photo credit: mckaysavage

Food has a life, a story. The environment it grew in, the people who produce it. And usually it’s traveled an awefully long way to get to our plates. I’d like to know these things.

There’s a moment, when you realize that the apple you are biting into was probably picked several days ago in a foreign country, that hits you. The moment is a collision, a crash of this new fact and the memory of picking an apple off the tree in your own yard and taking a bite.

I don’t remember when I realized that the food I was eating wasn’t from some nearby farmer. I do remember a bit of a panic, of fear, and horror. Why was my food being shipped to me when there was perfectly good land right here to grow food on? Of course I hadn’t yet heard of the locavore movement, or even considered such a movement might exist. It seemed natural to me, that food would come from nearby.

I blame my naivety on childhood. We had an apple tree, a pear tree, and several plum trees growing freely in my yard. The back yard was nearly all garden space where everything from peas to corn grew. Even when I moved on and no longer had a garden in my backyard I just assumed that someone, somewhere, had one.

In a way I hope my kids have that same naive assumption, because it means they’ve become normalized to food growing in the backyard. And the front yard. And some on the side vining up the fence. And maybe a few more in pots where I can fit them. Food, from my own backyard, eaten the same day that it was picked.

Nothing compares to eating your veggies ten minutes after being harvested.

Of course I can’t grow it all in my backyard. For one my landlord and my town have put their feet down to chickens. I can’t see a way around it that doesn’t involve heavy fines and finding a new place to live quickly. Luckily there is a local farmer that sells eggs from her chickens. For other things there is a great Oklahoma food coop where I can get almost anything we want. Literally, anything I want. Sure it costs a bit more, but I’ve found there’s money to pay for the extras once we stop buying the empty calories.

And if I can’t grow it, and we can’t find it locally, then we just do without. That’s a huge thing in our society, doing without. With 24/7 stores and online marketing it’s hard to believe anyone choosing to go without something as simple as pineapple. I’m still a bit shaken by the idea of giving up good Swiss chocolate. But we’re going to try at least. The trying will make it easier.

Quotes from Home Is Where The Food Is

With my garden plans this spring I’m making an effort to compost our food scraps as much as possible. I keep a little ceramic bowl in the kitchen that I fill up and dump back out in our big barrel outside.

Composting has several benefits, all of which I’m enjoying.

• less garbage to toss out
• happy plants in my garden
• sweet hippie cred

My DIY composting system is pretty simple, and cheap. I bought the ceramic bowl for a dollar at a thrift shop and found the barrel that someone tossed out free. When I’m ready to get a second one there’s a local man selling several for only $6 each. That’s certainly much cheaper than the fancy bins I found at Lowe’s for $70. And it’s less likely to get complaints from neighbors than a heap in the backyard would.

My compost barrel consists of all the organic garbage from my yard and kitchen. This includes leaves, grass, leftover food that won’t be eaten, or newspaper (no more than a fifth of your pile should consist of newspaper, due to it having a harder time composting with the rest of the materials). I expect my barrel to fill up within several weeks. Then I can start getting it to compost.

After I get a large assortment of materials in my compost bin, I need to moisten the whole thing. This encourages the process of composting. The experts also say to chop every piece in the barrel into the smallest pieces possible. As the materials start to compress and decompose I need to frequently head outside and aerate the barrel. If you have a heap or open bin you can use a shovel to mix it all up, or an aeration tool to poke dozens of tiny holes into it. With my barrel I simple need to spin the barrel over several times (there’s a great video on spinning a compost barrel here). Doing this will increase the oxygen flow to each part of the pile, and oxygen is required for any decomposition to take place.

Let it compost down and Voila! All the stuff I would have thrown away becomes top grade fertilizer for my garden.