When I first planted a garden, I dismissed the idea of putting in potatoes. I didn't eat a lot of potato, but I also thought that store bought ones were just fine. When I eventually added space for potatoes, I learned how wrong I was. New potatoes straight from the ground are nothing like the ones that have been sitting in storage.
"Put the pot on to boil, then go pick the corn. That's the right way to do corn on the cob," I was told. When I grew corn, I was seldom organized enough to obey that rule, but it was always picked within a couple hours of the meal. I can't grow corn now, but I still rely on roadside stands where I know the corn was picked that day.
Enjoying my own corn has made me a little snobbish. I am not even tempted by peeled cobs wrapped in plastic at the grocery store in March. Sure, the kernels look good, but I can just imagine how starchy it would taste.
My tomato plants are producing good sized fruit, and I am looking forward to warm, ripe tomatoes. We're a couple weeks later than everyone else here by the shore, so they are not ripening yet. But the plants are doing well in the heat sink between us and our neighbours to the south. There are enough coming that I may even spare a couple for fried green tomatoes as I wait for others to turn red.
Tomatoes just off the vine are not the same fruit as the tough reddish things we buy in February at the grocery store. Those do tempt me, however. But even choosing what looks okay, one cut in reveals green on the inside. But I haven't gotten used to cooking with canned tomatoes, unless I am making chilli or a big casserole. I give in to temptation and deal with what I get.
A few years ago, the church I worked for put on an earth day dinner called, "Eat local--and it's April." And the meal was vegetarian. We served crepes. We sourced local flour, potatoes, squash, and mushrooms, with apple crepes for dessert. It was too much work to repeat, but it was interesting to prepare a meal at the tail end of winter with local produce.
Right now, eating local is easy. Besides our own gardens, there are stores that bring in local produce, roadside stands, and farmers markets. We can buy directly from producers. In Ontario, the season is limited, but worth it.
Some years ago, in a conversation about buying local, a rather generous, forward thinking woman objected. "Why wouldn't we send money to Africa and South America for food? It's selfish to keep our money to ourselves." There are organizations that specialize in fair trade with small farmers. These tend to focus on produce that keeps, like coffee and cocoa. With items stamped with a big name, the money is going to the multi-national corporation not a local community.
When we were in Kenya in 1995, a friend was taking us out from Nairobi to her family's farm in Nyeri. Her brother and mother still lived on that productive ten acres. Her field was planted with corn and beans together. She explained that November was the short rains, so there was not always enough moisture to produce corn. In a year like that, the beans would be the crop.
Every bit of that farm grew one or two crops. That small farm supported and fed a large extended family. On the way there, we had passed a pineapple farm owned by a well known multi-national corporation. Acres and acres and acres of land that had once been farms like our friend's had been bought up and planted in a monoculture. We could see that the pineapple in our grocery store would put pennies in the pockets of day labourers and dollars in the company coffers. And monoculture like that costs the land.
It will always be a long way from the warm ripe tomatoes I am waiting for by my side door to the food I can get fresh in February. But in Ontario, we have started to stop acting like we can ignore the seasons.
Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway
