farmers' market + garden update
There was a farmers' market on campus this afternoon as part of the local post-harvest festival: about a dozen local farmers took pre-orders last week and then brought the ordered goods, plus in most cases some additional items for impulse-buyers, to town for the market. Offerings were limited - apples, onions, carrots, squash, pork, beef, chicken, cheese - but all local; and the relatively small number of vendors meant that I got to talk to them all and make arrangements for future purchases.
I had placed some pre-orders, many of which were available for pickup: ten pounds of carrots (big sweet ones!), twelve pounds of onions, thirty pounds of squash, sixty pounds of pork. The quarter of beef that I ordered won't be available until early December, by which point I hope to have found someone to split it with me; in the meantime, the pork is settled in my little chest freezer in the basement, the carrots are packed in crates of sand, the onions are spread on cardboard on a preserve shelf in the root cellar, the three buttercup and four butternut squash are arrayed on another preserve shelf, and the fifteen-pound hubbard squash, which is rather too large for the shelves, is lurking on the floor next to the wine rack.
I made a friend of the squash farmer before I'd even met him; when I placed my order, I said I wanted thirty pounds of any squash but acorn: butternut, buttercup, kabocha, kuri, hubbard, whatever, just please, no acorn. When I met him this afternoon, he handed me my enormous mesh bag of squash and grinned as I literally bounced up and down at the sight of the hubbard squash, and then he leaned in conspiratorially: "I don't even grow acorn squash," he said; "nasty stuff." "I couldn't agree more," I said.
The guy who grows onions thanked me for placing my order; "I wasn't sure I was going to drive in," he said, "but your order meant I'd at least break even on gas, so I said, you know, why not. And now..." He gestured at his empty crates. "Sold right out. That's a good day."
I traded squash soup recipes and tomato stories with the woman who's selling me organic grass-fed beef; she and her husband raise cows and chickens, and also have a large garden of organic vegetables, mostly heirloom varieties, for their own use; she offered to trade tomato seedlings with me next spring.
I have been doing some calculations based on these purchases, my garden plans for next year, and the availability of staples (wheat, dairy) produced locally or regionally. If all goes according to plan, next summer about 40% of my food will be grown within 50 yards of my house, another 30% will originate within 60 miles of me, and 10-15% will travel less than 150 miles to reach me, leaving about 15-20% coming from outside my region. These are sketchy calculations, estimates only, an alchemical combination of cost and weight and approximate proportion consumed weekly; I'd like to track my life in food more carefully over the next year or so, see whether I can get the outside-the-region number down into the single digits over the next few years.
I'm already collecting seed catalogues, making compost arrangements with a local horse barn, investigating my apple tree options - the plan is to have three apple trees (each a different variety) in my front yard by late spring, though they probably won't bear fruit for four or five years.
I planted garlic about a month ago and noticed this weekend that all thirteen cloves have sprouted up through their mulch, which bodes well for next summer's harvest. I've fertilized the lawn, edged the paths and the peony bed, dug odd stumps out of the peony bed, dug out the hydrangea from the side garden, taken down a stand of unidentifiable dead trees (about ten slender trunks) and started pruning the dogwoods. The yard doesn't look much better than it did this time last year; what's different is that I have a plan, and when I look at the yard I see it with that plan overlaid, faint but definite, waiting for me to turn it into reality.
I had placed some pre-orders, many of which were available for pickup: ten pounds of carrots (big sweet ones!), twelve pounds of onions, thirty pounds of squash, sixty pounds of pork. The quarter of beef that I ordered won't be available until early December, by which point I hope to have found someone to split it with me; in the meantime, the pork is settled in my little chest freezer in the basement, the carrots are packed in crates of sand, the onions are spread on cardboard on a preserve shelf in the root cellar, the three buttercup and four butternut squash are arrayed on another preserve shelf, and the fifteen-pound hubbard squash, which is rather too large for the shelves, is lurking on the floor next to the wine rack.
I made a friend of the squash farmer before I'd even met him; when I placed my order, I said I wanted thirty pounds of any squash but acorn: butternut, buttercup, kabocha, kuri, hubbard, whatever, just please, no acorn. When I met him this afternoon, he handed me my enormous mesh bag of squash and grinned as I literally bounced up and down at the sight of the hubbard squash, and then he leaned in conspiratorially: "I don't even grow acorn squash," he said; "nasty stuff." "I couldn't agree more," I said.
The guy who grows onions thanked me for placing my order; "I wasn't sure I was going to drive in," he said, "but your order meant I'd at least break even on gas, so I said, you know, why not. And now..." He gestured at his empty crates. "Sold right out. That's a good day."
I traded squash soup recipes and tomato stories with the woman who's selling me organic grass-fed beef; she and her husband raise cows and chickens, and also have a large garden of organic vegetables, mostly heirloom varieties, for their own use; she offered to trade tomato seedlings with me next spring.
I have been doing some calculations based on these purchases, my garden plans for next year, and the availability of staples (wheat, dairy) produced locally or regionally. If all goes according to plan, next summer about 40% of my food will be grown within 50 yards of my house, another 30% will originate within 60 miles of me, and 10-15% will travel less than 150 miles to reach me, leaving about 15-20% coming from outside my region. These are sketchy calculations, estimates only, an alchemical combination of cost and weight and approximate proportion consumed weekly; I'd like to track my life in food more carefully over the next year or so, see whether I can get the outside-the-region number down into the single digits over the next few years.
I'm already collecting seed catalogues, making compost arrangements with a local horse barn, investigating my apple tree options - the plan is to have three apple trees (each a different variety) in my front yard by late spring, though they probably won't bear fruit for four or five years.
I planted garlic about a month ago and noticed this weekend that all thirteen cloves have sprouted up through their mulch, which bodes well for next summer's harvest. I've fertilized the lawn, edged the paths and the peony bed, dug odd stumps out of the peony bed, dug out the hydrangea from the side garden, taken down a stand of unidentifiable dead trees (about ten slender trunks) and started pruning the dogwoods. The yard doesn't look much better than it did this time last year; what's different is that I have a plan, and when I look at the yard I see it with that plan overlaid, faint but definite, waiting for me to turn it into reality.