Natural Papa » local food

Free Fruits from the Urban Forest: Neighborhood Fruit Harvesting

Derek Markham — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 22:13:43 +0000

Feeding a growing family with fresh healthy foods on a budget can be a very challenging affair. The quality of foods that we eat, and that we feed our children, have a large impact on the quality of our health, so we feel very strongly that it should be a priority in our family budget. We focus on basic foods, with a big emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables, and we very rarely purchase packaged goods, but even so, our grocery bill can be staggering sometimes.

Luckily, over the last couple of years, my wife has become quite good at finding free fruits in our neighborhood. In fact, my lunch today is a bowl of fresh, ripe, apricots, a small part of the continuing harvest from our neighbor’s apricot trees. We’ve been able to add tons of fresh fruit to our diets without adding a penny to our food budget.

For the most part, all it takes is five minutes to introduce yourself and ask permission.

In many urban areas, there are homes that have mature fruit trees, originally planted for food for the owners, which are now dropping ripe fruit over the lawn or sidewalk. The current owners or tenants consider it a nuisance, and would love to have someone come and pick all the fruit and take it away for them!

The easiest way to begin is to simply pay attention to the trees in people’s yards the next time you go for a walk with your kids (If you don’t take walks with your kids, now is a great time to start!). Get familiar with what apple trees and apricot trees, etc., look like – it’s easiest in the summer when they’re full of fruit. Once you know what they look like, you can identify potential fruit trees at other times of the year as well.

Once you’ve located a yard with fruit trees, go knock on their door and just ask them if they would mind if you harvested some of the fruit. You might get turned down once or twice by people who actually harvest their own fruit, but many times people would rather buy their fruit from the store instead of their back yard, and have no problem with someone harvesting the trees. You may also find fruit trees growing in or around ‘commons areas’, such as parks or medians, which are also free for the taking. Technically, if the fruit overhangs a fence onto a public area, it’s fair game, but it might be best to just ask the owner of the tree anyway.

When you’re ready to go harvest some free fruit, bring bags and gloves, and if you want to be extra helpful, a bag for the rotten fruits that have already fallen on the ground. The owners will appreciate the cleanup, and your compost pile gets some added nutrients. Only harvest the fruits that are ready to eat (or very close to ripeness), and be prepared to come back every couple of days to continue picking as they ripen.

Once you get home, clean and pick over the fruit, pulling out the most ripe pieces to eat or process first. For some fruits, such as peaches, plums, or apricots, taking out the pit and giving them a quick rinse is all you need to do before freezing them. Puree the ripe fruits to make fresh fruit ‘jam’ and then freeze, or put the puree in a food dehydrator for the healthiest fruit leather ever. If you’re a canner, then put up everything your family can’t eat right away. And if you really want to make the tree’s owners happy, bring them back a bit of whatever you’ve made, such as jam or fruit leather or applesauce.

With a little work, you can feed your family with fresh, free fruits for the summer, plus gather and process enough to keep them eating local fruits for a long time afterward! If there’s more fruit on the trees than you can use, consider harvesting some for your local food bank – fresh food is usually in high demand.

Some of the free fruits our family has gathered over the last year are apples, pears, apricots, mulberries, cherries, and jujubes, and we live in the Southwest, not necessarily an easy climate for fruit growing. In other areas, you may be able to find a wider variety, as well as nut trees to harvest from, such as walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, chestnuts, etc.

Also, check out Neighborhood Fruit, a site that tracks over 10,000 trees nationwide, for help finding fruit trees, or ask your coworkers if they know of any opportunities (maybe their own back yard?).

Image: kkimpel at Flickr

Review of Wisdom of the Last Farmer

Derek Markham — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:51:22 +0000

I’m a book addict. At any given time, I’m in the middle of a handful of books, both fiction and non-fiction, and reading is one of my favorite activities when I need some downtime. I’m also a pretty critical reader, perhaps because I’m a writer, and I usually have a good sense of whether I’ll enjoy a book within the first couple of pages.

One of the books that I just finished reading is Wisdom of the Last Farmer, by David Mas Masumoto (I received the book courtesy of Simon and Schuster).

I must admit, when I began the book, I was expecting something a bit different – a straightforward memoir of farming, or a treatise on local food, maybe. But right in the first chapter, as Masumoto describes discovering that his father just had a stroke, I knew that I was in for another type of book altogether. Sure, it’s a memoir, but it’s also a story about a father and a son, it’s about healing, about Japanese American immigrants and California’s Central Valley, and it’s a glimpse inside the mind of a farmer who is truly rooted to the land.

