When the Farmer is Your Neighbor

Eating fruits and vegetables in season is good: Getting them right from your neighbor's farm stand is even better. This summer, we are eating fresh, and we're eating just about as local as we can get. 

Every Wednesday and Saturday morning during the summer, we experience what might be considered a little traffic jam just down the road and around the corner. The cars and trucks line the sides of the road, waiting for 8AM when the family owned and operated Hale Farm's stand opens up. 

While we wait, we admire the rows of vegetables and flowers and the view of Picacho Peak in the distance. 

At opening time, folks grab a little red wagon and fill it with green chiles just brought in from the field, watermelon, garlic, onions, okra, cucumbers, black-eyed peas, tomatoes, cabbage, new potatoes. eggplants, squash of all kinds, green beans, fragrant basil, honey from the hives out back, and cut flowers. Oh, and the best sweet corn on the cob that I've eaten in years--Bill grills it in the husk. Those are just some of the items I've seen so far, and we're still at the beginning of the season. 

The line at the cash registers stretches out to the road, while the neighbors chat and kid each other good-naturedly. The lady at the register says "There's got to be a place where no one's in a rush, and this is it!" We all agree, while reaching over for a few more fresh green beans. 

This is part of our haul from this past Wednesday. Tonight we're having grilled corn on the cob and a salad made of those red new potatoes, green beans, and pesto made from that good-smelling basil. So healthy, and so delicious!

If you want to see what's going on at the farm, you can like them on Facebook at Hale Farm (Las Cruces). 

Pancake Week on The Zees Go West; An Index

You can find more recipes of all kinds on my other blog, Recipes for Ben.

Best Pancake Recipes
Cheese Blintzes
Cottage Cheese Pancakes
Dutch Babies
French Pancakes
Healthy Whole-Grain Pancakes
It's Time for Pancakes!
Making Chocolate Chip Pancakes Without Singing
Pancake History
Pancakes for Your Face
Pannekoeken Recipes
Pumpkin Pancakes in Sugar Season
What to Put in Your Pannekoeken
Yogurt Pancakes

Southwestern Foods on The Zees Go West; An Index

Spring cleaning! It's time to de-clutter and tidy up at The Zees Go West. The next blog post or two will consist of indexes to help you find your way around and to minimize some of the stuff on the side of the page.

Note: You can find more recipes of all kinds on my other blog, Recipes for Ben.

Best Green Chile Cheeseburger

Blue Corn Meal

Chipotle Recipes

Green Chile Recipes

Harvest Time in Clovis

Honey Spreads

Little Fires in Your Mouth

More Chile Sweets

Peanuts!

Pinto Beans

Posole

Red Chile

The Search for Local Honey

Which is Best--The Owl or the Buckhorn?

Wineries in New Mexico

My Favorite Blogs

My favorite bone

You may have noticed my list of favorite blogs on the left side of this page. Here is a little additional information about each one. Go ahead, check them out--but beware of blog addiction!

Animals

-Bonobo Handshake: Vanessa is a writer and researcher with the Hominoid Psychology Research Group. Her blog is about her 2007 research trip to study endangered bonobos in the Congo.


Books
-A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy: Liz B. writes about books, movies, and TV shows, with an emphasis on books for children and teens.

-Incurable Logophilia; reflections on a love of words, of literature, of language: A wonderful resource when you’re looking for books to read next.

-A Patchwork of Books: Amanda is a bookworm and children’s library assistant who is working toward her Master’s in Library Science. She writes about children’s and young adult literature.

Fiber Arts
-Knit Lit: Kate says “I write. I knit. I write about knitting. And I like you. I really, really like you.” Great writing, terrific ideas and photographs, and a list of links that includes I May Be Knitting a Ranchhouse, Skein Cocaine, and Fondle My Sweaters . What else do you need to know?

-Yarn Harlot; Stephanie Pearl-McPhee goes on (and on) about knitting.

Food and Recipes
-Desert Candy: Mercedes does some wonderful Middle Eastern cooking, then photographs and writes about it in this beautifully designed blog.

Life in the Southwest
-greenchilesandroses: Night Lightning Woman is a retired social worker who has lived her entire life in New Mexico and Texas.

-If the Creek Don't Rise: Lin (“I figure that fantasies should be game plans”) writes about living off the grid in the remote desert Southwest.

-La Casa de Towanda: Sharon is doing some New Mexico dreaming while planning her move from Kansas to Santa Fe. She writes lovely posts on northern New Mexico, with gorgeous photographs and a stylish layout.

