way to reduce this traveling distance is to buy your food from local distributors, like a farmer's market. On top of reducing your carbon footprint you'll also get to meet the people who are growing your food.
Check out the local farmer's market in your area for a couple hours of fun and some great food!
(via Pallet = easy bikerack | Recyclart)
What a great way to reuse! I want to find a couple of these bad boys so my roommates and I have a place to store our sweet rides.
Eating locally is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It's not all going to the market and picking up the food you see around you. Not starting in the summer months means that I'm not privy to a lot of the fruits that I normally enjoy. I wasn't around to buy them when they were in season and then freeze them or put them in juice and store them during the colder months. So for all you trying to eat local folks, start slow and really try to stock up on your favorite foods when they're in season!
Communal eating is an important part of environmentalism. It might seem like a silly thing, taking the time to make and eat food with your friends and family, but it happens less and less in the digital age in which we live. We are so consumed with rushing from one place to the next and working that we forget the importance of the little things, like community. Maybe if we all slowed down a bit and enjoyed each others company face-to-face, we would realize that texts, emails and facebook isn't the same thing as having a good old family meal.
So, here's a little video I made at the beginning of the year of my family taking time out of our busy schedules to sit down and enjoy each others company. It's not always easy to do but it's necessary to feel part of something that's closer than the nearest electronic communicating device.
The next time someone sends you an email asking how you're doing, send a reply inviting them for a home cooked meal so you can catch up!
Reusing? Recycling? Many people aren't entirely sure of the difference and to be honest I wasn't even sure what the difference was before I read this article. Well, to make it simple recycling is the reprocessing of something where reusing is extending the life of a something.
To go along with my big lifestyle change I'm trying to do I've been also trying to reuse more of the bottles, boxes, containers, etc that my foods come in.
From what I've been reading online, reusing is actually better for the environment because the energy and resources (gas for the recycling trucks, the fuel it takes to actually break down and begin the recycling process, etc) is much more than it is if people were to find new ways to use their old items.
Here are some of the top reasons why reusing is better than recycling:
1. Reuse keeps goods and materials out of the waste stream
2. Reuse advances source reduction
3. Reuse preserves the “embodied energy” that was originally used to manufacture an item
4. Reuse reduces the strain on valuable resources, such as fuel, forests and water supplies, and helps safeguard wildlife habitats
5. Reuse creates less air and water pollution than making a new item or recycling
6. Reuse results in less hazardous waste
7. Reuse saves money in purchases and disposal costs
8. Reuse generates new business and employment opportunities for both small entrepreneurs and large enterprises
9. Reuse creates an affordable supply of goods that are often of excellent quality.
(tips found at care2makeadifference)
So, to sum things up recycling is green but reusing is GREENER!
Side note, check out this website it's called chasing green and they literally have hundreds of ways to reuse your household items.
The video shows a tiny, inside glimpse into Melanie Epps' life as she learns and lives the life of a locavore. She explains how she's able to eat the food she loves year round and support the local farmers and butchers in her area. She's lives in Guelph and helps make living a locavore lifestyle more realistic.
Melanie also keeps a blog and has a twitter. They are both interesting reads so definitely take some time and check them out.
Having some Inniskillin and doing crafts with roommates - one of the best ways to waste time on a Tuesday night.
Locavore?
I’ve been thinking, if environmental citizenship can take place in our own backyards why don’t I try to start (and to consciously) purchase locally produced food? Eating these local foods won’t be all, I’d also like to limit the amount of food I consume that travels long distances (i.e. fast food restaurants, out of season produce, etc.).
It’s going to be hard but I think I’ll be able to do it!
"Local food or the local food movement is a collaborative effort to build more locally based, self-reliant food economies - one in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution, and consumption is integrated to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular place."