Tomatoes in a pot

Even though the temperature dipped below freezing last night, Spring has officially arrived and it’s time to start planting! Indoors, that is, or if you have a green house or hoop house. I imagine the farmers are well into hoop house planting by now. Starting your seedlings indoors and then transplanting them outside either in a garden or in containers is about as local as you can get. Not everyone has access to a diggable, sunny plot of land to dedicate to growing food, but container gardening is a viable option for many people, and it’s apparently all the rage these days.

A recent New York Times article states that container gardening is a billion dollar a year retail business. There are all kinds of cool products for would-be home gardeners who want to get their hands dirty and experience the joy of home-grown goodies but who are lacking acreage. Enter the “Garden in a Bag,” for instance. Or the “Herb-Grow Bag” that you can place on the “Self-Watering Tray.” And if you’re worried that your baby seedlings aren’t going to get enough light, you can get the “Jump Start Grow Light System.” All these gadgets are great but be prepared to pony up some serious cash. (Read the full New York Times article here.)

Personally, I’m planning to put a couple old whiskey barrels into service as containers for tomatoes and herbs. In their former life they served as water gardens and they’ll do nicely for a few veggies. I just have to figure out where to get the dirt and determine the best spot for them in my mostly shady yard.

A friend of mine said that his father used to cut a hole in a large plastic bag of dirt, drop a tomato seed in the hole, and harvest lots of tomatoes come August. Judging by all the photos of container gardening online, people can and do get creative with their containers.

We have a small selection of flower and vegetable seeds available in the produce department so you can get started with a few organic varieties. The brand is “Seeds of Change” and more will be coming soon. For more information about starting your own container garden, check out no-dig-vegetablegarden.com.

We all know the benefits and importance of eating locally grown food and how this practice is good for our bodies and our planet. But to what degree would it be preferable to not eat local? And what is the definition of ‘local’? Would a food produced 100 miles away still be considered local? Local Harvest recommends that food travel no more than 100-200 miles from its source, which seems like a long way for a farmer to drive to deliver cukes and tomatoes.

Is it better for a single semi truck-load of lettuce to be driven across the country from California to the East coast or for dozens of farmers to drive from their individual farms to farmers markets in New York City and Boston to sell their crops? It’s worth considering whether local fruits and veggies really are more carbon-friendly than grocery store produce.

No one can argue that a homegrown tomato tastes superior to one picked prematurely in order for it not to get pummeled in the long transport process. And that just-picked goodies retain more nutrients than veggies that were picked two weeks ago. But how practical would it be, if eating local becomes more and more of a focus, to allocate more city-side land to farming in order to feed all us city dwellers? And what about those who live in arid or desert climates where farming is impractical? There are many more questions to be asked regarding the ‘eat local’ movement, not all of which may have satisfactory answers.

As for choosing to be a diehard locavore, I for one would have a tough time giving up coffee for breakfast (anyone tried growing coffee beans on Old Mission Peninsula yet?), chocolate, coconut, olive oil, bananas, brown rice, and many other ‘exotic’ foods. Even Barbara Kingsolver, in her family’s quest to eat local for an entire year (chronicled in her book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, an excellent read) allowed everyone a single non-local exception. Her husband chose coffee. She chose spices. (I forget what her kids chose.)

If you happen to live in Southern California or Florida, you have it made. The last time I visited the Santa Monica farmer’s market in L.A. in mid-winter, it was bursting with organic produce. It was a regular cornucopia of culinary delights, all while back in T.C. everyone was scraping their cars and shoveling their driveways. But for those of us who live in cold climes, you better like squash, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and apples, because that’s mostly what you’ll be eating all winter. Say bye-bye to fresh salad greens for several months. (Although the season can be extended with hoop houses.)

We can also extend the season by growing our own sprouts, culturing our veggies, and canning and freezing foods. But the point is, it would be rather difficult to be a local purist and shun non-local foods, especially in the great white north. This is not meant to criticize the locavore movement, but simply to raise the issues of whether eating local is truly environmentally sound in every way (i.e. one semi-load vs. dozens of truck deliveries), and how we would get along without certain foods we have come to know and love and consider staples, such as extra virgin olive oil. Any ideas on this one?

A few weeks ago as I was doing my Saturday morning shopping at the indoor farmer’s market at Building 50, I stopped to ask a vendor, who had several varieties of apples for sale, if his fruit was unsprayed. I spied his Honey Crisp apples, my favorite, and which we don’t carry in the store. He did not have an “organic” sign up, but I know that many farmers are organic for all practical purposes but do not have the official organic certification.

“No,” he said, a little defensively. “We have to spray them or they’d be full of worms. But we only spray them every other week instead of twice a week like most farmers.”

“Would you consider switching to organic?” I had to ask him.

“No,” he said again. “We’d have to change to pest-resistant trees. Besides, organic farmers use tons of copper sulfate and that much copper can’t be good for you.” He was distinctly on the defensive now. I wish I’d had knowledge of copper products so we could have discussed it, but I just thanked him and left without buying his apples.

But just how difficult and cost prohibitive is it to change to organic? To find an answer to this question I asked two formerly conventional farmers who made the switch and who now supply Oryana with their organic products, Bernie Ware of Ware Farm and Bob Weaver of Omena Organics.

