Anna, would you send a link to your response? I couldn't find it on the site. http://rejectedletterstotheeditor.com
Although Martin raises good questions, he also appears to be setting up false dicotomies and ignoring many better solutions. On the issue of tomatoes in cans vs tomatoes from far away other solutions would be: *Growing as much as you can in your own yard or community garden plot. *Drying your own tomatoes, preferably using the sun *Buying a winter and spring's worth of dried tomatoes all at once from a local producer. *Eating different orange vegetables that are fresh or store naturally over the winter such as carrots or butternut squash *Using Four Season Harvest Techniques *Eating tomatoes in the winter if you live where it's warm enough to grow them then. In the strawberry situation, one of the downsides to farmer's markets is that they usually require that each farmer bring their items in individually and be physically present for the market. This means that a high number of people are driving in to the market area in smaller vehicles. One of the things some states are doing with Oklahoma being the leader in this is to have a farmer's market co-op. Then a farmer far from the market drives in, stopping at other farms on the way to pick up their items. All the other farmers are not required to come in as well. There are other solutions to the farmer's market though such as *Having a farmer's market surrounded by farms *Having a CSA service a particular neighborhood or building so that the CSA makes one or two deliveries rather than all the CSA members driving to the farm. And some people will counter that people don't have enough room in their yards or community garden plots to grow all their own foods. This is often true. So what might be a good solution here is to fucus on growing fresh high nutrition items that don't travel or store easily and then sign up with local farmers to grow your items that could be stored naturally through the winter. So grow your own salad items and berries if you have a small space. If you have a medium amount of space add fresh beans, summer squash, melons, sweet corn, fruit trees/shrubs, herbs and spices, and more tomatoes and peppers for home drying. From the farmer get irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, dry beans, dried fruit, additional dried vegetables, grains, storage onions, nuts, seeds, vegetable oils, keeping apples, vinegar, winter squash, and items you can store in your root cellar such as cabbages or root vegetables in sand. To help in planning an integrated system like this helpful sources are *Any/all3 of the Square Foot Gardening books by Bartholomew *How to Grow More Vegetables 7th ed by John Jeavons *One Circle: How to Grow a Complete Diet in Less than 1000 square feet by David Duhon. *The Mexican and Kenyan sample plans related to the One Circle book from Bountiful Gardens. *The Complete Nutrition Garden experiment by Albie Miles http://www.cityfarmer.org/albie.html *Some good nutrition software such as DietPower *An encyclopedic cookbook--Anyone have suggestions here as to what is the most thorough and wide ranging and would give people a tremendous set of skills? >Don't drive your sport utility vehicle to the farmers' market, buy one food item and drive home again. Even if you are using reusable bags. Exactly. Is there a name for this sort of misguided yet well intentioned attempt at green-ness? Faux Greenies? Green Veneered? Sharon [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
