The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: nutterly_uts on August 02, 2015, 08:16:58 pm
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Friend posted this on Facebook (see attached) Thoughts? I think personally until people are more aware of what their food is (scary how many people (not just kids) can't ID common vegetables or what animal things come from) there is little point in trying to educate them in seasonality
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I completely agree with the post we should be supporting local seasonal food, however the shops make it so hard to understand what is seasonal. I only started being more aware when I started growing my own, but people are generally greedy and too used to everything at their fingertips would be hard for majority to change
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There is an American woman, author, who wrote a book about eating locally. She grew almost all her own food and never ate anything exotic or shop bought for one year, to do with air miles and quality of the food. The woman is called Barbara Kingsolver and her book is animal, vegetable, miracle
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Another book to read is "The Wild Life" by John Lewis-Sempel. He vowed to eat nothing that he couldn't shoot, trap or find growing wild on his farm. A fascinating read!
Apart from beef which we haven't got room for, we eat only home grown meat and we need more small scale meat producers (and should probably eat less meat?)
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I personally love the idea of eating seasonally, I have some (currently un-explored) hypothesis that nature provides what we need as the seasons roll. Yes, we can import oranges etc but on the whole I'm trying to feed my family with locally sourced (preferably from our land) food on this basis. Our ancestors did it and freezing or storage in other ways can help promote it.
I remember my daughter telling me that a child at her school believed that 'lamb chops' came from a cow ::) and we live in the countryside!!
The argument that fresh and locally sourced food comes with a higher price that some cannot always afford seems to deter people though. But, 'in an ideal world...'
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My late father in law lived his whole life eating mainly what fruit and vegetables he could grow and therefore only ate 'seasonally'. He never owned a freezer or a fridge and spoke of the extra pleasure of anticipating the seasons and the fruits as they came.
Whether Plumseverywhere is right about the health benefits I dont know but he lived a long and extremely healthy life until his final illness in his 90s.
And for those who imagine such a life style cannot be acheived now - he lived refrigeration free up to 2012 and grew everything in his westmidlands surburban garden!