Flip of the Coyne

Did my major seed ordering this morning.  I am looking forward to the garden this year I have some things coming that I truly am looking forward to growing including peanuts.  In our quest for 100 mile sustainability it is hard to imagine not eating the things that we have taken for granted like peanut butter.

Even though I am not a big peanut butter eater the idea that I cannot have toast with peanut butter and honey is a bit of a downer but if my peanuts are successful then I will have enough peanuts that we can have peanut butter for a year.  When I first started to look for peanuts I thought I might be able to make some sort of makeshift lean-too to grow them in but then found not only one but two varieties that should grow in my limited growing season I was ecstatic, well almost.  The first ones I found were in the US and since I cannot make heads or tails out of the import regulations I started to lose hope until I found that Dominion Seed House had a variety developed for a Canadian growing season.

I have actually found a couple of great things over the past few weeks that excite me about 2010.  I got the Zero Mile Diet Seed Kit for Christmas from my wonderful wife, you can get yours at www.saltspringseeds.com, this kit will give me enough seeds combined with the Ref Fife we obtained last summer that we should be able to grow enough grains to keep bread on the table for a long time.  I also found Maple Syrup right here in BC and within 100 miles of home too!  I was amazed to find that BC has a budding maple syrup industry with a festival to boot!

Then there is Naramustard from Naramata, I have yet to confirm if their mustard seed is from local sources or from the prairies.  It may be the closest thing to local mustard I can find since I have come up empty on mustard seeds to grow.  I would like to know if I could make something from the wild mustard that grows everywhere.

I am still looking for a Canadian source of sorghum both for the sugar and for the grain so I can make gluten free flour for my dad.  There are suppliers all over the US but I have not found any here yet, well other than broom sorghum.  I did order an Aztec corn that I will try to dry and make flour out of I just hope mother nature cooperates this year.

Sometime today when I wake up since it is 4am I will make my sweet potato order.  This may be the funnest order the idea of having a winter supply of sweet potatoes is exciting.

I am pretty lucky that we have the space to experiment with all these varieties of plants.  If I am successful then in a few years we shouldn’t have to go off our farm to by much of anything.  Once we have our garden all established we have talked about putting in a small orchard, the challenge there is our growing zone is 3.  There are some older varieties that once grew on farms all around the area but as new people have moved in they quickly cut down the old fruit trees as the fruit is bitter from the lack of water or care or they simply don’t want to look after the tree or have no use for it.  It is a shame there used to be a bunch of apricot trees that grew what would now be a heritage apricot but they are mostly gone as are the cherry trees and even the apples.  It is too bad since these older trees were not always grafted onto another species.  We have a plum tree that my great grandpa planted the original tree is gone now but 4 of its suckers have grown into very productive replacements that give us the best plums ever.

Its late and my son will be up in a few hours so I need to sign off.  If you are going to be doing any gardening this summer I would love to hear about it.

g’nite.

Just finished reading Michael Pollan’s book Food Rules An Eaters Manual. This book is a great little read it has 64 Rules that will help you eat better and it is a great book to help make the argument for eating locally.  For example Rule #3 Avoid food products containing ingredients that no ordinary human would keep in the pantry. 

You should pick up a copy of this book if you are looking for a light read.  It will only take you an hour maybe less if you have no distractions it is only 140 pages long and really is an easy and in some places a funny read.

We live in one of the greatest areas in the world for local food production yet our restaurants have yet to realize this and capitalize on it.   There are a few great locations like the Bench Market in Penticton, the Bonfire Restaurant and Bar West Kelowna or the Cabana Grille in Kelowna but these seem to be only a few acceptations out of the  many many establishments in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys.  Some of the Wineries have began to utilize local tastes to accompany their wines but for the casual diner the experience is still few and far between.

With 2010 here I would like to see our local restaurants add at least 1 local meal to their menu.

When we are lucky enough to have world class local wineries and micro breweries in our region we should be celebrating it with great local cuisine.

As some of you may already know I have been on a quest ever since I read “The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating” by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon winter 2007/08. Well that and a combination of other things that were taking place in my personal life at the time. I had been reading a lot the couple of years leading up to that book. Books like Urban Meltdown that looks at how we build our communities to books on global warming and sustainable economy.

I had gardened before in fact growing up on our family farm the garden had played a large roll in my early memories. I grew up with eating locally but had never paid it much attention until I moved back to Princeton. It had become noticeable that the local food economy had started to disappear but it wouldn’t be for a few years until I really understood the consequences of what was happening around me.

So back to my quest, when I was reading the 100-Mile Diet I had already decided to plant a garden that year. So when I read the book it solidified my resolve to start eating locally. There was one little flaw in my plan but unlike the authors in the book I was not about to jump into this project blind, nope I had read the book and saw how hard it was for them to find food other than potatoes when they had decided to start their 100 mile journey. The biggest problem for me is, well Princeton seems to be in the middle of no where.

Luckily for me and the rest of us on this 100 mile quest you do not use road miles rather you draw your circle as the crow would fly,

meaning straight line. This was a great relieve when I learned this because unlike living in Greater Vancouver Area where there is the dairy farms of the Fraser Valley or their potato production, and other basic necessities I am in Princeton and all of these areas would be out of my reach by the highway mile method.

So here is what I am going to do and I will document it along the way, I am going a 100 mile diet quest. I am not going to jump into this without educating myself first and I am not about to start in the dead of winter with nothing local other than some canned cherries, beets and some frozen pumpkin. Nope I am going to find what grows and is produced within my 100 mile range, what I cannot find I will try to grow myself. And I am going to change the rules a little since we live so close to the US border much of my 100 miles is south of the border. With so many regulations and restrictions on what you can bring to Canada from the US I am going to make some allowances in other areas to cover some of the mileage that I am going to lose to the south. Another rule I am going to make is that if you go on a trip your food should be within 100 miles of the place you are visiting, if you visit an area for more than a day then you can bring home food from that area. For example if I visit Vancouver Island for a few days then I can bring home some food that was produced on the Island.

If you do follow my quest I hope it encourages you to join me.