“After his father has a stroke on the sprawling fields of their farm, Masumoto looks with new eyes on the land on which he and generations of his family have labored for decades. He sees the price they have paid to grow flavorful heirloom peaches—while the market rewards tasteless, big and red fruits—and the challenges of maintaining traditions and integrity while working in the modern, high-pressure agricultural marketplace. “Most organic farmers don’t do what we for the money,” says Masumoto. “Something else keeps us toiling despite the challenges—our emotional connections to the living things we grow, to the land, even to the people who eat what we produce.”

Masumoto comes from a family of farmers – farmers who immigrated to the US, were subject to internment during WWII because of their Japanese ancestry, and who worked tirelessly in order to eventually own land and put down roots. His family’s story is one of sweat, blood, and tears. It’s also a story of the blending of two cultures, and the struggle to work with the sun, wind, rain, and soil for a noble cause – producing food.

Masumoto’s father figures prominently in the book, and as he shared the many things he has learned from him about being a steward of the land, I found myself with a whole new appreciation for the skills and level of patience and persistence necessary to being a farmer. His descriptions of the farm are crisp and vivid, bringing me right into the orchards with him, and in his depictions of the day to day struggles of farming (especially organic farming and the growing of heirloom fruit varieties), I recognize once again the value of hard work and honest labor.

As I read Wisdom of the Last Farmer, I saw that not only does Masumoto understand how to work with the land to produce food, but he also understands the delicate dance that is the relationship between father and son. His thoughtful handling of his father’s condition, and the story of helping him come back to the farm and return to some semblance of his former work is touching, and shows a tenderness and respect for his father’s life and accomplishments.

I think that anyone with an interest in food, farming, healing, or the relationship between fathers and sons, will enjoy Masumoto’s book, and walk away with a whole new appreciation for the efforts necessary to bring forth fruit from the fertile soil of the heart.

David Mas Masumoto is the award-winning author of Epitaph for a Peach and other books, popular columnist, spokesperson for organic farming, and a fellow at the Kellogg Foundation. A third-generation farmer, he grows certified organic peaches, nectarines, and grapes on his family’s eighty-acre California farm. He lives in Del Rey, California. For more information, please visit www.masumoto.com.

Find a CSA Farm and Enjoy Fresh Local Food!

Derek Markham — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:00:00 +0000

With all of the green re-emerging from the ground at this time of year, it’s time to either start digging a garden of your own or looking for a local CSA farm. Community-supported agriculture is a great way deepen the connection between your food, your community, and the air , soil and sunshine that ultimately feed you. Going to the farm every week and planting and weeding and then – wow – harvesting your food alongside your fellow “villagers” is fulfilling.

There’s a rootedness that happens when you come full circle, and smelling the rich soil warmed by the sun is food for your heart. In my (previous) neck of the woods, there’s Happy Heart Farm and Grant Farms. There’s probably one near you – search Local Harvest for the nearest.

Eating locally is a hot topic these days, it’s kind of hip and green and healthy. It wasn’t really that long ago that there wasn’t even a choice of eating whatever, whenever, from wherever all of it comes from. People took responsibility for their food supplies and grew or gathered or hunted most of what they ate. They made their meals. They cooked the soup, baked the bread, gathered the greens.

How many times each week do most people eat homemade meals?

I mean from scratch, as my mother would call it, not from a mix or a can or a jar. I know there are those who boil pasta and heat up sauce from a can and call it homemade (I used to be one), but I take it to mean starting with the basic ingredients and ending up with a meal. I don’t grind my own flour or make my own pasta, but for most dinner-type meals that I make, I start with whole food, not precooked or premixed or heavily packaged food products. I buy in bulk at my co-op, and order cases of fruit or vegetables in season. I’m a rice lover, so we usually have a 25# bag of organic brown rice on hand as a staple, and it makes a good starting point for a meal, hot or cold.

Even if our food is not all from our region, just cooking it ourselves and being mindful of what we are putting in our bodies for fuel and repair and energy is a big step. It’s also way cheaper to eat our own homemade food, and it makes organically grown food a lot more affordable for most of us. I often hear “I don’t have time to prepare food, like you guys. I’m very busy.” Yet there’s always time for one more time sucking distraction or phone call or t.v. show or web surfing…

With all of the money spent on researching and surveying and measuring our buying habits and diet choices these days, I’d be curious to know if there are any statistics out there.

