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...

Honey Badgers eat Local

My kids are obsessed with the Honey Badger. Which isn't really a badger and doesn't actually eat honey. They know this but they still love to pretend to be Honey Badgers whenever a new bottle of honey comes in the house. They eat it on everything. Our recent favorite is organic peanut butter, my chunky pear jam I canned a few weeks ago and Thomas Honey, a locally produced raw honey we can get at the weekly farmers market and True Value.

I have never lived in a place that I can get honey at a hardware store or canning jar lids and tomato plants at the gas station. It's a little surreal at times.

Over the weekend I missed out on yet another bee keeping class. This tallys up to four over the past two years I couldn't make it to. It's a tad bit depressing. As if the Universe just isn't ready for me to be exposed to bees. I'm trying to be patient but my squash is suffering from lack of polinization. I've had to pull off about 5 shriveled squashes so far. Bees would be so welcomed here.

I tried to go out today to hand polinate (which includes muck boots, q-tips and mood music) but it was a bust. You see, zucchini and yellow crookneck squash, the epitome of gardens and summer produce, have both male and female flowers. Both need to be in bloom and have a qualifying polinator to create a vegetable. Today all my female flowers were brightly blooming. I could see them from the porch and yet not a single male flower was even close to opening. I'll try again in a few days time.

Last year I grew only 3 teeny zucchini. I was throughly discouraged. I'm  hoping a little human intervention will help.

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.