choices in your food, you feel better, you're sleeping better, you
have more energy, it's just better for overall health."
People who eat locally are controlled to some extent by the
four seasons. Eating locally means making some lifestyle
changes. In order to ensure a balanced diet, a locavore will
prepare for each upcoming harvest and, like much of the
animal kingdom, store for the winter. This does not mean
burying your veggies in the dirt in hopes of making a spring
salad in April. However, the storing process for winter does
include planning and preserving the year’s crop.
Sound like a variation on an old way of living? Maybe it
is. And it can be hard to embrace in the comfortable, diverse,
and easy-but-complicated lifestyle most of us have created for
ourselves.
Locavores try their best to survive winter’s meagre
harvest. Winter staples are parsnips, carrots, beets and celery
root, along with meat. Most locavores agree there's no need to
be rigid because, after all, eating locally often stems from a
passion for delicious food. A well-balanced diet can be
achieved by opening a jar of fresh preserved peaches from the
summer. Planning is important. Canning, pickling and
freezing will extend the season.
“Eating seasonally can be delicious and makes seasonal
treats like raspberries that much more special,” said Amy Fare
of Local Fare Wheatley.
Ontario, with its wide variety of crops and great growing
conditions, is an excellent place to eat locally all year around.
Fare hopes to eventually see all local products made from all
local ingredients. This will be a long process and will happen
in stages. Fruits and vegetables will have to be processed
through freezing, drying, fermenting and canning.
Communities will have to grow food like mushrooms, sprouts
and other items throughout the seasons in a greenhouse.
Vegetables like squash, onions, carrots, garlic and beets will
have to be stored for the winter. To complete this process, a
Long after the snow falls, local produce is
still available
community needs suppliers and processors.
A community also needs to work together, and you need
look no further than Leamington for an example. In the wake
of the H.J. Heinz announcement that their Leamington plant
would be closing in 2014, more than 2000 people have already
declared their support on Facebook for “Leamington Stands
Strong.” The group is dedicated to bringing locally made
products (food and other items) together with consumers in
the area.
While making your way through the aisles of the grocery
store, do you peer at labels and signage hoping to find the
word local? Does it feel like you’re standing in the middle of a
soulless store surrounded by trucked-in goods and imported
delicacies? Large, cookie cutter supermarkets usually offer the
same products and experience whether you’re in Windsor,
Winnipeg or Washington state.
The search for placement on the shelf started eight years
ago for Amy Fare when she expressed concern about her food
system and decided to join a guerrilla community garden.
After a few failed attempts at starting her own food
cooperative, as well as a buying club, she began to pursue a
dream of opening her own grocery store filled with food from
local providers. Now, the Local Fare Wheatley delivers
groceries to people around the city and also carries Fare's own
line of food products made with local ingredients.
Fare suggests people become more concerned about their
food choices. She expressed an understanding for money
constraints and believes food security issues need to be centre
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