Poor Laura, at The Urbanhennery, the host of The Dark Days Challenge. She's had one heck of a winter! Outrageous weather, old farm house damaged, power problems, road problems, the loss of some hens and even the loss of a beloved horse. It's more than anyone should have to bear. So, everyone participating in the Dark Days got an email a while back that she had ended up just toooooo far behind to ever catch up. And we all understand. But have we stopped eating local? No way!
Eating local is, to some extent, a way of life for us now. Not that we're trying to be off-grid, self-sufficient hermits or anything! It's just that we're in the position to supply ourselves, to know how our food was raised, have great tasting and healthy food, save some money and stuff like that. Plus, since we're in the business of selling our stuff, we like to buy from people around here and support them, lower our carbon foot print - you know! So, just as we were running out of our own garden carrots, just after Christmas, we saw an ad on eBrandon advertising carrots! They're lovely - almost as good as ours. If you're in the Westman area, they came from Peters Market Garden in Virden, email petersmarketgarden@rfnow.com; Marlin comes into Brandon fairly regularly so it's not hard to connect with him for pick-up! I was also rushing through the Town Centre last Friday to pick up honey from Mann Apiaries and I think I saw some carrots on a vendors' table. Of course, if you're looking for potatoes, we can help with that!
We've also received an awesome gift to help us eat local! Our good neighbours Mike and Naomi have been reading about the Dark Days Challenge here on this blog and our foray into pasta making. They've given us some of their homemade canned tomatoes and sauce! They've also been making sausage this week, probably from deer that Mike has harvested right around here! They've offered to share some of that with us, too! Love that - thank you, Mike and Naomi. Now I know who to call, too, when I give canning tomato sauce a try for the first time this summer!
It's wonderful how when you're growing your own food you don't even have to think too much about eating local. The food is just there. We still have apples and tomato sauce in our freezer from last fall and I just picked an overwintered carrot a couple days ago.
ReplyDeleteMarguerite, I'm interested to know how you overwintered your carrots. Root cellar? In the ground? In the fridge?
ReplyDeleteIf we knew you were looking for carrots we apparently have lots in the "root cellar" under Ed and Amanda's house as well. Last I tasted them they are still crisp and fresh. We are going to be bringing more out on Friday or Saturday.
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