Food For Thought…
It is finally feeling a tiny bit like fall. I love feeling the seasons changing with the crisp mornings! I hope you are still enjoying your summer bounty. The heirloom tomatoes are appearing along with winter squash babies. You may have some summer produce plants that wrapping up. Just a reminder, be sure to cut the plant at soil level. Do not dig the plant up with the root ball. Leaving the roots and bottom stem allows the decomposing plant to add carbon and nutrients back to the soil.
If you have a garden that is not in full sun, you can plant some winter vegetables, kale, broccoli, swiss chard and snap peas to name a few! If you have a very sunny garden, it is best to wait another month so the fall heat doesn’t cause winter veggies to bolt.
As you feel the seasons change, does your weekly menu also change with fall coming into view? Do you cook mostly what is in season? My kids have requested apples in a time when apples are not local so I tell them they aren’t in season. Of course, you can go to any mainstream grocery store and find apples year round. However, food tastes so much better when you can get it locally. If you shop at the farmers market, or at my favorites Jupiter Foods or Penngrove Market, then you have tasted the difference in produce when you shop local.
In addition to eating seasonally, do you know where most of your food comes from? There has never been a better time to get to know your farmer. We are so lucky to be surrounded by so many local farms in Sonoma County. Most likely you can think of 3 off the top of your head that hopefully you frequent or purchase at a local store. Just a few that we purchase: Straus Creamery, Two Rock Eggs, Full Belly Farm, Stemple Creek, and of course all the road side farm stands. Shopping locally not only helps the local business, but the local farmers and our community as well. Food grown locally and seasonally has a much much smaller impact on global emissions. Local food doesn’t need to be picked before it’s ready and trucked in from 100’s of miles away. We can ask these local farmers how they manage their crops and grazing animals. All of this leads back to measure J. If Measure J passes, then we would lose what makes Sonoma County so wonderful. It’s delicious and full agriculture economy! We loose the farmers, the work for all the employees, the local food, and the benefits it has to the planets soil health. Vote no on Measure J!
