Sep 19, 2008
Living by the Seasons
I have never been so delighted to see an apple.
After living without apples for months on end, I happily spent 20 minutes after work this week scooping up apples from the tree at the place I work. For most of August and all of September I’ve enjoyed tomatoes every day from our garden. I’ve hardly ever had to purchase lettuce from the store all summer. We pick 10 pounds of blueberries at a local farm and feast on them all week while also making jelly. Some are frozen for the winter.
It wasn’t all that long ago that I realized you could go so long without an apple or only eat tomatoes during the peak of the season. I never knew a strawberry could be so good if you only waited until the local strawberry season.
However, lately, we’ve been trying to take a seasonal approach to our food as much as possible. Instead of picking up whatever fruit I want, I go all out for strawberries during their season and continue to do the same for tomatoes, blueberries, and apples. I think it may save a few bucks, but it also ensures I’m enjoying each fruit or vegetable at the peak of its season.
While it’s catching on all over the place, the “eat local” movement has been around for a while in small pockets of Vermont. While farmers are struggling to get by, and many dairies are closing, there remains a solid core of farmers who are making a solid go of it. Many are aided by the booming artisan cheese business. Cheddar may make everything taste better, but it doesn’t always bring in the best profits.
Perhaps I could have eaten locally and seasonally in Pennsylvania if I had worked a little harder at it–we had a strawberry field five minutes down the road from us for crying out loud. However, you just can’t miss it in Vermont where there Subarus zipping about with “Eat Local” stickers and sandwich boards for farmers markets in every town.
So for now we’ll enjoy the last of our blueberries and start sampling the various kinds of apples, not to mention apple cider donuts.