All of my meals this month were made at home. How about you? How often do you eat out?

(I also ate several bananas that came from very far away, at high cost to someone (all of us, I guess), as well as coffee (not even food), also from very far away. I’m not sure what that means.)

Image: thebittenword.com at Flickr

Growing Spinach at Home: Salad Greens in Your Garden

Derek Markham — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:24:04 +0000

Growing spinach for your family at home is a simple way to get more greens in your diet, lower your foodprint, and teach your kids about gardening at the same time. Early spring is the perfect time to start thinking about planting yours.

I have to admit, it wasn’t until I was grown up that I started enjoying spinach. As a kid, I remember looking at the bowl of cooked spinach (from a frozen package) with despair, just dreading having to eat some of it. I don’t remember ever being served fresh spinach while growing up, but to be fair to my parents, there’s a lot of hazy spots in my childhood memories, so it may have happened.

Working at a local food co-op exposed me to a great variety of fresh food, especially locally grown produce, and I found that a big bowl of baby spinach was a tasty and nutritious lunch. Later, while volunteering at a local CSA farm, I got hooked on eating the fresh baby leaves straight off the plant. And now, whenever there’s fresh baby spinach, it always reminds me of spring and the smell of rich soil under the sun.

When we began gardening for food for our family, one of the first things we tried to grow was salad greens, starting with a baby greens mix (mesclun mix) and then head lettuce and spinach. And while head lettuce is satisfying to grow, it takes a lot longer than growing microgreens (baby salad greens), so over the last few years we’ve been focusing on our greens bed and doing succession plantings all summer long. Growing spinach is not tough in most regions, and it’s the perfect vegetable to start in early spring!

Growing Spinach at Home:

Planting spinach:

Spinach loves cool weather, so you can start preparing the soil for it in early spring/late winter. Loosen the soil in your beds with a garden fork down to about 10″ deep, working in some finished compost at the same time. As early as six weeks before your average last frost date, start your seeds inside or directly in the soil under a cold frame. You’ll need to check the plant hardiness zone map to find out what’s best for your area.

When sowing your seeds, space them in full sun, a couple of inches apart in the row, and plant about half an inch deep. Spinach grown for baby greens can be planted closer together, but for full sized plants, make each row no closer than six inches apart. Keep the surface moist until the seeds have germinated and have grown their first true leaves. (These are generic planting instructions, so follow the ones on your seed packet for that variety of spinach.)

Sow the next succession of seeds between a week and two weeks after the first ones germinate, and continue to plant more at intervals through the spring for fresh spinach all season long. Once each planting is established, mulch between rows to help keep the soil cool and moist. Don’t put the mulch directly up against the baby plants – they’ll have a better chance of surviving both slugs and rot that way.

Thin the rows once the seeds are up and have a few leaves, making sure the plants are at least six inches apart for full sized spinach, or three inches for baby spinach. Eat all the ones you have to pull out while thinning – they’re spinach sprouts!

Harvesting spinach:

For baby spinach, harvest a few leaves from each plant, starting as early as a month after sowing. Pinch off the bigger leaves right at the base of the plant, leaving the smallest leaves. They taste great right off the plant, so eat them immediately or fill a bowl for a salad.

Once the leaves start getting large, you can either harvest the outer leaves regularly, or wait until the whole head is big and cut the entire plant. I recommend doing both – harvest half or more as leaves, and leave some alone to grow into full sized bunches. But watch out, as you might be surprised by how much spinach you get if you let all the bunches mature.

Rinse the leaves or the bunches in cool water and store in the fridge if you aren’t going to eat them right away. For the most nutrition and best flavor, don’t store spinach for more than a couple of days before eating it.

During the hottest part of summer, spinach will bolt, which means that it sends up a tall flower stalk and wants to produce seed. The leaves tend to be tougher and smaller when that happens, so you can pull up all of those plants for your compost pile, unless you have open pollinated varieties and wish to save the seeds. In that case, let some of them flower and go to seed, harvesting the seeds once they are mature.

Harvest the bunches after the first frost for the sweetest taste, and use row covers to extend the harvest through the early winter. With a heavy mulch, you can still harvest fresh spinach well into the season.

