8 Reasons to Pick Your Own

I have to get to the local farm that allows you to pick your own strawberries. I don't know when I can get there, but my summer will be much sadder without my strawberries that I freeze for daiquiris.

What's so great about picking your own fruits and vegetables from a nearby farm. I'll tell ya.

1. It's cheaper. Way cheaper. I can get pounds of strawberries for about half the price of going into the little market right on the farm and buying them already picked.
2. Zero waste. You can take your own containers to pick in. My kids take beach buckets.
3. You get the freshest, best tasting produce. You can pick food that is perfectly ripe and eat it that day.
4. It's educational. You and your kids (if you have them) can learn things (see my post last year on Lessons Learned in the Strawberry Patch)
5. You'll support small farmers. It's not the big, agribusiness farms that invite locals to come pick. It's the small, family owned farms. They need our support.
6. It's fun.
7. It's good exercise.
8. You can take awesome photos of your family and friends while picking. Really, every year, I get the best pictures. I'm really tempted to post one, but I don't use my kids' faces on my blog.

You can find nearby farms that allow you to pick what's in season at PickYourOwn .org. The site allows you to search by state, and they even have resources out of the U.S.

Green Term of the Week: Farm to Table

Whenever I go to a major city, I always try to find a farm to table (also called a farm to fork) restaurant to eat at. Back in November, my husband and I visited Founding Farmers in Washington DC, and we had one of the best breakfasts out we've ever had (see picture at left).

Farm to table is a term that is used to describe "a restaurant where the ingredients are sourced as locally as possible, which means that they tend to be very fresh, and they have been through a minimal series of middlemen, if any, literally going directly from the farm to the table. The farm-to-table restaurant trend is part of a larger movement to eat as locally as possible, taking advantage of seasonally available fruits and vegetables and focusing on the environmental and cultural impacts of farming." (source:Wisegeek)

Why do I make it a point to eat at farm to table restaurants? I believe in supporting local economy - both the food and business economy. By choosing a local farm to table restaurant when traveling, I'm not only supporting local food, I'm also supporting local business in general. Plus, you're always in for the unexpected at a farm to table restaurant. At Founding Farmers, I was able to order vanilla bean cream for my coffee - cream that was heated up with vanilla beans to order. No fake vanilla creamer. It was delicious. I've never seen that anywhere else.

I'll be heading to Boston in a few weeks, and I'm having trouble locating a farm to table restaurant in that city. If anyone knows of any, let me know.

Jersey Fresh Canned Tomatoes

I don't know if the rest of the country views Jersey Tomatoes the way we view them here in New Jersey. In my state, if you've got a vegetable garden, you grow tomatoes. It's what New Jersey soil was made for, or so we're raised to believe here in the garden state. I grew up with my father raving about Jersey Tomatoes. In the summer, he loved to eat thick slices of local tomatoes with a huge dollop of Miracle Whip on them (ya, I know - ewww, but that's how he liked them.)

Earlier this year, six NJ farms pulled together to can their own tomatoes, putting them out under the Jersey Fresh label. All of these farms are from the South Jersey region, but for some reason they initially began to sell the canned crushed tomatoes in North Jersey (and for those of you unfamiliar with NJ, they might as well be two different states). I knew nothing about them until a few weeks ago when they showed up at my local farmer's market. There were some women buying several cans of them so I asked if they had tried them. They said they had, and they were delicious.

I bought a couple of cans and used the product for the first time Sunday night to make eggplant parm. The women at the farmer's market were right. The crushed tomatoes are really good.

According to the press release issued earlier this year

Jersey Fresh Crushed Tomatoes are a premium product. It is made with pure, ripe Jersey Fresh Tomatoes. There is no tomato concentrate, no puree, no citric acid, no water and no sugar. It is all spelled out on the label, and no other major brand can make this claim.

So that's it. Just Jersey tomatoes. Excellent. I get to season them however I want including adding as much or as little salt as I want. I like it.

I like it for another reason, too. As much as I admire people who can their own produce, I'm not sure if it is something that I'm going to learn to do anytime soon. If I were to can my own produce, tomatoes would probably be the first thing I'd do. Now that this product is available, I don't have to can my own. I can support local farmers, my food isn't traveling hundreds or thousands of miles to get to me, and I can have the tomatoes year round. The press release also mentioned that the tomatoes are picked, processed and canned within 24 hours. I would assume that means that they are vine ripened and little or no energy is needed for refrigeration throughout the process.

Supporting local farmers is much more difficult in the winter than it is in the other seasons. I'm really glad I've found a way that I can continue to do it in a small way throughout the whole year.

