Dear Umbra,
I live in New Hampshire, and I am getting ready for the long, cold winter. I try to eat locally, but with no year-round growing season here and such a dense population, most of the food comes from elsewhere. I was wondering what I could do to reduce my impact during the winter and how I can eat as locally as possible. Do you have any ideas?
Diana
Durham, N.H.
Dearest Diana,
Mmm, just in time for Thanksgiving.
The Mason-fixin' line.
Photo: iStockphoto
Hearken back to days of yore, ere yon freezer trucks and container freight hauled yon Cal-Mex foods to thy door. What did New Hampshirites do 60 years ago or more, other than live free or die? Stored winter vegetables and grains in a cold cellar, and ate as much meat as they could, I presume.
There's nothing stopping you from doing the same, if there's time for you to procure storage vegetables and other produce such as winter squash, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, apples, beets, and turnips. Either you'll need to befriend a farm (or farms) with a steadyish supply of these items, or buy a batch to stick in a sawdust-filled barrel in a cold, dark part of your home, aka root cellar.
If you eat meat, find a local producer who can supply you regularly in the winter or find room in your freezer to throw in a partial pig or cow or what have you. I excuse you from trying to find and grind your own winter oats and barley, but local eggs may be available until the hens go on winter holiday. You also could -- for future reference -- put food by in the summer months (with the guidance of the excellent Putting Food By). Canning, freezing, pickling, and drying are all proven, tasty techniques for capturing a little bit of summer. Too late this year, of course, but think about it for next year.
Mayhap you know where to look for local farms to start this project, through your area farmers' market or community-supported agriculture program. If not, the Northeast Organic Farming Association-New Hampshire chapter could help point you toward a willing producer.
Do those ideas sound insane? Easier than hunting down and gathering up your own agricultural producers will be using your local natural-foods store or co-op grocery. If any grocery is sourcing local producers, it will be they. Ask at the produce counter.
Eating locally in New Hampshire, though -- let's think about the specifics of that quest. For one, you'll need to adjust your diet (I may be presumptuous in thinking of turnips as outside your normal purview). For two, what is local to you? Is it Strafford County? Is it New England? In the winter you may need to broaden your concept of local to include not only your food's producers, but your food's purveyors. If none of the producer-related steps above work or entice, switch your winter focus from producers to locally owned grocers. In an era of megastores and giant corporate foods, all businesses in the local-foods chain need your allegiance.
Lastly, my food storage suggestions seem odd to a modern household, but certainly the idea of stocking up the pantry and taking fewer car trips will not -- driving less is another fine way to reduce your winter impact.
Rutabagaly,
Umbra
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Comments View as Flat
mijo Posted 5:42 am
20 Nov 2006
Local Winter Food
I encourage you to plant some greens: turnip, kale, mustard, collards - whatever you like, or some of all. Then find some way to fit them into every meal. Eggs with greens and feta. Greens in the soup. Greens in the stir fry. Or just a big mess of greens by themselves (with a little vinegar or sauce). Plant them in a large pot, a small bed near the house, or a field full for the whole neighborhood. They will last most of the winter and come back strong in the spring.
And don't forget to grow sprouts in jars by the kitchen sink. Fresh, crisp, raw, or cooked.
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wiscidea Posted 6:02 am
20 Nov 2006
Which is better during the winter?
Venison from your backyard or...
tofu from several hundred miles away?
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sarazoe Posted 6:11 am
20 Nov 2006
also on the seacoast of NH
Hey Diana! I wish there was a way to contact you directly - we could brainstorm together!
I've been trying to put together a resource, although again, summer is easier, but here you go: www.seacoasteatlocal.org
Also, the Durham marketplace is awesome in terms of local goods (at least in comparison to most places) - you should be able to stock up on root vegetables and such. I'm in complete agreement with Umbra - if not local food, at least locally owned independant businesses or locally produced products. Tuttles is honest about what is, and what isn't their own. Philbrick's in Portsmouth may be a bizarre place, but they actually do a really really good job at stocking locally produced products. Who knew there are flour tortillas being made in Barrington and middle eastern yogurt being made at Sunrise Farms in Exeter - Philbricks!
Sorry for all the particulars for the vast majority of you all that don't live on the seacoast of NH - I just got so excited to see another trying to be local eater in my area!
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TheSSG Posted 10:42 am
20 Nov 2006
Ecological Meat Eaters?!
