Year-round local food
Wouldn’t it be great to have year-round, fresh, locally-grown, organic veggies?! In cold-weather climates like Canada’s, this doesn’t seem possible, at least, not without extremely expensive, energy-guzzling greenhouse operations.
The surprising reality is, it can be done! With an energetically open-minded approach to farming, featuring plenty of research, planning and trial-and-error experimentation, it IS possible to provide year-round organics, on a small and sustainable scale. If you’re interested in how this could happen, read on…
The year-round harvest starts here…
We start with our regular outdoor growing season here in southern Ontario, lasting from May through September, when the days are long and the temperature warm. In the best of years, with an early last frost in spring, and a late first frost in the fall, that’s only 5 months of good growing weather.
Many garden veggies don’t take well to cold, but luckily, many others do. Hardier fare like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and kale, spinach, Swiss chard, and root crops like carrots, parsnips, beets, and potatoes, can easily last through the cooler, darker month of October. So that brings us to 6 months of outdoor growing.
After that, we have to dip into the farming toolbox to stretch the season…
What’s in our toolbox?
To stretch the prime six months of the year right around the calendar, we have to combine several methods and techniques:
Season extension refers to just about any approach to growing that somehow modifies the weather conditions at the beginning and end of the regular outdoor growing season to allow for longer production. The fully heated greenhouse is the ultimate season extender, but it also costs a fortune, both to build, and especially to heat and light. There are many other, more practical techniques. Some of the most interesting for our purposes include transplants, row covers, mulch, and unheated greenhouses. By combining various techniques with creative crop selection and timing, we can fairly easily add a month to the beginning and end of the outdoor season, April and November. Our total is now 8 months (these approaches still depend to quite a degree on the weather)!
Then there’s winter harvest, a more extreme technique that can fill out the coldest months with absolutely fresh veggies. Certain hardy crops, including carrots, spinach, and a number of other greens, can be grown in late summer and fall, left in the ground in unheated greenhouses, and harvested through winter, into March and even April (in the low-light days of winter, they don’t really grow much, but remain healthy and fresh).
All of that covers the remaining four months, taking us allowing us to grow for a full 12 months, right through the calendar!
Of course, there’s a difference between what’s growing and what’s available to eat. For example, during the winter, you can’t live on greens and carrots alone (maybe you could just get by, but it wouldn’t be that exciting!). For EATING right around the calendar, a couple more approaches come in handy…
Winter storage, as in a root cellar and preserving, is the traditional family farm way to have local veggies during the winter months, right until the very first new harvests begin in May and June. Given the proper cool conditions, a whole range of crops can be stored fresh for several weeks to several months, things like cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, squash, even tomatoes. Crop planning plays a big part here as well: certain varieties that are especially good for long-term storage. Preserving food by a variety of methods, including pickling, canning and freezing, accommodates an even wider veggie selection.
Seasonal eating is the final strategy. It’s not exactly a farming technique, but it is a necessary part of the year-round, sustainable, local food equation. By adjusting to what is fresh and locally grown at different times of the year, expectations match the harvest and year-round, locally-grown organics…works!!
If you’re interested in year-round, local-food organics in the Lakefield-Peterborough area, drop us a note!
