I have lots and lots of pictures, but the card reader isn't working!! AAAHHH! I'll have to hang tight until the "Man" can fix it:-) Until then though, I do have some very good reads attached....
You know how I am about good food, I mean, GOOD FOOD....Food being the key word here! I like to know that what I'm eating has not been concocted in a laboratory, and neither is it one ingredient or molecular structure away from being pure plastic. Since that makes up for 95% of what is on the shelf at the grocery store, I enjoy hunting down good local FOOD:-)
Recently, my Dad made a job "change" from the Rutherfordton NC farming epic center to Polk County NC Ag. Center. Nice change:-) Boy, have the options and availability for some incredible food opened up!!
You can check out the new Market/co-op here...
piedmontlocalfood.com
AND you can get seasonal food availability updates, hands on learning classes, and such here...
http://faceonthefood.wordpress.com/
AND you can check out the farmers blog here!!!
http://www.polkcountyfarms.org/agblog.php
You see, buying plastic engineered in a lab to resemble actual food drives up the cost of real food that's grown in dirt. Real food is not expensive when you cut out the truck drivers, shelf stockers at the grocery store, cashiers, packaging solution companies, etc. When the farmer picks it, puts it in a brown paper bag and hands it to you, that doesn't cost you $4.50 for one little measly head of "organic" cabbage that weighs barely a pound. It only costs you around $1-$2 and the cabbage weighs 4-6 pounds! Now the "drawback" to this "field to table" way of eating is that YOU have to go get it. Yep, twice a month you drive around to your local farms and pick up what you've ordered. You might spend 3-4 hours that day collecting your purchases, but from what I hear, a lot of people spend that much 3-4 days a week between clipping and sorting coupons and making multiple trips to multiple stores to get "deals" etc..
Has ANYONE calculated time and gas expenditures into the "savings" aspect? I'd like to hear about that if you have!
Anyways, what I'm saying is this...the price of "food" **I mean stuff in the store** is on the rise at a rapid rate and has been for the last four years or so. Despite that, our grocery budget has not gone up one dollar. Nope! It's the same as it's always been and we eat better and have more put up than we've had in our entire married life of almost 12 years! If you want to bring down your grocery expenses, get rid of chronic illnesses, and have something edible in your freezer for all your "hard work" (driving to pick it up is the easy part...I'm not the farmer so it's not very hard for me:-) BUY LOCAL!!!! Also, buying local will make your life easier for you because it will drive down the cost of the items that you like in the store because someone will start producing locally and providing those items to your store at a very affordable price!
The conclusion is this...on Monday we celebrated my husbands 32nd birthday. I made him a humdinger dinner with steak, apple and feta cheese salad, roasted sweet potatoes, and biscuits. The dessert he requested was dark chocolate pecan brownies with whipped cream. When it was all said and done and we were sitting down to eat, I realized that 99% of what had been fixed was grown locally....RIGHT HERE IN NORTH CAROLINA! We started naming off the farmers who had grown the beef, the salad, apples, the wheat, the sweet potatoes, etc...wow, it was amazing! AND the taste was incredible! I took lots of pictures to attach to this email, but alas, the card reader is not cooperating so you'll have to wait for those another day:-)
Yes, eating in a truly healthy manner is completely available and affordable. You just have to be willing to get up and go get it! Besides, you get to meet some incredibly creative and downright amazing farmers who are brimming over with eagerness to share their knowledge and expertise with YOU! It is an amazing experience to meet these true "service job" individuals who count it a blessing to be able to meet your need while at the same time, doing what they love best - Farming! We need to keep them in business so we can learn from them and teach our own children. THEY, not technology, are the WAVE OF THE FUTURE...the future of food....and good health....and sharp minds....and good work ethic....and the ability to be able to meet the needs of the community on a one on one basis....and provide a great ministry outreach for you and your family....
As my Dad always says, "here's to putting a face on the food"! The next time you eat something, look at it and be honest with yourself. Does the face of a friend you just saw last week or a piece of cardboard and a machine come to mind?? Doing that will help you change your life AND make things easier for your pocketbook:-)
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Great post! Thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom! I have a question...what would you do if you lived in an area without all of those resources? For instance we have a hard time getting chicken around here...even in the stores it is outrageously priced, and fresh is almost non-existent! We do grow almost all our own veggies, but some things we can't grow and aren't available in our area at this time of year! I'm just curious how you would handle that type of situation! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteWell, you live in Canada right next to the ocean so your main meat should be fish and wild game...not chickens:-) You not only strive to eat seasonally, but you strive to eat locationally...meaning, you eat what's available to you in your state. For instance, pecans grow in abundance here, not almonds. Almonds are highly nutritious but don't grow here, so they have to be shipped cross country. I then hunt down and harvest the locally grown pecans and eat those. I don't live next to the ocean so I don't eat seafood because it has to be shipped. I eat chicken! Get the idea?:-) If something cannot be grown in your zone nor is it easily available, you're not supposed to consume it. Your body adjusts to what zone you're in and you consume what is highly available in your zone. The thing to do is to research your zone, what grows in it, what it's seasons are for growing different things, and then pursue those options. Does that make sense? Americans have grown accustomed to the idea that they are supposed to be able to eat whatever they want whenever they want...YEAR ROUND:-) Not so. I'm sorry, but strawberries don't grow Sept.-March:-) It's kinda fun to research things out and find local producers of local foods! We've made it kinda into a "foraging" game:-) This year we had BUMPER pecans...gathered around 30 gallons AND since we've had milder temps, we've been able to enjoy more greens and such. Just added another "foodie" element to our house this week. We bought a wheat grass juicer for juicing our sprouted (indoors mind you:-) organic wheat berries so that we can get chlorophyll and such even when it's too cold outside! That's something you should research for you! Glad to help and check the blog often as I am going to try to do better about putting up helpful information in the future!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I always look forward to gleaning from these types of posts!
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