Summer Veggie Variety vs. Locally Grown Limitations

Are you as eager for the fall weather as we are? This heat is enough to drive us all indoors and forget about growing summer vegetables. But then where would we be? We'd be buying retail vegetables that have, at best, half their life force remaining before we even get them home. Speaking as a Market Manager, I too am frustrated that we don't have the variety and volume now that we will have more easily with cooler weather. But what we are growing is growing well in this heat. The trick is to shift our consciousness into "making do" with what is locally available and that isn't an easy nut to crack. Why? Because we
are all so conditioned to having variety either trucked or flown in from all over the planet.

If you are over 50, take a quick spin back into your childhood summer and remember what was on your supper tables. Corn on the cob in August, right? No matter what else mom made for supper, accompanying it was corn on the cob every single night for a month! And we loved it because we knew we had only a limited time to enjoy it.  As I recollect all this, I can smell the butter melting on it and the tang of the salt and pepper we applied heavily before digging in.  So it's August in Florida and we have tons of okra available. In fact, we are not selling enough of it and I have a freezer full already.


Are you ready to shift your consciousness about okra? There has to be 100 ways to cook it, roast it, saute it, etc.  Okra does not grow year round in Florida and now is the time to be enjoying it. I guarantee that if you have not eaten FRESH okra then you really haven't eaten okra. Nathan and I never ate it before we started farming it but we learned to love okra because it is locally grown and is incredibly nutritious and versatile. In fact, it tastes fantastic roasted! Yes, it's got that mucilagenous thing going on but we've gotten past that. We recognize that the nutrients from fresh local vegetables are literally health and, therefore, life altering.  

All this leads to is a request for you to read Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. She addresses this whole dilemma of variety vs. local limitations and the environmental benefits of letting go of the "variety consciousness" (my words). This book will change your life. It did ours... All the best for what remains of a very hot summer! ...and thank you for all of your support, regardless of your veggie choices.

Related articles

• A Northern Girl Discovers Fried Okra (whiskandwhimsy.com)
• The humble okra (lujos.wordpress.com)
• Oven Roasted Okra with Tomato (goodcooks.wordpress.com)
• Transforming Vegetables into Products (timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com)