Eat In Sync with the Seasons

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We also have a pantry. We can about 600 to 800 quarts of food per year — with modern pressure canners it doesn’t take that long and, once sealed, storing this food requires no energy. When tomatoes are rolling in from the garden, we make juice and can tomatoes. We also make salsa, ketchup and tomato paste. Each year, we buy bushels of apples from an orchard and make our own applesauce. When the grapes ripen in late September, we pull out the juicer and begin canning our juice concentrate. We cut it with half water to drink. The elderberries along the river are great for making jelly, so we reserve grape juice for drinking.

When cabbages are ready, we have a couple of 10-gallon crocks for making sauerkraut. Later in the season, when cucumbers are pouring in, we reuse the crocks for making pickles. (My wife, Teresa, makes fantastic sweet pickles.)

Our basement serves as a root cellar for fall vegetables and root crops. In November, the basement is full of butternut squash, sweet potatoes, white potatoes and cushaw squash. We lay mulch over late carrots in the garden and they become sweeter and sweeter as winter progresses. Whenever we want some, we get a handful fresh out of the ground.

Laying hens are only really productive for two years. At the end of that time, we dress them and cook them in a huge roasting pan. We pick the meat off, cut it up into bite-size chunks, and either can it or freeze it. Then, when it’s 5 p.m. and supper panic sets in, Chicken ala King is only a few minutes away. That precooked, ready-to-go canned or frozen meat is about as handy as it gets.

This laying by behavior is considered so normal in my family that, I confess, we find it somewhat odd when customers who buy our meat and poultry say they don’t have a freezer. And even more so when we talk to people who have never canned or eaten home-canned food. We all choose our routines. Ours is to lay food by, and enjoy eating out of the larder all winter.

Tips for Local and Seasonal Eating

There’s a simple way to synchronize your eating with seasons and availability. Make a list of products available in your region and note the normal harvest months for each. It’s a wonderfully simple way to express the ebb and flow of the seasons. Then, preserve abundant food for when it’s in short supply. Here are a few more tips for getting started:

• Visit the local farmers market, and while you’re shopping, ask about hard to find items. They may know producers who sell things you can’t get at the market.
• Search for the food you want on the Internet. A few good resources to find food in your area are www.localharvest.org, www.sustainabletable.org and www.eatwild.com.
• If you don’t already have a chest freezer, get one. You’ll be able to store much more food.
• Find books about food preservation and learn more about dehydrating, canning, pickling and smoking. Play with different techniques — it can be a lot of fun. (For more ideas see “Enjoy Fresh, Local Food All Year.”)
• Get product-specific recipe books to see how many different ways you can fix the same thing. Entire cookbooks concentrate on tomatoes, squash, eggs, beef or buffalo. Explore!
• If you’re a reluctant cook, try sitting down on a Sunday afternoon and making out a menu for each day of the week. Planning ahead takes the fear out of the process. It also reduces the temptation to panic and buy frozen pizza.
• Ask a local farmer what he or she routinely has in excess, and then buy and use it. He or she will love you for it, and if you buy in bulk you can get wonderful fresh food at a lower cost.

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