-Picturing New Mexico: Lots of intriguing photos.

-Santa Fe Journal: “New Mexico, past and present, with photos and text.”


Sites That Appeal to My Librarian Self
-Love the Liberry : Amy and Marian write about the weird stuff that happens in libraries; librarians won’t be surprised, but you may be!

-Planet Esme: Children’s author (Sahara Special, etc.) Esme Raji Codell writes about children’s literature.

Impossible to Classify
-Overheard Lines: I love those snippets of conversation you hear when passing through a crowd. This eavesdropping playwright captures odd bits in that most fertile of listening posts, the San Francisco Bay Area.

-Philip Greenspun's Weblog: A posting every day, an interesting idea every three months. I’ve always loved Philip G’s photographs, now we can find out what he has to say.

-PostSecret: Anonymous handmade postcards each tell a secret never before revealed about their maker; an ongoing community art project that is now featured in several books. People slip even more postcards into the books on the shelves of bookshops and libraries.

-to-do list : A collection of lists and what they reveal (“quirks, compulsions, and habits”) about the people who make them.

Eating Locally

Apparently, eating locally has become a big issue. I wrote a little about it after reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; A Year of Food Life.

Take a few moments to listen to Manny Howard’s amusing story about the farm he created in his Brooklyn backyard, as he tried to eat only what he raised.
Man Lives Off Fat of His Brooklyn Land: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15337128

Here are some more National Public Radio audio stories on the issue of eating locally:

Will Work for Food: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10219029
Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon try, for one year, to eat only food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver, British Columbia home. Weekend Edition, May 20, 2007. Their book is called Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally.

Back to Basics; Kingsolver Clan Lives Off Land: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9891473
An interview with Barbara Kingsolver and her husband, Steven Hopp on Weekend Edition, April 29, 2007.

Eating Local, Thinking Global: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5709576
Discussion and calls from listeners on Talk of the Nation, August 25, 2006.

Yet Another Plug for the Clovis Farmers Market…and other local food sources

I’ve been reading Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver, her husband Steven Hopp, and daughters Camille and Lily, moved from Tucson to the family’s farm in southwest Virginia. Their aim was to eat only food that they grew themselves or that was produced locally for a whole year.

We have gotten used to eating food out of season—food that is transported all over the world. There is a movement, variously referred to as Slow Food, or eating locally (those who do are called “locavores”), that challenges us to eat a more healthy diet and to help the environment and the local economy by not buying food that has been transported for more than 100 miles (“oily food” according to Steven Hopp). In doing so, we eat fresher, more wholesome food and support sustainable agriculture and our local farmers.

Here are some examples of “oily food” from my own kitchen here in Clovis, New Mexico. I have a package of Cape Cod dried cranberries which was purchased in Manchester, New Hampshire before we moved here. Cape Cod, where the cranberries grew, is 120 miles from the store where I bought them--a little over the 100 mile limit I’m trying for. However, the label tells me that the cranberries from Massachusetts were packaged in Kingsburg, California! That’s 3142 miles from Cape Cod, so my cranberries traveled from Cape Cod to Kingsburg to Manchester (and we know that there were probably grocery distribution centers involved along the way that would increase the mileage) for a total of 6,265 miles, plus the 16 mile round trip I made to and from the supermarket. I’m shocked, are you?

I don’t even want to try to compute the miles traveled and the gas and oil used to produce the grape juice I bought recently here in Clovis. The label tells me that it contains concentrates from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. I could have bought fresh apple cider from right down the road.

When you eat locally, you can buy directly from the producer, often at farmers markets, or directly from the farm. Much of this food is produced organically, because it is grown on a small scale. The meat comes from animals who have lived a good life and have finished it up in grassy pastures, not in the crowded horror we see at feedlots.

We buy more and more of our weekly food from the Clovis Farmers Market. I have spent some time looking at sources for grass-fed beef and other meats, then checking maps to find which are closest to home—preferably under the 100 mile limit. Local Harvest is a good online resource for the best organic food that is grown closest to you. Check the distance from your door to the food producer’s door on Google Maps. The Animal, Vegetable, Miracle website has a good list of resources to help you start eating locally.

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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle web site: http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

FarmersMarket.com: Listing of markets by states: http://farmersmarket.com/

Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Local Harvest; Real Food, Real Farmers, Real Community: http://www.localharvest.org/

Slow Food USA: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/

A source for grass fed beef that is only 53 miles from Clovis: http://www.milnesandgrassfedbeef.com/

Sustainable Agriculture: http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/concept.htm