Something special sat on my kitchen windowsill this week – The first ripe tomato from the garden! It didn’t last long. Ended up sliced in a salad. Organically grown, red and delicious, there’s another one sitting on the windowsill now. What a blessing! Thank you Lord.
This year the whole growing veggies thing started when the price of gas shot up like a geyser. I’d better grow close to home, I thought and promptly started sowing seeds and seedlings in
containers and in the ground.
Of course, the big planter that you saw when this adventure started (see spring blog below) got seeds and seedlings that have grown and overflowed as you can see from the recent photo.
That yellow flower? It is a squash blossom. Quite lovely. When the morning sun rises, the flower opens. As the heat of the day progresses, it closes up tight. Squash flowers are good to eat. Pick them fresh and open and add at the last minute to scrambled eggs for a sweet delicate flavor. The small white flowers you see are from the arugula gone to seed. I read this week that arugula blossoms are good to eat. Perhaps with the new tomato!
Between gas prices rising and the recession (yes, it is here) growing food in your yard and going to local farmer’s markets is starting to look VERY attractive.
I love farmer’s markets, especially ones with organic food. Why put pesticides in your tummy?
In Ocala a farmers market has started at Circle Square on SR 200 every Thursday from 8 a.m. to noon. Wahoo! Something nearby. We went the first day they opened and I came home with . . . .an olive tree. Yes, I know. It is not produce. But someday there will be olives.
If you want to know where the Florida Community Farmer’s Markets are, go to the Florida Agriculture site and look up your county. Some markets are expanded and have farmers and craftspeopl
e and cooked food and . . .well, they are just an adventure. Stroll slowly and be enthralled. You may find something homemade or homegrown with your name on it.
I was in Tallahassee last weekend, staying high up in a hotel overlooking the chain of parks. On Friday night the park below was springtime green with big oak trees. The next morning, as if by magic, the same park still had the trees but you could hardly see the green grass. Tents had sprung up everywhere,
an instant city. Craftspeople, farmers, food vendors and even a horse and carriage showed up to give people rides around the parks the old fashioned way. One of the crafts was a lady making beautiful baskets out of pine needles.
The Downtown Market Place happens every Saturday from March through November.
Fernandina Beach has a Farmer’s Market on Saturdays in the historic district. This is a lovely stroll anytime and the market makes it even more special. Funny thing about local markets – you meet people growing plants, raising food, making jams who turn out to live not so far from you and usually know someone you know. It’s called connections. We need them. Buying locally means using less gas and supporting your home community.
While all of that works for me, it may also be what can happen organically when the distribution system breaks down. Did you know that any given grocery store has about two days worth of goods? I didn’t until I read my son Martin’s review in his blog DeepGreenCrystals of the book “World Made By Hand: A Novel” by James Howard Kunstler who thinks the post industrial world will arrive as a slow steady slide. Martin gave it five stars. Yes, this is a pessimistic subject but it doesn’t hurt to ask the question “What if?” Well, what if there were no grocery stores? We’d be back to the way people did business – farmer’s markets, co-operatives, barter and trade, neighbors helping neighbors.
Maybe if we did more of that right now, the slow slide will be put off for a very long time. In fact, growing vegetables and using farmer’s market could be a whole new world for us and squash blossoms are definitely part of the equation. So are ripe tomatoes fresh from the garden. Yum.
Lucy Beebe Tobias is a freelance writer, artist and photographer in Ocala, Florida. Her book “50 Great Walks in Florida” is part of the Wild Florida series published by University Press of Florida