And more spinach planting:

About a month before the first fall frost date in your area, plant a couple of rows of winter spinach in an area protected from harsh winds and extreme temperatures. Before the first frost, cover them with a thick blanket of mulch and some row covering or a cold frame (try using fall leaves and covering the whole thing with some chicken wire to hold the mulch in place). Those plants will supply you with your first greens of the year, as they will continue their growth very early in the spring, before anything else is growing.

As with most vegetables, don’t plant spinach in the same areas every year – rotate the beds so that nothing in the chard family (like beets) gets planted in the same bed that spinach was last growing (and vice versa). This keeps any diseases or insect infestations from getting out of control.

Growing spinach with kids is fun, because it can be sown early in the spring, when the little people are dying to get outside, and it grows very fast. This makes it a perfect candidate for a child’s own garden, and once they learn that they can pull off the young leaves and eat them, you might have a hard time stopping them from devouring the whole row!

Image: woodleywonderworks at Flickr

What’s a Food Policy Council?

Derek Markham — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:00:00 +0000

The term “food security” can mean a couple of different things. It can refer to the safety of our food, like being free from adulterants, poisons, infectious materials. It also refers to the availability of food. From World Hunger Year:

Food Insecurity- Limited or uncertain access to nutritious, safe foods necessary to lead a healthy lifestyle; households that experience food insecurity have reduced quality or variety of meals and may have irregular food intake. (USDA / Life Research Office)

Food Security – Access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food security includes at a minimum: 1) ready availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, and 2) an assured ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways. (USDA)

Access to fresh air and clean water are basic human needs, as without either, you sicken and die. Without access to clean food, and enough of it, lives are shortened, and the quality of life goes down.

Unfortunately, most of our food system is controlled by the needs of corporations to make a profit, no matter what. There are smaller food systems, local food systems, in some places, with farmers markets and CSA farms and food co-ops. But right now, there simply isn’t enough food being grown locally in order to feed people locally.

One emerging idea that addresses local food systems is a Food Policy Council. It entails bringing together those with a stake in the food system: consumers, producers, community groups, schools, health systems and groups working towards alleviating poverty and hunger. A council generally works as an advisory board to local government, as well as influencing policy in institutions and organizations through assessment and education. It can bring together diverse members of the community with a common need – food – and work to propose creative solutions to issues surrounding local food systems.

I have been involved with several local groups working in food systems and the local living economy project, and I recently volunteered to be on the task force to form a local food policy council. It’s always interesting to work in a group setting with other volunteers.

Mark Winne, Food Policy Council Director at the Community Food Security Coalition of Santa Fe, gave a presentation about Food Policy Councils at a local food connection meeting, and that started the ball rolling for us. Many people expressed interest and strong feelings about participating, yet only a small group shows up to work towards it. One of the things Mark said about this kind of work was “Don’t worry… it will take 20 years!”

I’m not a very patient person. I’m probably not going to spend 20 years working towards it. But, I’m willing to suit up and show up and do the work right now, because food and health are very important to me and to my community. It’s service, and it’s what I can do.

I’ll keep ya posted.

Homegrown Propaganda

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Local Food: Great Greens in the Garden

Derek Markham — Mon, 19 May 2008 01:00:00 +0000

Mixed salad greens, arugula, and kale are coming up in the garden!

In support of my ideal of living simply, I am a big believer in growing as much as you can, even if all you have is a planter in the window or space on the counter. That’s the simplest and most natural method of feeding ourselves, and it’s inexpensive and fulfilling.

Mixed baby greens are one of the easiest to grow and they can be harvested continuously until they bolt, or flower. Just cut the leaves near ground level with scissors, and they will grow back again. Growing spinach is another easy spring meal.

Because this food goes to nourish our children and ourselves, growing organically makes the most sense to us. The natural father knows that there’s no need to worry about washing anything from our garden before eating it, and if we eat a little of the soil every time we eat from the garden, then we are actively building our immune system with soil based micro-organisms and minerals.

Local: It’s the way it used to be…

Natural Papa » local food

Free Fruits from the Urban Forest: Neighborhood Fruit Harvesting

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Review of Wisdom of the Last Farmer

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Find a CSA Farm and Enjoy Fresh Local Food!

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Growing Spinach at Home: Salad Greens in Your Garden

Growing Spinach at Home:

Planting spinach:

Harvesting spinach:

And more spinach planting:

Related posts

What’s a Food Policy Council?

Related posts

Local Food: Great Greens in the Garden

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