Seasonal foods

Very few people think of eggs as being a seasonal food. Our chickens range freely in the pasture, digging and scratching, though at dusk they all march back into the brooder house, so we can lock the door on predators. In the brooder house they have corn available to them to encourage those beautiful yellow yolks. Yet as winter approaches we have an increasing number of days when the chickens stay in the brooder house. We have introduced a new generation of chickens into the flock, and the youngsters are less 'street smart' so, with harsher conditions, we tend to keep them locked up. The water is heated to keep it liquid but from the moment the chickens stop ranging they lay fewer eggs. When the days get noticeably shorter they lay even fewer eggs. We have gone from 15-18 eggs a day to one or two. Still plenty for our own use but not enough to hand out anymore. Strange, we had flyers out all summer advertising free range eggs, and now the phone calls have started!


The single most political act most of us can do is to eat locally grown food! A new study published in the journal Food Policy  found that the transportation of food over long distances (above 12 miles!) can cause more harm than the growing of food with non-organic methods.Calculating the hidden costs of food transport in farming, the researchers calculated that the UK could save around $4billion a year if all food consumed were to be grown locally and an additional $2 billion if it were grown organically. It may be time to label food in supermarkets with the miles a food has travelled.


Locally grown doesn't have to be boring, with all the techniques available for preserving food, it doesn't even have to be seasonal. We freeze, we dehydrate and we can food. We have 3 chest freezers and when we walk out to grab food, we jokingly refer to the south porch as 'Walmart'! We also try to share our bounty with family or friends unable to grow a garden. We try to grow as responsibly as possible and eschew chemical pesticides, preferring to use natural methods.

People may joke about the 'hippy lifestyle' or 'The Good Life' but eating locally grown food, growing it or buying from the Farmers' Market, affects farms, large corporations, political decisions..... I guess that makes us the revolutionaries of the 21st Century!