According to Bernie Ware, organic apples ARE more difficult to produce, but the challenges far outweigh the risks as far as he is concerned. For example, conventional pest management calls for the use of sterol inihibitors, or hormones, against fungus, but their use has not been fully tested, which concerns farmer Ware. “I would worry more about hormones being unleashed into the environment than copper.” He added, though, that he uses fungicidal copper products judiciously. And copper products are allowed within the organic guidelines.

But in terms of his overall outlook on switching to organic, here is what he had to say.

“Back when we had a farmstand, (and when the farm was an ‘industrial grower,’ as he put it) I was talking to a young man who had a child with him and he was holding a quart of strawberries. He was questioning me, asking, ‘Do I need to wash these berries?’ It hit me hard. That was one of the many things that led me to change.”

“The transition period is a tough time and we’re not handling as much as we were years ago. The bottom line is tighter. It’s much more management intensive. But we have embraced the new system. We are science-based in our approach and science is standing behind organics. People know what we do and appreciate it. Conventional farming ignores the external costs. What will it cost to fix the groundwater?”

And he boasted, “Last year we had the lowest water nitrate test ever. We have a healthy biological layer in the soil, a very healthy soil ecology. The nutrients aren’t all leaching down.”

As for his outlook on organics: “This is the economic paradigm we live in where we depend on technology to fix our mess. But organics do not leave problems for future generations to fix. We are community-minded stewards. The only mistake we made was we didn’t start 10 years earlier.”

Bob Weaver expressed similar sentiments. “Switching IS a big deal,” he said, “but it’s a labor of love. You have to want to do it.”

“You have to create an atmosphere that’s unfriendly to pests and fungus,” he explained. “It’s harder because people want perfect-looking produce.”

And as for the use of copper, he says, “You’re not using it in those quantities. We use it but I’m in a constant search for something else. But it’s not a synthetic.”

“We fell in love with the concept. I think the fruit tastes better; it’s more dense and has better flavor. Although it’s a labor of love, the goal is to stay in business.”

So the next time I question a conventional farmer as to how he or she deals with pest management, I’ll have some ammunition and good examples to back up my suggestion. And kudos to the Wares and Weavers and all our other wonderful farmers who made the shift in spite of the challenge.

It seems that as the unemployment rate rose and the economy did a swan dive, people are foregoing their Egg McMuffins and Croissanwiches at fast food restaurants on their way to work. Since fewer people are driving to work and scarfing their fast food breakfast on the way, and even those who are still working are pinching their dimes to make dwindling ends meet, on-the-go breakfast sales are falling by the wayside. “There is a direct correlation between unemployment and breakfast sales,” says Jeffrey Bernstein, an analyst at Barclays Capital.

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, Burger King reports that traffic increased at every meal except breakfast. So it seems that, what might have been a blessing in disguise, i.e. fewer people eating low quality, high fat, high salt, factory farmed food in the morning, they are making up for it by eating more fast food later in the day. What a shame. This seems like a prime opportunity to rethink breakfast, even for those who are unemployed.

It’s been drilled into us since childhood that eating breakfast is important, and that’s because it’s true! Eating a healthy breakfast means you will be less likely to crave fattening snacks during the day, and you’ll also have the energy to accomplish mental and physical tasks. So here is a renewed call for breakfast, the meal that ‘breaks’ the long ‘fast’ of night.

Breakfast can seem like an inconvenient chore, especially when you are in a hurry in the morning. A quick bowl of cereal is better than nothing, as long as its not a bowl of Fruit Loops or Oreo O’s, where the main ingredient is SUGAR. But there are so many fairly easy and quick options that there is really no excuse for not eating breakfast or for eating junk cereals and other unhealthy so-called breakfast foods.

Here are a few ideas to get you started and your day off to a great start with a nutritious, fast, and easy meal.

Eggs are nature’s original fast food. They cook very quickly and are an excellent, high-protein option for breakfast. We’ve been sold a bad bill of goods for years about how bad eggs are but the truth is, they do not cause an increase in cholesterol, nor do they increase the risk of heart disease. So enjoy, enjoy our wonderful, local organic and/or cage-free eggs for breakfast. Try them:

• over-easy on sprouted grain toast
• scrambled and tucked into a sprouted grain tortilla with cheddar cheese and salsa
• scrambled with leftover sauteed veggies and goat cheese
• scrambled with smoked whitefish or salmon, dollop of cream cheese, and capers
• hard or soft boiled with some tomato and whole grain toast
• any style with leftover baked potato fried in butter

Other yummy and easy breakfast ideas:

• fruit smoothie made with yogurt, frozen fruit, fruit juice, protein powder, banana, etc.
• whole grains (cooked the night before) such as brown rice, kashi, millet, or kasha (buckwheat) prepared
  savory: with nutritional yeast, butter, and Bragg’s Aminos
  sweet: with maple syrup, butter, cinnamon, chopped or dried fruit, toasted nuts
• tofu scramble: saute some onion, green pepper, mushrooms, crumble in tofu, seasonings, water.
  fresh fruit in season with cottage cheese or Greek-style yogurt
• Sprouted whole grain toast with almond butter, cashew butter, or Naturally Nutty flavored butter

These are just a few ideas to get you started and thinking about more creative ways to nourish your body in the morning using whole, fresh, local ingredients but that are still quick and easy to prepare. Convenience doesn’t have to mean microwaved frozen Kellog’s waffles. With just a wee bit of planning and stocking, you can have a great breakfast on the table in 10 minutes or less. Here’s to happy, healthy mornings including breakfast!

Read the rest of “Breakfast Food Sales Decline” »