Waste Not Want Not

While we travel up our sharp learning curve, with the back-drop of the humidity, Joe, Judy and I, still remain passionate about fresh produce and learning everything we can about it. Not only are we educating ourselves on what is healthy, what you are willing to buy, how much we should charge when it cost us more than the grocery store, (trying not to pass it on to you and still make a little bit of money), when/how much the next planting should go in and be - but let's not forget the "Oh my gosh, what do we do with the leftover food!" Like I said, it is a sharp curve but answers are coming fast. But first, I would like to talk about prices and how we come up with what we do.

Everything is organic. If we don't grow it, then we buy it. Organic food cost a lot. I never knew why, before. But I sure do now. You lose crops caused by blights, and lack of sprays due to being committed to a healthier planet and palate. The food spoils faster because it is not genetically modified also driving the cost up. Another factor is we don't order in large amounts. And since, I almost never walk into a grocery store (I have always hated them, just the lighting and music drives me bonkers, let alone the food) I really don't compare. When I go to the Farmer's Market I do check their prices and try and stay pretty much where they are. My tomatoes were more expensive because I was getting them from the only grower in Michigan that had them ready in May, which was a real luxury. If a few tomatoes go bad or are bruised, which always happens, you can kiss your profit good-bye. And, you aren't adding the ferry trip and gas...blah blah blah. Hey, no one makes me do this, I love it, just thought I would explain to the one old guy that told me my tomatoes were too expensive. Now that ours our coming in, we have dropped the prices by 75 cents a pound which, I know helps your pocket book and we can make a little.

(As a side note: Our Locavore distributor told me how Kroger has a warehouse in Illinois that is the size of 18 football fields. He said it is packed with unripened food from California, Mexico, and South America to name a few. Then to ripen the food before it is to go out to us, they spray it with the gas Ethanol. Let's not go into how they wax the eggs so they will keep for several months in their coolers; a high price to keep food prices down)

I have a friend who sells essential oils. She was telling me how many plants it takes to make one bottle of oil. She said that if they followed the same price costs they had in the 1920's the product would be 20 times more than what it is now. She laughed when I told her that after watching how long it takes for a watermelon to grow, they should be priced at $100.00. The awareness for me, has been what it takes for something to grow. The weather must be conducive, good soil conditions, planting, fertilizing, watering every day, unless mother nature wants to cooperate and then of course weeding. Which if you are anything like Joe and I, is just a fricking losing battle. After seeing Jackie at RC Organics fabulous farm (she co-ops 50 families) and all of her weeds and the fact that they don't seem to bother her, I have decided to let go a little on this and/or get help when we can afford it. This is not a Zen Garden or will probably ever be on the garden tour, but it does do what it is supposed to, which is to feed us and others.

Now, what do we do with the extra food? I have gotten really good at getting on the internet and discovering that you are able to can radishes, make vegetable soup with just about anything and if you have a hydrator, can make kale chips. Right now we are on our third huge pot of vegetable soup, getting it ready for canning. It has turnips, corn, cauliflower, green beans, parsnips, garlic, onion, potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini and squash. We call it roots soup. Cook it up, pour it into the jars, seal them up and can away. Viola! Veggie soup! A lot of work? Yes! But if you were raised by the mother I was raised by, wasting food is a sin tantamount to "Though shall not commit adultery". She ground her own meat, put all the vegetable scraps in the soup pot that was never not on the stove and created on the spot recipes. Hopefully, we can return to some of this good ol' common sense and in the meantime be healthier for it. So if you don't buy my incredible green peppers this weekend, I will pull out her insanely good recipe for stuffed peppers with lamb, rice and tomato. I also have a recipe where you stuff the peppers with black beans and rice! Yummy!

We continue to explore, plant, weed, water, discuss, learn, dig, laugh, cry, cook, bake, sell, organize and live this new lifestyle and hopefully inspire you to do the same.