Yamhill Valley Grown, Your Guide To Local Food

BACK TO OUR ROOTS ~By Kendra Lindell Everywhere around the valley, a common theme I see is people going “back to their roots.” Though we would never want to give up the comforts of today’s modern times, we idolize a not so distant past when your vegetables came from the farm stand down the road, your milk was fresh with the cream on the top, and the eggs sizzling in your pan came right out of your backyard. Wait a minute, that soundsl like Yamhill County! We are lucky to live in a time and a place when and where people are really starting to get it. Through trial and error of new methods discovered in the last century, we are learning that more isn’t always better, diversity is key, and local is the name of the game. Thus, traditional farm methods are ﬁnding their way back in our gardens, farms and plates. My husband and I started raising layer small garden even seems out of reach, and chickens. We are in awe of how well they ﬁt in that’s just ﬁne. CSA’s and Farmers Markets are our “landscape.” We feed them our vegetable more prevalent and locally sourced produce is scraps and they give us manure we use for ﬁnding its way onto the grocery shelves. We compost. We use the compost in our garden and want to know where our food comes from and grow food. The scraps we don’t eat, we feed to these kind of options are helping bridge the gap. the chickens. The chickens make manure and The more we demand and vote with our dollars, the cycle continues. the more commerce Additionally, they graze will respond with and keep pests down. opportunities to do so. Cycles and systems like I’m also noticing this are present more people learning everywhere, and they how to stretch our all depend on each resources, using both other. When you pay old and new ways of attention you see nature preservation. is constantly showing us Whether how this whole living and growing thing works. We also keep bees and a small garden. We’d like to get some livestock but we’re taking baby steps. I doubt we’ll ever be fully self sufﬁcient. After all, getting back to our roots doesn't mean we should all become farmers. Not everyone will post a chicken coop in their backyard and sometimes life gets so crazy that growing a we’re “putting up” food we’ve grown, or using produce bought from a local farmer. Unlike food off the shelves of grocery stores, we know exactly what is in it and where it came from. Canned and frozen foods taste better when they’re put up fresh, and that’s something we can control when we do it ourselves. When we grow our own food or 25

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