If you're eating meat, do you really care anyway?
How many of you are honestly hunting your own food/allowed to?
I'd have a hard time imagining eating "local" meat, due to the inherent inefficiency, would be environmentally better than that grain that came from a few hundred miles further...
Seriously, I think if you're still buying meat from anywhere, you probably need to re-evaluate this whole "impact" thing.
Nothing like a few pounds of beef to multiply your ecological footprint...
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DOW Posted 11:28 am
20 Nov 2006
Linguistic roots
What kind of lousy copy-editing does poor Umbra have to depend upon? The proper adverbial form, of course, is "rutabagally." We'll forgive Umbra her lapse, since even Homer occasionally nods... but the copy editor's oversight (probably attributable to Grist's budget constraints) is really rutabagal.
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Jason D Scorse Posted 12:27 pm
20 Nov 2006
TheSSg is absolutely right...
grain produced in large quantities and shipped is orders of magnitude more efficient than people driving around in trucks chasing deer.
J.S.
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atreyger Posted 4:57 pm
20 Nov 2006
TheSSG and J.S.,
Did you use a life-cycle energy analysis, such as the energy (and money) that goes into grain production, i.e. making tractors, using oil-based fertilizers and pesticides, plowing, seeding, soil lost to erosion, carbon influxes from degraded soils, making railroad cars, train tracks, bridges, general aesthetics and human well-being to back up your statement? Or did you use a faith-based proposition?
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nonprofitfriend Posted 12:14 am
21 Nov 2006
Winter gardens
There is a great book to help you figure out how to keep your garden going and your indoor storage of veggies fresh through the winter - it's called Four Season Garden by Eliot Coleman (or something close to that). Really good ideas to keep local food on your table for the winter. I'm using the ideas in my upstate NY home and he created the book living in Maine (or Vermont? my memory's not so good today!) so it's definitely possible in NH.
Good luck!
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willa Posted 3:20 am
21 Nov 2006
jarring, indeed
I recently started canning again (my mom and I used to do it, and I hadn't for the last decade or so), and I find that a decent way to at least limit the number of non-local, out-of-season things I eat. The one caveat: only high-acid things can be canned on a water bath--or, in English rather than food-preservation-ese, only fruits and tomatoes (not tomato sauce!) can be canned in a big pot of boiling water. Everything else requires a pressure cooker (and tomatoes are a lot quicker if you have one, too) to reach temperatures high enough to prevent botulism. See the National Center for Home Food Preservation for current info on how to safely can at home, because the way your mom did it decades ago was actually dangerous enough that they revised the standards, and a lot of those old recipes are no longer recommended since the risk of food poisoning is too high.
Being lazy and cheap, I just did a few jars of tomatoes and a whole bunch of apple sauce and skipped buying the pressure cooker for now. Applesauce is the easiest thing ever, especially if you have a hand-cranked apple peeler--This year I even skipped using a ricer or grinder, just mushed it with a slotted spoon, since the peeler cuts such thin slices that once it's all cooked there's not much to grind up. I canned half-pint widemouth jars, which are just the right size to substitute for a yogurt or other snack/dessert in a lunchbox.
I also bought a bushel of butternut squash before my local farmstand closed. Maybe I should have bought two of them, though... but for now, I still have some local veggies.
I am thinking about getting a chest freezer (energy-star approved, natch), because it would do two things: first, it would allow me to store more food with less hassle and risk than canning (while maintaining more nutritional value--some things have to be processed in the water bath or pressure cooker for so long that they lose all their vitamins and whatnot); and second, I could save a lot of money by stocking up on things I like when they're on sale, and that money could then go to making the expensive but environmentally-reponsible choices I prefer to make when I have the money, or I could just donate more to environmental groups. It seems to me that the energy used by an efficient chest freezer kept in the cool basement would be less than the energy used to transport string beans from California in February because I don't have any local ones left due to insufficient freezer space. What say y'all?
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bburtis Posted 4:32 am
21 Nov 2006
local food
Check out this story on an indoor (winter) farmers market (from NHPR.org): http://www.nhpr.org/node/11838 - and note the local meat mention, you local-meat doubters. I live 1/4 mile from an elk farm, and could buy grass and local-hay fed elk meat (if I wanted meat), so it's certainly possible.
I'm surprised Umbra didn't mention more about the local food/slow food/CSA/farmer's market movements! The OED had "CSA" as a runner-up for "Word of the Year" this year; the winner, of course, was "carbon neutral". So, things are changing.
