{ Preparing for Winter }

This weekend we picked up what may be our last CSA "Endless Summer" box for the season. Our fabulous farmers http://www.island.wsu.edu/4h/data/csa.html will still harvest until they can harvest no longer, but we are needing to bring food production weekends to a close and tend to other preparations for the long dark Winter. This first year of eating local has been a good trial run. We now understand that we need to expand our own growing, can and freeze almost triple what we have now and most importantly, we'll need to build in a lot more time for these endeavors. Our food budget (like most every one's) is doubled from last January's projection. We've got our chickens for the winter and we'll take our last 1/4 of beef next month which will be plenty to see us through until June. Because we aren't fully stocked for 5 months of no food production, come early to mid Spring we'll need to make some decisions about grocery store buying and where we compromise - local vs. organic. This year we go into that decision knowing that with better planning, next year we'll hopefully not have to choose.

For the Seattle based readers of this blog I want to tell you about a local food event at Seattle Art Museum being hosted by Taste on November 23rd. Visit Taste SAM's blog for details about this lovely event. http://tastesamblog.wordpress.com/