Monday, March 7, 2011

Eating local & in season March

I have been reading Animal Vegetable Miracle. It follows a family that moves from Arizona to Virginia, to be able to eat local, organic, and in season; also known as a localvore. Since they are in Virginia and not southern Georgia, there produce starts coming in about a month later than it does here. Some of the foods listed came from the book, but most come from personal experience. I grew up on a farm and generally know what is in season and when, but not totally.


With this post I will list things that are locally available and either in season or that can be stored long term either in the ground or in a root cellar. I will not include foods that are preserved from previous seasons by drying, dehydrating, smoking, canning, freezing, salting or other preservation methods.


Those items from the ground or the root cellar:
potatoes
apples
wheat and other grains including corn, oats, millet, barley, quinoa, rye, etc.
Onion
beets
carrots (mine never stopped growing or got mulched by me)
walnuts
pecans
cabbage (I have some in the greenhouse, but some wintered out doors due to lack of space) also it can be stored in a root cellar.
Celery
citrus fruits
garlic
rice
winter squashes
pumpkin
rutabaga
turnip
celeriac


Those that can be grown and harvested right now:

cabbage (if it over wintered in the ground)
green onions
baby lettuce (full grown if grown in a green house)
rhubarb (this the "fruit" that bridges from fall apples to spring berries)
mescalin salad
spinach
carrots - overwintered
kale
broccoli
cauliflower - overwintered
peas
asparagus (mine are only on their first year so no harvesting this year)
morel (I have not found any yet, but I should before the end of the month)
parsley
cilantro - greenhouse
chard
collard greens
mustard greens
garlic - green or immature garlic
onion - some fall planted varieties are beginning to fatten about now.

Animal based foods available now:
eggs
chicken - I think now is the wrong time to eat them since they are about to reproduce for a spring flock. But if you have excess rosters that are not needed for breeding it would be a good time to eat them now.
Lamb
veal - if you can afford it and get over mentally eating an infant cow. Most veal comes from milk cow calves in commercial operations. You can share the milk with the calf or let one cow feed two calves while you milk the other, but this is "inefficient" in a commercial milk operation. Some commercial operations bottle feed formula to the calves till they can be weaned and sold.
Milk
butter
cream
sour cream
cheese
butter milk
yogurt
keifer
and any other dairy products

there are also a few wild plants and animals available this month.
Morel
dandelion greens
dandelion flowers
wood sorrel
clover

fiddle heads
wild hog (this animal is an invasive species and there is no closed season in Georgia)
game birds and small game if still in season (Georgia's season closed at the end of last month, but you could still have them in your refrigerator)
wild fish - crappie, bass, catfish, bream (sunfish), etc.
Turtle


If you know any other wild, gardened, or stored foods that are available please let me know in the comment section. Thanks

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting! And thank you very much for the pumpkin plants. they are doing well in the kitchen.

    ReplyDelete