Last year I found out about Road's End Farm, which sets up every Saturday at the Oliver Street Market from 9AM until 2PM. What I found out is that if you get onto their waiting list for the following summer, and are willing to pay a lump sum in advance (usually in spring to help with their seed starting), you can get veggies EVERY week that are locally grown! When you pay the lump sum, you get the veggies every week without having to pay, and how much you get depends on the size of the bag you want(which is determined in advance so that you pay the right amount).
I love going to the farmer's market and getting veggies that were probably pick fresh the day before! They always taste better than grocery store bought, AND they travel a far shorter distance! No, I know that not everybody can afford to pay in advance, so don't fret, they sell produce to people who are not part of the presale.
Road's End isn't the only local farmer selling their wares at the market either! There are 14 other venders there, varying from honey, eggs and meat, to spices and veggies. Heck! There's even entertainers playing music while you meander to look at everything!
There is also the Williams Lake Farmer's Market in Boitanio Park on Fridays from 9AM until 3PM. They have a great variety there as well!
The only problem with being a locavore is that you have to learn to cook for the food that is in season. This means that you eat what is readily available from local farmers. A true locavore would not go to the grocery store and buy oranges in December, because there is NO WAY a local farm could have grown them.
I am trying to be a locavore as much as I can be, but I am not able to totally commit to it solely yet. It's hard to change ones ways immediately, I have to say. The changes that I HAVE made though, are slowly putting me on the path. For example, I no longer buy plastic jugs of milk from the grocery store that (more than likely) have travelled from the lower mainland to get here. I now purchase bottled milk, which has travelled less than 100KM to get to my door.
I also (of course) buy produce from the Farmer's market, which has probably (I'm not absolutely certain though) travelled less than 100KM to get to me. I try to buy from the Cariboo Growers Market, which is open all year round, on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. I'm not entirely sure of their hours of operation on those days, but you can check it out on Oliver Street, across from the KFC.
I do, however, also purchase from the local groceries stores, because I like variety. Although, once I figure out how to can some of the produce that I purchase from the local farmers, I'll be a bit more of a locavore than ever before! :)
Friday, August 31, 2012
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, these are the basics of turning your home into a green home. So I've talked about recycling in my previous post, but I think that I'm still talking about it for today as well. I want to discuss Compost.
Composting can be gross, depending on how it is done, and what you place into the compost. Most composting does not include meat being added (either cooked or raw), as that make it smell bad, takes ages to compost, and add a whole new element of different kinds of bugs and health safety for everyone.
I'm not the best at composting, and I live in a townhouse where there are only two little gardens available to me. Not enough room for a true compost heap that my family might create, so I totally cheat. I have a bucket that I keep under my kitchen sink for raw veggie scraps, when it gets filled, I take it to "The Potato House Project"(http://www.facebook.com/potatohouseproject ) and put it in their compost pile.
I have the option of taking it to the dump's bin that takes plant materials, which anyone can do, but I love "The Potato House Project" for the education about the environment and growing. I also like the fact that it is on my way to work as well, *smile*. Mary Forbes and her husband told me that I could take my scraps there, and gave me a list of rules to go with it.
So here are the rules that I was given: No banana peels, coconut shells, avacodo skins, pineapple skins, or anything with tough skins of the same, as they take longer than a year to break down, and their goal is to be getting newly composted soil out to the garden beds every year. Absolutely NO meat whether cooked or raw, as it has the potential to cause sickness and contaminate the plants that they grow. They prefer no pitts from fruits be tossed in, again the reason being that they take longer than a year to compost. And the final rule I was given: NO cooked foods. I am not sure why this is, but I know there must be a good reason for it. Possibly a rodent attractant (no one wants those in the house!), along with other bugs that might destroy the benificial bugs for composting. As I said, I do not know for certain, so this is speculation, but I guess I will have to read up on this to further my knowledge on the subject.
I also believe that composting is a great way to recycle AND reuse! ;)
So that you can further YOUR knowledge about "The Potato House Project:, I have included a few interesting links, hope you enjoy! :)
Sunday, August 26, 2012
My Road Begins...
Well, my road has begun a while ago, but now I'm blogging about it. Here's hoping that I'm able to keep up with it...I have little faith in my being able to maintain regular posts, but I'm giving it a whirl.
