“You are what you eat.” -Unknown

Mike and I have had several great conversations over food about food recently. We go around and around trying to figure out how best to stay healthy while cutting back on the impact that our food consumption has on the environment. We’re extremely interested in the idea of a local diet. Exclusively local. Sounds great, especially when we live in a town with an organic family farm around every corner. But there are some real challenges with this lifestyle, like making sure we still get a diversity of food and nutrients in our diet.

Since moving here, we have already cut way back on buying food products that are processed and packaged. But we still buy a lot of things like nuts and fruits that were grown far, far away and then transported here.

How do we get away from that? We have come to the conclusion that there is not one solution/alternative to big agriculture for the whole country, let alone the world, or even a state. It comes down to a person’s region, and the type of foods that are abundant in that region. We need to eat more of what is native here.

In northern WI we have wild rice growing in abundance in our rivers and lakes. We have thick forestland and lakes where fish, deer, rabbits, ducks, and other game live. We have maple syrup. We have farmland.  We really have everything we need in order to feed a bunch of humans. What we don’t have is bananas…avocados…exotic fruit and veggies that need tropical or Mediterranean climates in order to survive.

If we’re going to do this eating local thing the right way, we would have to give up those things. But could they possibly be grown here? According to Eliot Coleman in his book The Winter Harvest Handbook, you can actually garden all winter long, even in cold climates. We’ve been reading his book and thinking hard about how we can put some of his ideas for winter growing into practice around here. Mr. Coleman’s main strategy is to build a greenhouse within a greenhouse- to really capitalize on the sun’s heat during the day and retain that heat all night long.

If these techniques work to grow regular veggies during the cold months, might they also work for growing exotic veggies and fruit during the warm months? We intend to find out. First on the list is peaches. We would love to grow fresh peaches here, but it’s just a tad too cold. If we can figure out a way to keep a peach tree alive and happy, we’ll move on to crazier things like olives and maybe even mangoes!

But there is another possible solution- a seasonal diet. Basically every animal on the planet has a season diet, besides modern-day humans. Deer eat bugs and birds and grass all summer long, but during the winter they eat the bark off of trees. Bear enjoy an enormously diverse diet all summer long, and eat very little of anything during the winter. Native Americans way back in the day had very seasonal diets.

Most people today have season cravings, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a seasonal diet. We crave apples and pumpkin in the fall, melons and strawberries in the summer, root veggies and hardy meat stews in the winter. Our cravings happen because our bodies know what foods are in season and therefore are the tastiest. But because modern technology and big agriculture make it possible, our society has grown accustomed to supplementing those seasonal goodies with so many other foods, imported from far away.

I am always shocked to see watermelon sitting in the produce section of the grocery store in mid-December. WHY? Does anyone even feel like eating a watermelon in December?? My guess is 75% of those melons end up going bad and being chucked out by the produce guy. Sad! Why even have them in the store at all, until June?

I challenge you all to be more sensitive to what is in season in your area and what is not. Find out what foods are native to your area, and increase those in your diet. Treat exotic foods as luxuries and cut way back on them if you can. Appreciate the technology that makes it possible for you to eat them. Maybe even make a family outing to a Native American reservation and shadow someone as they go out for the annual wild rice harvest in the fall, or collect and boil maple syrup in the spring. I bet they’d be happy to share and teach their traditions with those who are interested, and they are usually very skilled and knowledgeable in ways to use our area’s natural resources for survival.

One last thing, check out this great website for videos and recipes for local and seasonal eating.