Eating Local- Blueberries

HeartSong Farms isn't just about creating our own food, it's also about supporting those around us that are driven with the same desires. Providing healthy, fresh eats gets my heart thumping. I love the community that automatically develops when a dish is involved. Cooking and eating not only nourish our bodies but also our minds and souls.

We had the opportunity last week to visit the local organic blueberry farm to pick some local berries for our pantry. The 2.5 acre blueberry patch was so pretty- nicely mulched, bushes nearly as tall as I am, friendly staff and gorgeous fruit.

We could literally stand at a single bush and get pounds in return. For all our picking, we got ten pounds in roughly twenty minutes.

Its a really wonderful feeling supporting someone you can see, talk to. I learned the farm is named after the owner's daughter Isabella. I learned how they keep the birds away with an air cannon. I met their dog. You just don't get that in a little plastic box.

For all we picked, somehow we only ended up with five and a half pounds when we got home...

What is this?

And can I eat it....



And will it kill/maim/hospitalize me....

And if you answered "yes" then "no" to the above questions, do you have a recipe?

Standards

On Thursdays down in town they have a weekly farmer's market. Pretty colored tents get set up and the locals bring their wares. I've seen the signs before but yesterday was the first time I ventured down to check it out. There were perhaps just over a dozen booths set up with everything from fresh produce to handmade jewelry. There were even some fruit and nut trees and mushroom logs being sold.

I came away with apples, pears, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, eggs, strawberries, lettuce and broccoli plants and two loaves of freshly baked bread. I met a farmer gal that had pulled up the carrots and other treats just that morning, it was amazing to see one of her gardens nestled in the town between the police station and the funeral home. She literally walked the carrots over about fifty feet and sold them to me still dirty from growing. My smile was a permanant fixture.

There are a few things I noticed though, after the sparkle of the market wore off. The pears -while grown in the US- were trucked in. The bread was made with canola oil, not the end of the world but not what I would have done had I made it myself. The differences were merely standards.

Years ago, I would have taken a loaf of homemade bread and thought I was making a huge difference in the world. My standard of homemade was higher than my standard of ingredients. If homesteading has taught me anything these last few years it is that I am always learning. My standards are constantly changing. Right now, I'm evolving my standards of food to the 100 mile diet and have high hopes of producing 95-99% of my produce, chicken, eggs, and dairy products within the next 12-18 months, like these guys. With our mild winters and prolonged growing season, add in a greenhouse and it's not all that far fetched. The goats are on their way already.

Watching movies like "The Future of Food", "Food, Inc." and "Supersize Me" have helped me develop my sense of standards. I want good food. I want nutrient dense food. I want food that doesn't harm my body or the environment or has been mutated into substances that are molecularly non-food. While I'm not always perfect, I am trying. I still have a terrible sweet tooth and much of the time my budget doesn't stretch enough to cover all organic foods.

But I want to be better and I think that's a pretty good standard.

Farm Girl

One of the reasons I wanted to farm was to reconnect myself and my children to our food. To instill in them a sense of responsibility to what they eat and to understand that as meat-eaters there is a huge sacrifice connected to dinner that is more than just filling their tummies.

Farming takes work. Lots of work. Sometimes doing things you don't want to do just to ensure that the animals that will sustain you later live a life filled with a freedom and health they'd otherwise be denied. Explaining that to kids is hard. Especially young kids. With the addition of the fourteen new chicks the understanding that not all of these cute, fluffy balls of chirp will stay on our farm long is a harsh reality. The connection to a chick in a cardboard box and a breaded chicken nugget can be a confusing and treterous path.

But as with gardening for sustinance, caring for animals is something we are learning. We have plans to grow beef calves for slaughter, raise turkeys from poults for holiday dinners and release our dependency on store bought chicken and eggs. And we have decided that -as we grow and learn this farm life- if we can't do the things we have done in conventional grocery store society with respect and care that we just won't do it.

I hope the children grow up understanding the sacrifice and the fact we might become vegetarians.