The time for New Year’s resolutions has passed, you’ll tell me, but from our food’s perspective, the new year is right around the corner. Spring is already in the air. For food lovers, this is the exciting, difficult time when everything is growing, but just about nothing is ready to eat.
It is the perfect time to make plans for eating more sustainably over the next 9 months or so when good local food is easy to come by. I’ve got my resolution – more like a master plan – for this year already.
In the past, I’ve always tried to go to the farmer’s market every week, and that’s where we get most of our produce and eggs during the local growing season. My favorite market, in Takoma Park, has a huge selection including almost every kind of vegetable, eggs, dairy, meat, and a handful of specialty items. If you can make a farmer’s market or farmstand part of your weekly food shopping, or even go a couple times a month, that’s a good resolution for eating more locally.
Or, you could try a CSA. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it’s a system where you can sign up with a local farm (most are run by individual farms) to get a weekly box of whatever’s good. They vary in length (most run from spring through early fall) and in the details. Most have a set of pickup times and locations, and you just need to find one that’s convenient; but some will do an extra dropoff if you get together a bunch of interested neighbors or coworkers, and a few will even deliver to your house. Some will let you sign up on a week-to-week basis (good if you’re traveling a lot), but in most cases you’ll subscribe for the full season.
The challenge of a CSA is that you can’t usually choose what you get. Your box will contain whatever is ripe that week. If the farm has lots of tomatoes, you’re in luck. If this week it’s kale and collards, you may find yourself flipping through cookbooks trying to find something, anything new to do with greens. And if, for example, your whole family hates zucchini, there may be a few weeks when your CSA share will make you sad and you have to force most of it on your unsuspecting neighbors. But it’s a great way to challenge yourself to cook more (you’re more likely to cook vegetables if you have them on hand), it can be convenient to pick up your weekly share, and you’ll be surprised with new, exciting, and sometimes unfamiliar foods.
A CSA isn’t for everyone (it’s not really for me), but if it sounds appealing, now’s the time to sign up. A lot of CSA’s fill up long before the season starts. While farmer’s markets aren’t even open yet, it’s the perfect time to research your CSA options. For DC-area CSAs, check out this listing from the Washington Post. If you live elsewhere in the US, Local Harvest is a great resource for local foods of all sorts, including CSAs.
Then there’s the home garden. There is no more local food than what you grow for yourself. If you’re concerned about staying organic, your garden is the only place you have complete control. And the vegetables will always be fresh and delicious.
It isn’t always easy to garden in urban areas. Until we moved last year, we had zero outdoor space for growing. But if you have even a little outdoor space, you can grow something in containers. And if you have none at all, you can try for a community garden plot, or borrow space in a neighbor’s backyard. If you really want to garden, there are always options.
Our food resolution this year is to grow as much food as we possibly can on our 8×15, partially shaded patio. We tried to grow a number of things last summer, after we moved in, without much success. I blame the rain, which started the same day as our hasty post-move planting, and lasted for a month without pause. If I can blame it on the rain, it makes me feel better about my chances this year.
Despite (or perhaps because of?) last year’s failure, I feel compelled to go overboard this year. Since we’re not in the middle of moving (yay!) we can actually plant things at the appropriate times, plan out the layout of our garden, and even start seeds indoors. And we’re doing it all. It may end up being madness, but hopefully the madness will give us a decent harvest of our own food. I want nothing more than to get up in the morning and pick some lettuce and a tomato to go on my sandwich for lunch. Or to come home and pluck fresh herbs and a head of kale for dinner.
We’ll see how it goes.
That’s my resolution. What are you doing to eat more sustainably this year? Have you tried a CSA? Are you starting a garden? Tell us in the comments!