Green Options

Subsistence activities, including whaling, are a way of life in the traditional Iñupiat Eskimo village of Kivalina.

Yesterday, the residents of Kivalina had the opportunity to enjoy tradition as they have for generations - sharing the first beluga whale kill of the year.  In this time-honored harvest ritual, Monday’s beluga whale kill allowed each of Kivalina’s 77 families to enjoy five pounds of muktuk and meat.

As our gardens start to deliver, as I harvest my first spring veggies this time of year, I always make the same resolution:  This year I’m going to eat more fresh out of the garden.

It sounds obvious, but the truth of the matter is I always get wrapped up in the garden work, from watering to weeding, and food preservation, from freezing to fermenting, that I get too busy and loose sight of the key reason why my family started the garden on our Wisconsin farm and B&B, Inn Serendipity, in the first place:  to savor and celebrate fresh, local, healthy food.

Once again this year, I’m on a mission to feast on the bounty, to not get so wrapped up in the process that I miss opportune feasting moments.  As inspirational fodder, I researched this idea further, resulting in an article for the upcoming July/August issue of Hobby Farm Home magazine:  Farm-style Fast Food:  If the growing season has you too busy to prepare well-planned meals every night, follow these tips for healthy “fast-food” eating.” In addition to that article, here are a few more tips I found helpful:

The recent fall in grain prices across the developed world may have given the impression that food security isn’t a problem – but it is. There are more people not getting enough to eat than there were a decade ago.

Dear Readers,

In the spirit of the season, EcoWorldly is running a special Thanksgiving theme this week. As families in the United States make preparations to come together this month for the traditional feast of potatoes, cranberry sauce, and turkey (or the vegetarian Tofurky equivalent), we’ll take a look at food and farming in other cultures and countries around the world.

We’ll share our favorite environmentally friendly recipes for local specialties and ethnic cuisines around the world and we’ll also explore some of the environmental issues involved with bringing food from the farm to your dinner plate.

Subscribe to our RSS feed by email to get all of these, plus our regular stories about the environment from writers living on six continents.

Lately, I’ve been noticing food. Yes, but not in the usual places like the grocery store, farmer’s markets, produce stands, et cetera. No, I’ve been noticing food in unusual places. On the ground. Under trees. In the street.

While many people these days may think that apples, pears, plums and walnuts only come from pristine orchards in pastoral valleys, there is food among us. Right under our noses. And often, it’s going to waste.

Tis the season . . . for harvesting wonderful herbs that is. There are many books, articles and probably millions of blog posts on the many ways to use and abuse herbs.

Other than drying or freezing them, another way to use fresh herbs to create delicious herbal taste into the colder months when we may not have as hearty a harvest available (although window herb planters are kind of cool for winter-fresh herbs.

Herb-Infused Vinegars
As Kelli Best-Oliver wrote earlier this week in her ‘five cool things to do with herbs’, making herb-flavored vinegars is pretty easy. She suggests heating the vinegar slightly. I’ve never done that, but it seems like a good idea!

I usually use white wine, white balsamic or champaign vinegars for these. My current favorite (and the one people are getting for x-mas this year) is tarragon vinegar, which of course makes an awesome bernaise sauce (always served at our traditional McWilliams family Christmas eve dinners).

Pear pie. Pear ginger muffins. Pear cordials made from aging pears, sugar and vodka. Pears canned in sugar syrup. Pear jam.

When Mary calls me every year at the end of August with her annual message of “The tree is ripe – come pick,” I turn into the Bubba Gump of pears, gratefully using the four bushels of pears I harvest off her abundant backyard tree.

As the country whines about escalating food prices, there’s often rotten apples falling from some tree near you. Or pears, plums – name your fruit. You know the tree I’m talking about – the one you pass by every day in someone’s yard that is practically falling over with ripe fruit and you think to yourself, “Someone needs to do something with that.” How true – and that “someone” is you.

Talk about a sustainable homerun: By connecting with and harvesting a local fruit tree, you not only garner more organic, fresh, local fruit booty than you know what to do with – and put something to use that would otherwise have gone to waste. You build community by connecting with others. We’re talking community at its core, most sustainable essence, sharing abundance with others, relishing the gifts of the land.

Step up to the plate – or bushel – and tap into these unwanted fruit on trees in backyards across the nation that could be making the world a better place through more pie – or jam or cobblers or muffins – you get the picture.

Here are three tips for foraging a fruit tree near you:

“Free organic fruit. Perfectly ripe. Locally grown. Yours for the taking.”

Your ears perking up yet? If this showed up on your local Craig’s List or Freecycle would you be frantically e-mailing, “When can I come over”? Amazingly, such an opportunity probably exists right now, perhaps right down your road, as fruit trees ripen and – too often – fall to the ground and rot.

Like an archeological remnant of a past generation, industrious homeowners often planted these fruit trees several decades ago, before our era of mega-supermarkets and the universal concept that we can, and should, buy everything 24/7. Seems these trees tend to fall into two categories: either they belong to senior residents who can’t physically pick and process the fruit, or newer residents who bought the house with the tree and don’t have the time to pick, much less know what to do with four bushels of pears. Other folks even go as far as considering these trees a nuisance, as overripe fruit falls to the ground and attracts bugs and rodents, eventually chopping the tree down.

Don’t anger the Lorax, make pear pie instead. By connecting with these untapped fruit sources, you cook up something bigger than your private food stash – you will be an ambassador for building community, one bite at a time. I made my annual pilgrimage yesterday to local seniors John and Mary’s house to raid their pear tree, coming home with three five-gallon buckets of fruit. No secret invasion needed; Mary calls every year right before Labor Day to let me know the pears are ripe and we’re welcome to harvest.

Here are three tips for foraging a fruit tree near you: