January 2011 Archives

Dear Shoppers,

I am sitting here in what will soon be a dark room writing this out by hand so I can dictate it over the phone to my son who will send it on to you. Needless to say, I’ve lost the lights of my life.

Thank goodness for my market camp stove; I will be able to heat up something from the larder for lunch. Actually, more like something in the fridge that must be eaten ASAP. And thank goodness for the wood stove; we are cool but not cold, and bright sun is doing a good job of warming the south side of the house. We live in a small, well-constructed home that was built in 1959 by an early proponent of passive solar energy. The position of the house itself, its window placements and the landscaping all work together to enable the sun to heat the house in the winter and to shade the house in the summer. A great idea that seemed to take a while to catch on.

For those of you who have followed the bill we proposed for introduction in the Virginia General Assembly, here’s an update. Thanks to a truly dedicated and energetic effort by delegate Kaye Kory, an agreement has been reached with the Virginia Department of General Services to incorporate changes in the procurement system for Virginia schools and possibly other public entities to facilitate the purchase of produce directly from local farmers. I was invited to attend the meeting yesterday where this was accomplished, but the snow kept me home, and the lack of power has left me without details for the moment. But there will be a press conference soon to announce those details, and we will make sure you know where to view it or read about it.

At our markets this week, Uncle Fred hopes to dig out his smoker in time to come to both markets. As of now, he is certain of making it to Gainesville and a little less certain about Oakton. He is accepting orders for Super Bowl weekend.

See you at the markets!

Dear Shopper,

I read newspapers, at least two every day, and three on Sundays. I also clip newspapers and save all the articles on food and health. I save most of the articles on farming and farmers and many that report on the food industry and the agencies that regulate it. And occasionally I find a really good recipe in The Wall Street Journal, and I save that, too. I spent the last week or so going through the stack from 2010. I was too busy last year to sort and file and save the links to revelations and research that may be helpful in the future — from informing a grant proposal to supporting an argument in a newsletter or giving me an idea for one!

I noticed something that I may have missed if I had been more diligent about my filing — that there were themes running through the mass of clippings and all of the papers featured stories that echoed those themes. I realized that I need to spend a little more time collecting and sifting the data for its relevance to our mission, but I feel certain there are lessons for all of us who want to stay healthy ourselves and raise healthy families.

I will get back to you with more details later, but we obviously need to be looking to improve our health by improving our intake of foods that provide those building blocks and free-radical attack dogs and essential vitamins — not supplements. Research is slowly trickling out into the public domain that many of those good things don’t work effectively in our bodies if they come in pill form. They just don’t or can’t perform their assigned functions unless we eat them in our food.

And the scientists are surprised! My mother wouldn’t have been; nor would her mother. Nor am I. My best friend’s mother used to say that food is cheaper than medicine. Remember that and budget accordingly. We need to adopt that as a national adage, and maybe then we can look at spending more on healthy school lunches and less on medicine and doctor’s visits for the young and medical care for the aging.

I have recently been involved in developing and hopefully passing some legislation in the Virginia General Assembly to encourage local school systems to purchase more locally grown produce from small Virginia farmers; each of those words is critical to the incentives we seek to include in the wording of the bill. The major hurdle, of course, is still going to be money; it will cost a little more to pay a farmer for his or her own produce. What I want to see is the research that demonstrates how much a dollar spent on healthy food saves us in dollars spent on health care down the road. Not to mention what we would save on vitamins. The answer may be somewhere in that pile of clippings — I’ll let you know. If it isn’t, I will just have to keep on reading and clipping until it shows up.

Something to think about. See you at the market!

We need you to write your legislators in support of a bill (PDF) that is being introduced in the Virginia General Assembly, possibly as early as Tuesday, Jan. 18. This legislation would create a smoother procurement process for schools who want to buy local directly from farmers. We will update you as we know more about the scheduled hearings and other events.

For now, please visit this page to read more about the legislation and write members of the General Assembly to urge them to vote for the bill. Thank you!

Dear Shopper,

Hello and Happy New Year to all of you who have been away enjoying your holidays. In case you missed the e-mails last week, we have dropped the winter market at Fairfax Corner and hope that our very few regular shoppers will be able to shop with us on the weekend at either Oakton or Gainesville. You can always check our website for details and timely updates about the weather and how it may affect a market — or follow us on Twitter or become a fan of your favorite markets on Facebook. (Check here for the Facebook links.)

Every year I am amazed and somewhat overwhelmed to read the same articles all over again about dieting and now is the time to start and here is what you need to buy to guarantee that the diet will work for you! Our family is indeed enjoying a healthier diet, but it has evolved by way of a meandering move to a more plant-based diet and to a more local and seasonal diet — most of which now is bought at the market.

It has certainly had a much bigger impact than making a commitment to go on a diet to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date. I have never even tried that because I know it would not work. And I did not take the road to healthier eating with a specific goal in mind. We like fruits and vegetables, so it is easy for us to eat those in abundance when they are in season. And we like them in their natural state and with little embellishment, so gradually I have moved toward serving a vegetarian meal several times a week or fruit in a salad or a simple dessert, not because we made a major decision to change what we eat, but because we have enjoyed the results.

I admit also that part of it is cost. We do not want to buy non-local meat any more; I just can’t bring myself to do it knowing what we are eating in addition to the meat itself. Besides, the beef, pork, chicken and other meats in our market are fantastic, so we do not need to sacrifice anything to taste to eat local meat. And the benefits are huge — at the table and over time. But we cannot afford to eat local meat as often as we once ate store-bought meat, so we don’t. And of course that too has led us down that path to a more Mediterranean diet, which is heavier on the veggies with meat and pasta in supporting roles.

I have also enjoyed shopping for what looks good at the market and then coming home to figure out what to do with it. Just like Julia Child! I let myself go at the market and admittedly sometimes bring home more than we can eat — but it is mostly fruits and vegetables, so I can do things with those to preserve them for future use. I can’t wait to make a cherry pudding in January!

My point here is that you do not need to make a New Year’s Resolution to change your eating habits, your health and your contribution to sustainability — you just have to come to the market each week, buy as much as you can locally and make those items the centerpiece of your eating experience. At this time of year, we will buy meat for stews, soups and roasts to serve with veggies, and we can buy eggs and cheese for our comfort-food dishes. And while we may have to buy more veggies at the grocery store, we can also still support our new eating habits and the market even in the winter.

One caveat that I try to use as a guide in the grocery store is to pay attention to where the produce has been raised. There are just some countries where the oversight is bound to be less than what we expect, and an “organic” label from those countries means nothing to me — and I am not likely to eat their non-organic produce either. In the meantime I am working with our farmers to encourage more high-tunnel and greenhouse farming — it’s coming even to us here in Virginia, and soon we will be able to buy more local veggies in the winter. It’s much more fun to be in a frame of mind where you can look forward to that than to another diet for the new year.

Happy eating in 2011! See you at the market!