Kristi went to the Winter Farmer’s Market in Wayland yesterday. This is what it looks like there, in mid-January. An abundance of food, not just of the root variety, but fresh and green and vibrant, as well.
Sometimes in the spring and early summer, when the markets start up and the CSA starts rolling in, I experience this guilty sensation. I want to just dive into full-on local eating, but you can’t really eat greens, garlic scapes and strawberries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s just not enough calories.
The nice thing about the deep winter is that you can count some serious local calories to be the backbone of a meal. Like potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, beets, turnips, kohlrabi. Then fresh and green things are welcome additions.
So I have a bone to pick with consumers and with farmers/infrastructure builders. Consumers: it is not difficult to buy 50lbs of potatoes (for example) and tuck them away in a reasonably potato-friendly spot in your home. Farmers/People with Resources and Power: It would be even better if YOU invested in root cellars and stored the food for us. Then we could be sure that our carrots and onions were well preserved. And we could get our asses out to you, or you could get our turnips to us here in the city. [Mental blip: Perhaps we need municipal root cellars.]
Last bit of this for everyone: It’s not hard to eat locally and well in the winter. With events like the Wayland Farmer’s Market, it doesn’t even require the advance planning or upfront capital of a winter CSA.
Went to the farmers market in Wayland and was pleasantly surprised with all the items that they had there. I will definitely try to return often as possible.
Unfortunately, for those living car-less in a small Boston apartment, buying, transporting, and storing 50 lbs. of potatoes (for example) *can* be difficult. (Same with getting to a suburban locale like Wayland for a farmer’s market in the dead of winter.) Not impossible, but for many the options are limited.
I agree that it would be fantastic if stores/farmers/community centers used their resources to help provide better access to local foods year-round; I would gladly go to a community center to purchase (or even just store & retrieve) foods that I can’t store at home.
I’ve had much better luck storing winter squash at home than potatoes, both of which I bought in significant bulk at the tail end of the regular farmer’s market season at Thanksgiving. I keep them in my “root attic” which is the right temperature (low 50s) and dark, but the potatoes just don’t last - I suspect it’s just too dry (which the squash loves, fortunately). Thus I hope local growers do get the message about mass root cellaring. It’s also entirely possible for them to grow or at least preserve some hardy crops under cold frames virtually all winter.
It’s actually VERY easy to get 50 lbs. of ANYTHING to your home, even a teensy apartment (like my Cambridge one). There’s Metro Pedal Power (http://metropedalpower.com/); there’s Zipcar (http://www.zipcar.com/boston/); and there are ALWAYS people more than willing to take you for a spin to do something good: like storing 50 lbs. of produce for the winter.
I do also adamantly agree with the fact that municipalities need to respond to the increasing demand for local food storage/lockers/freezers. Community-driven communal spaces, especially food-related ones, are a thing of the not-so-distant past that need to be a part of the oh-so-in-our-faces-turning-drastic future.
I went to the Wayland market, too, and posed for a photo with the collard greens. I threw down a $100 (that I barely had) and am THRILLED to have kept my dollars in a local economy and further thrilled to accompany my frozen and canned goods with these fresh winter staples.
If this California transplant can handle a New England winter, then so can you.
@Josh, I hear you on the car-less and with small apartment. We don’t live in a very big place, but we’ve had a much smaller apartment and it would have been really impossible. Also with the car. Would you consider zip car pooling with other folks who want to get to Wayland? We could help organize that. Our friend went out to Wayland with a zip car on Saturday for $40. Divided in four or five, that could be really reasonable.
@Eric, bummer about the potatoes! I hope too many don’t go in the compost.
Has anyone been to the Natick winter farmer’s market yet? Also on Saturdays - I’m going to Wayland today for the first time but might try Natick next week. The Globe wrote about it last week. I’m not sure if comments support HTML so I won’t try to link the URL but you can copy/paste: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2010/01/17/shoppers_warm_up_to_naticks_winter_farmers_market/
About the potatoes - if they’ve sprouted, just wait a few more months and stick them in a 5 gallon bucket full of dirt and compost, and voila - more potatoes!