A Seasonal Year

I'm kind of sad to be winding down with the canning. My back will be happy. I have a hard time winding down because my squirrel instincts say to bury nuts as long as there are nuts to bury. There's still tomatoes out there. Some late season corn, some green beans, zucchini, and more peppers. I should keep going...keep picking...keep storing things in my cheeks... Eventually you must pack up the picking bags, the canning salt, the ever present canner, and move on to other endeavors.

One of the things I'm going to be doing is looking for a local e-bay consignment facility to liquidate all my store stock that isn't stuff I made. I'm paring back and simplifying Dustpan Alley. This is going to take some time and tedious sorting. The great thing is that I am quite clear now on what I need to be doing, what I ought to have been doing all along. Once I've revamped my website and blog (they will be combined in the near future so that they are in one location) I will probably have to still go get work. Part time hopefully. Whatever Dustpan Alley is able to become, it will take time. So the goal is to clean it up, and also clean up my own house so that I can manage both much more easily even if I have to work outside the home. I'm taking the pressure off of my business to help us out of our dark financial times.

In the meantime, I'll be learning to do cool homestead-y things like using the tomato liquids from my canning to cook beans in. Isn't that totally depression era style thinking? I'm ridiculously proud of having done this. I have another big bowl of watery tomato juice today so the beans I made yesterday will go in my FREEZER! (See how useful my freezer is?) I will make another batch today. It worked very well.

The beans cooked up into a rich smelling thick plain stew. I never use a crock pot to cook meals in because I have had nothing but poor results from them. Lisa B. mentioned using a crock pot to cook beans in though and I've been wanting to try it for a few months. I got rid of my crock pot years ago but Philip bought this one so we could serve hot cider in the store, but his ulterior motive was to then make real gesso in it using rabbit skin powder. Isn't that disgusting? I think he will have to get himself another crock pot for that purpose. This one is for cooking beans in now.

I need help with something I have on my mind. I am thinking about challenging myself to eat seasonally for one year. Coming up with the parameters for such a challenge is not so easy though. You can't rely on grocery stores to guide you in what's seasonal because even health food stores are importing things from around the world; what isn't seasonal for us right here right now is in season somewhere else. I want to eat more locally too, but I think to restrict myself to only truly local as well as seasonal might be too much to do all at once. On the other hand, why not? How about I define local as within my own state? That's still fairly broad. Can you help me devise a plan?

Here's what I have so far:

• I was thinking that I would not buy any commercially canned goods for a year. That's my starting point. When we put things by ourselves it's very nearly always from local sources or from things you've grown yourself.
  

• I was also thinking I would not buy any commercially frozen vegetables for a year. Though I will say that I hardly ever buy frozen vegetables anyway.
  

• Anything Max eats is not a part of this challenge because he eats so few things anyway, I'm not messing with him. The challenge is for me and Philip who has agreed to participate.

• We will only eat seasonal produce. But this is hard to figure out, as I said. I haven't had a fall garden here yet so how do I know when to stop buying cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower?

• During the winter I will include the following staples on my list because most of them I could have conceivably grown myself and stored in a root cellar for most of the winter. If I had a farm, that is. So I will allow myself: potatoes, celery*, onions, garlic, beets, winter squash, and carrots.

• I think I'm going to scramble my bahookie into gear and get a bed of lettuce, spinach, and chard growing in my own garden. At some point, probably right around Christmas, I think the only thing that will be "in season" are hardy winter greens like kale and chard. Greens that can withstand some frost.

I would like this to be a local challenge as well. One year. The idea is to find out what it feels like to eat in such a way that is more connected to the natural cycles of the earth, that uses a lot less energy to create (less oil to transport being one way in which eating locally saves energy) and in accordance with the spirit of urban homesteading, which to me is living life in as self sustaining a way as possible in a more urban or suburban context. We don't all have farms but we can use the local farms to supplement our food stores, we can grow some things in our own gardens, we can do a lot for ourselves, even in a concrete jungle, than most people push themselves to do.

Obviously I need to stop re-watching Firefly episodes and start reading more books for inspiration such as Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle".

What will I be missing out on in such a challenge? Imported foods for one. No kalamata olives for a year? What about Parmesan? How far do I take it? No bananas for the rest of my life? No avocados? Should there be a short list of acceptable foreign products? I think that would spoil the spirit of the whole thing.

If I did the local challenge that means I'll have to make my own feta cheese because although there are some amazing cheese artisans around here, I won't be able to afford to eat their products. We are lucky though that Oregon has so much produce, dairy, and other agricultural products available. One of my favorite flour mills is less than fifty miles from here. Most or all of the bulk beans I bought were grown less than fifty miles from here too.

Spices will have to be excluded though. There is no way I'm going to find salt made here in Oregon. Though I can get (and have been using) a salt that is made in Utah which is a state over from us. That's not too bad. (That's the really expensive salt that i love because it's kind of pinkish in color.)

I don't want to do this to torture myself or make my modern life more complicated, in some ways I think it will simplify things. I very much doubt I can face a lifetime of no avocados or kalamata olives, but one year seems doable. A year in which to shift the way I shop, preserve, garden, and cook. A year in which to really appreciate what life was like before trucking took over. Before cargo planes made it possible to ship produce.

Perhaps I could talk to the produce manager at Harvest Fresh to find out what local produce is available at different times of the fall and winter and when those sources dry up. They do try to buy local produce all year round. So I might get a clearer picture from that.

Oh yes, and I am not going to throw out any foods in my pantry that don't match this challenge, that would be a total waste and I can't afford to do it. I have a few jars of kalamatas for example, which I intend to eat. But I won't buy any more of them.

Well, it's eleven am and I have a bunch of food to finish up processing. I'm not even out of my jammies yet. Off I go....


*celery being the one that isn't storable for the winter. But I'm not sure I can cook without it. Maybe I should take it off the list and just learn? It's certainly a cool weather vegetable. But when does it stop being in season?