Stale Coffee and the Choices we Make

Good morning. I woke up this morning to cold coffee. Somehow instead of the coffee maker starting it at 6am, it brewed many hours ago. Our machine shuts off its warmer after two hours so I have no idea when it was actually fresh. In my efforts not to waste food (or coffee beans and water in this case), I chose to pour myself a cup and stuck it in the microwave. Yuck.

But it kind of fits in with what I wanted to talk about this morning - choices. I've come to realize that being green, or taking care of this creation that I feel called to help to take care of - really involves a bunch of little choices every day. I can make huge, sweeping commitments to things like energy conservation, not wasting food, supporting local agriculture, line drying my laundry... but those commitments don't always translate well into the realities of my day to day life.

There are limitations - time constraints that don't always allow me to walk or ride my bike. Financial constraints that have me choosing cheap non-local pumpkins to carve instead of buying them for $9/piece from the farmer's market. Relationship constraints that have me not overriding my husband's choice to turn on the heat when I think we can all just put on one more sweater.

These choices aren't made without consideration, however. Take the pumpkins. I went to the farmer's market with a specific amount of money. I intended to buy food to eat and pumpkins to carve. But when I saw the price of the pumpkins, I needed to make a choice. Spend almost half of my money on pumpkins or spend most of my money on healthy, local foods for my family to eat and save a few bucks for some pumpkins at the cheap produce store. In the end, I chose to spend the money I had set aside for the farmer's market on food to eat. The farmers were still supported.

Now, I know there is another choice that could be made here. I could choose not to buy pumpkins at all. But, I promised my six year old we would carve pumpkins this year. We never got around to it last year, and he remembers how disappointed he was. So, now I've got the relationship limitations to think about. That doesn't sound too great - describing my six year old as a relationship limitation to being green, but it's the truth. But, while I believe that taking care of this earth is exceedingly important, I do not place my commitment to doing so over my commitment to my relationships. So, ya, I'm limited by those relationships, but I'm okay with it.

My children, my husband, my family, my friends - they cannot come second to my environmental mission or I'm working in vain. I think it's important to teach my children good environmental habits. We don't go to fast food restaurants at all anymore and telling them that we aren't going and explaining why we're not going will not harm my relationship with them. But promising to carve pumpkins and then breaking that promise to "save the world" would harm my relationship with my son.

See what I'm talking about with the choices? For each of us, those types of choices to put relationships or financial needs over our environmental commitment will be different. But it will need to be done from time to time, and we need to be okay with that. Make the right choice and then don't feel guilty, because it is the right choice. There is nothing to feel guilty about.

If you're nearby this afternoon stop by my house. We'll be carving cheap pumpkins. I'll heat you up a cup of stale coffee if you want.

Image courtesy of flickr.

Your Stimulus Check - If You're Going to Spend It, Do it Locally

The other day I suggested in a post about buying locally that if you are intending to spend your stimulus check that you consider spending it locally. When you spend money at local businesses, much more of it stays right in your own community than if you shopped at nationally owned businesses.

We got our stimulus check later that same day, and my husband and I immediately started talking about all the ways we could spend it. When I mentioned that I thought we should spend a lot of it right in our town and its surrounding communities, he was willing to consider it. We haven't decided exactly what we're doing with it, but here are some ideas:

• Spend a lot at the farmer's market - don't just buy fruit and veggies, but spend some extra on local meats, cheeses, flowers, etc.
  
• Donate money or supplies (bought at a local store) to a local animal shelter
  
• Eat at independently owned, local restaurants
  
• Make the big purchase your eyeing - that tv, new frig, etc. - from an independently owned appliance or hardware store.
  
• Buy a piece of local art.
  
• Buy tickets, or a season subscription, to your community theater.
  
• Take a class at your local art studio, yoga studio or adult community center.
  
• If you happen to still have an independently owned gas station in your area, buy gas there instead of at the national station, even if it is 2 cents more a gallon.
  
• Buy something from the neighbor kid selling things for a school fund raiser.
  
• Take that thing you've been meaning to have fixed to a local repair shop finally or hire a local contractor to come to your house and do it.
  
• It's vegetable planting time, buy your plants locally instead of getting them from the garden center at a national chain.
  
• Hire someone local to prepare your vegetable bed!
  
• This week, May 5-9, is teacher appreciation week. Buy some treats from a local bakery and take them to the teacher's lounge at your kids' school.
  

I could probably come up with a much longer list, but my five year old is beckoning. But I'd love for the list to get longer, so please add to it in the comments. I'm especially interested from hearing from people who live in a city. I'm sure that there are many other ideas for spending locally in that environment.

Happy Local Spending!