Anyways, as I was saying, my road to going green started a while ago, with recycling bottles. My main reason for doing this was, of course, self serving: money. I buy stuff in bottles, like that bad for me bottle of Pepsi, and would save the bottles until I was desperate for money. Had I been truly green, I wouldn't have bought the bottles of pop to begin with.
So I'm not trying to say that I AM a green person, or that I could educate anyone on it by any means, but this forces me to try to be a more responsible steward of the earth. After all, one day my kids might give me grandbabies for me to spoil, and they MIGHT like to be able to breath without a bottle of air...
Now onto my current endeavors, how I am working on become a greener household, and attempting to get my family to follow suit. I have a recycling "centre" in my house, which is really just a fancy way to describe my three plastic shelves with two old freezer baskets, and a mid-sized blue recycle bin, plus on plastic "bin shopping" tote. The blue recycle bin is always lined with a bag for returnable beverage containers. One of the freezer baskets is for newspaper, the other for cardboard, and the tote is for plastics and cans. I live in a townhouse, and if we want to recycle, we have to sort it and take it to the recycling centre on Frizzie Road.
I have also cut down on our plastic intake by a fair amount, especially since I switched to Avalon bottled milk (you can buy it at Marget Meats in Williams Lake). I like having the bottled milk, but my kids aren't so keen, they insists that it tastes different. I tell them that it's because the milk doesn't have plastic seeping into it...lol! I have to say that this was a more expensive en devour, as 1 liter of milk there cost almost as much as a 4 liter jug of milk from other grocery stores, but it was a choice that I made, and refuse to turn back from (what can I say, I'm pig-headed some times!).
I also take the recyclables from work (excluding returnable beverage containers), and take them to the recycling centre as well. The only problem with this is that I have to take the recyclables from work every day, or else they will toss them away. There is no room to store them for an entire week there, and the amount that comes from work is more than I can store at home as well. This then means that in order to get work to recycle, I have to use gas in my car in order to get these recyclables to where they need to go. I'm still fairly certain that in the long run it is better for the environment, but I wish that I didn't have to go everyday. But if wishes were pennies, EVERYONE would be rich! :)
Well, this is enough for one day, I'll try to write more tomorrow! :)
Anyways, as I was saying, my road to going green started a while ago, with recycling bottles. My main reason for doing this was, of course, self serving: money. I buy stuff in bottles, like that bad for me bottle of Pepsi, and would save the bottles until I was desperate for money. Had I been truly green, I wouldn't have bought the bottles of pop to begin with.
So I'm not trying to say that I AM a green person, or that I could educate anyone on it by any means, but this forces me to try to be a more responsible steward of the earth. After all, one day my kids might give me grandbabies for me to spoil, and they MIGHT like to be able to breath without a bottle of air...
Now onto my current endeavors, how I am working on become a greener household, and attempting to get my family to follow suit. I have a recycling "centre" in my house, which is really just a fancy way to describe my three plastic shelves with two old freezer baskets, and a mid-sized blue recycle bin, plus on plastic "bin shopping" tote. The blue recycle bin is always lined with a bag for returnable beverage containers. One of the freezer baskets is for newspaper, the other for cardboard, and the tote is for plastics and cans. I live in a townhouse, and if we want to recycle, we have to sort it and take it to the recycling centre on Frizzie Road.
I have also cut down on our plastic intake by a fair amount, especially since I switched to Avalon bottled milk (you can buy it at Marget Meats in Williams Lake). I like having the bottled milk, but my kids aren't so keen, they insists that it tastes different. I tell them that it's because the milk doesn't have plastic seeping into it...lol! I have to say that this was a more expensive en devour, as 1 liter of milk there cost almost as much as a 4 liter jug of milk from other grocery stores, but it was a choice that I made, and refuse to turn back from (what can I say, I'm pig-headed some times!).
I also take the recyclables from work (excluding returnable beverage containers), and take them to the recycling centre as well. The only problem with this is that I have to take the recyclables from work every day, or else they will toss them away. There is no room to store them for an entire week there, and the amount that comes from work is more than I can store at home as well. This then means that in order to get work to recycle, I have to use gas in my car in order to get these recyclables to where they need to go. I'm still fairly certain that in the long run it is better for the environment, but I wish that I didn't have to go everyday. But if wishes were pennies, EVERYONE would be rich! :)
Well, this is enough for one day, I'll try to write more tomorrow! :)
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