Locally Grown - Availability for March 18 , 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Sustainability has been on my mind a lot lately. If I had to guess, it’s probably on the minds of most of our farmers too. That’s one of the things that sets this whole group of individuals involved in the Locally Grown market apart from the average person. That includes all of you reading this too. There may be a few customers who just want fresh food, but I’m guessing that most of you care about the conscientious efforts to protect the environment that are going on behind the scenes at each of the participating farms.

Here are a few of the ways that I see connections between LOCAL FOODS and FARMING and SUSTAINABILITY.

Pastures practicing rotational grazing and mob stocking are actually creating a way to PUMP Carbon into the soil forming a CARBON SINK for CO2 from the atmosphere. Think of it this way. TALL GRASS = TALL ROOTS and when the cow comes to eat all that grass aboveground, the roots don’t all decompose they form a stable carbon pool in the ground which is also a source of immense fertility and enhances the ability of rainfall to soak into the ground. Grasslands well managed build topsoil faster than almost any other natural system. But only if they are well managed and it takes a special kind of farmer to do it. There’s only a small handful in our region. The beauty is, not only is it better for the environment (including potential benefits to climate change), but the animals are happier and better fed, and grassfed meat is better for us (chloroplast is where omega 3’s come from….not fish….fish get it from algae).

A few of our farms use some form of rainwater harvesting. The community garden in Clarkesville is 100% fed by capture rainwater. Rainwater harvesting is increasingly important to our urbanizing north Georgia region. North Georgia is at the tip top of a bowl called a watershed, specifically the Chattahoochee watershed. This is one of the smallest watersheds in the country serving a population well over 5 million people. Unfortunately, every time we build anything we disconnect rainfall from landing on the ground, soaking into the earth and slowly releasing into rivers and streams naturally. Farmers that are recycling the rain that falls from the sky reduces the pressures we put on water we pump out of the ground, or from surface waters. This is something that you can do as well. Recycling water from your roofs for gardening. Or simply encouraging rainfall at your home to go into the ground, not into a pipe. Pipes are bad for rainfall. They make it go downhill fast and forever.

The recycling of organic wastes (so called wastes) is a valuable way to rebuild topsoil fertility. Keeping organic wastes out of landfills actually reduces the production of methane gas which is a harmful greenhouse gas that is a byproduct of burying any organic waste in a landfill. Decomposition in the absence of oxygen is called anaerobic decomposition and produces methane which is 20x worse than CO2 per lb in increasing the greenhouse effect. Many if not most farms are involved in some form of composting, or at least using composted materials as a source of fertility. If there’s one thing you could start doing today to get involved in organic sustainability, it would be to start composting your kitchen scraps. It’s a lifelong activity just like brushing your teeth.

Here’s the way we figured out how to do it at our house with the least amount of hassle. Every meal we have veggie scraps (we don’t add citric wastes, meat, dairy, or hot peppers because micro-organisms don’t like these) and we put them in a ziploc bag that then goes in the freezer. This stops decomposition until the bag is full, then I carry it outside. I have a pile of leaves from my oak trees. I put a small circular cage on top of the leaves then add the food scraps and put several layers of leaves on top. This reduces any unsightliness, smells, and can even reduce things like flies if you really bury the scraps deep. Plus, the sandwiching of greens and browns helps the pile break down.

I feel extremely fortunate to have been involved in sustainability efforts for nearly 20 years now. However, let’s admit this to ourselves. We are all still taking baby steps in learning to live sustainably with our environment. True sustainability is a never-ending reinvention of ourselves and our behaviors. And what joy to learn about the earth and how to live in harmony with her patterns and habits. Sometimes I try not to pretend we’re saving the world through our actions. We’re just trying to do the best we can right here where we are, this piece of land that we control.

Why? Because its beautiful to live closer to the processes of the earth. In ecology there’s a term for organisms that live together to mutual benefit. It’s called symbiosis. Each action we take can either have a regenerative effect on the earth, or an extractive effect. It’s rarely just neutral. Keep that in mind as you walk the earth, and as you decide what you’d like to eat this week. EATING WELL isn’t the only way to walk sustainably by a long shot, but if you were going to just choose one practice to adopt, what a good way to go. We hope that your practice to EAT WELL may lead to a dozen other small steps towards sustainability.

EAT WELL and LIVE WELL!

Justin, Chuck, Andrew and Teri