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kmp Posted 4:32 am
21 Nov 2006
Freezer, etc.
Willa,
I seem to remember Umbra tackling that very issue (but I'm too lazy to search the archives). If I recall correctly, she came to the conclusion that the freezer does indeed save energy over trucking in of string beans from Cali.
My own organic veggie CSA ended (two weeks early!) before Halloween. I am in denial that I am now back to store-bought veggies and the appalling lack of variety therein. I'm clinging to the last vestiges of the harvest - pumpkins & butternut squash - before the long, cold, fresh-veggieless winter.
I flirted with the canning idea (the tomatoes from my farm were simply amazing) but I too balked at the pressure cooker idea. Memories of Breakfast at Tiffany's methinks. Ouch.
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mihan Posted 11:56 pm
21 Nov 2006
Just can it. Or freeze it.
I do a lot of canning, but so far just water-bath canning (jam, applesauce, pickles). I have relatives who do pressure canning, but I haven't made the leap yet myself. One thing at a time.
I do have a chest freezer and I (heart) it. If I recall correctly, Umbra came down on the side of chest freezers from an energy viewpoint; I'd like to come down on their side from an aesthetic viewpoint. Which would you rather put in a winter stew: flaccid, greyish canned beans or bright green, barely-blanched beans from the freezer?
Having a freezer also allows you to eat better. I make twice as much as I want to eat right away, then put some in the freezer. Then, instead of doing something quick (read: expensive and less healthy) when I'm short on time, I pull something delish (and nutrish) out of the freezer.
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willa Posted 1:32 am
22 Nov 2006
fresh frozen
Even the freezer compartment in my fridge is enough to allow me to make planned leftovers, so i usually have some soup or something stashed there (and for lunches to take to school/work, it's a lot easier if the soup starts out frozen, so it doesn't leak all over the lunch bag, substitutes for an ice pack, and is thawed by lunchtime). In order to really preserve food for the winter, though, I need a bigger freezer.
Also, Quorn chicken products are on sale for $1.20 off the regular price this week, and I could only buy four packages because my freezer is so full.
So, to mildly hijack this thread, does anyone have an energy-star chest freezer they absolutely love (or hate)? What should I look for, and what features do I not care about? Or should I just go on the Energy Guide data and buy the one that uses the least power?
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CyberBrook Posted 2:42 am
05 Dec 2006
Eco-Eating
Eating local is enviromentally good, but it is only one possible way to be more sustainable, as Umbra indicates.
For me, the most powerful way is through vegetarianism, which can also be local and organic whenever possible.
Perhaps you've seen the new UN FAO study:
Livestock a major threat to environment: Which causes more greenhouse gas emissions, rearing cattle or driving cars?
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.ht...
Please take a look at
Eco-Eating: Eating as if the Earth Matters
www.brook.com/veg
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Yoyo Posted 6:12 pm
12 Aug 2008
I'll see your kale and raise ya, Ruby (chard)
mijo's list of greens: turnip, kale, mustard, collards - sounds wonderful, but I've never seen any of them except kale! Must be an Anerican thing? Here in Oz (Australia) we often tuck into silver beet, aka chard; ruby chard is nice, too, and both grow right through our fairly mild winters.
Frankly, if I lived in America's New England, I'd emigrate! (or at least trek south for winter). In Oz's New England, it's really "What winter?" - pretty mild. If I were stuck in a cold clime, I'd definitely grow what I could indoors, if only a few greens, herbs and tomatoes. Here (in Victoria) we can plant and harvest potatoes outside all year round, and they're the ideal vegie garden starter - so simple kids can grow them. And tomatoes grow well in tubs most of the year, as do sweet capsicums. You can grow tubs of these last three on verandahs or in enclosed porches all year round in most climates.
Did I mention my heritage rhubarb? It's been growing in the same spot for decades, and makes a great addition to stewed apple and custard. We pick year round. We've also got a mature blood-plum tree, which bears prolifically and of which we stew and freeze maybe quarter to half each year (the rest goes to neighbours and rellies). If you've got space for a lemon tree, pick the warmest corner of the garden and it'll fruit most of the year.
We had a big chest freezer, but my diminutive wife and even tinier daughter kept falling in! So we replaced it with an upright freezer with drawers from Fisher-Paykel. Highly efficient, and not half so terrifying. ;-)
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