Here’s a quick(ish) look into why I believe taking the extra effort to eat local pays off in dividends larger than we can measure.

Nothing beats sun ripened home grown tomatoes!

Local Food Tastes Better 

Fresh + local food just tastes better. Exhibit A> The Tomato. Homegrown varieties will leave you smiling as you savor the layers of flavor that drip off the sun warmed juices. The store bought, often packaged version of tomatoes  we get up North in winter are pale pink, mealy, styrofoam imposters. Don’t even get me started on eggs

Nutritional Value

Food loses nutrients after it is harvested- up to 30% in three short days! Being able to pick a salad out of my garden or buy from a farmer that harvested earlier that day means more nutritional ‘bang’ for my buck or my work than buying food that was shipped across the country. Not to mention food flown/shipped here from another continent before it was ripe.

Lower Carbon Footprint

Next generation of Costas Farm Family helping you get your dose of daily veggies.

Local food (obviously) doesn’t travel as far- so it doesn’t have all those packaging + transportation costs that come with food traveling on average 1,500-4,000 miles, such as; gas, (trucks/trains/planes, drivers, health insurance, middle management, CAFO Operators…) There’s A LOT of info on the internet back and forth about this issue. You can make numbers say anything you want depending on what slice of the pie (strawberry thank you) you look at. I have to say that if people spend a Saturday morning buying a bunch of fresh veggies from local farms, or digging in their gardens, I have a hard time seeing that as a loss. (PS- buy produce in bulk when you go, bring reusable bags, or heck, just read more of my tips on shopping Farmers Market. )

Local Economy Boost

Small scale farmers put it all on the line each year, not knowing what the weather, banks or pests + critters will do. Go ahead, thank a farmer today! When the food you eat comes from closer to home, the money put into growing that food stays closer to home too.  The Shop Local movement is strong on many fronts and local food is leading the way! Restaurants are jumping on the local food bandwagon too. Some Twin Cities area restaurants are having wonderful results.  Also, there is a whole lifting of the community that happens when people truly support local that is hard to quantify, but easy to feel.

Lower Food Waste

Between keeping chickens +composting we throw away very little food.

From farm to table over 40% of the food grown in the US is wasted.  Just thrown away, in a land fill. Where the food will decompose in an anaerobic environment, releasing more carbon dioxide, worsening climate change. Unless you don’t believe in that sort of thing. Processing food, transporting food and ‘picture perfect’ grocery store demands all add to that high percentage of waste. But we each play a large role in that as well…

In 2018, more than 63 million tons of food waste was generated from residential, commercial, and institutional sectors, with 4.1 percent diverted from landfills and combustion facilities for composting.
-EPA website

When we spend more on locally grown food, whether apples, bacon, eggs or broccoli, we are more likely to make sure we use it or preserve it (freezers are awesome, people). We simply value local food more and if that helps decrease food waste I’d say that’s a pretty good place to start.

Building Better Soil

Thank you Farmer Josh! …of Turnip Rock Farm, his wife runs Cosmic Wheel Creamery on the farm as well.

I know you probably don’t think about the state of your local soil, but your small family farmers sure do. When they live on the land they farm, they tend to the land differently than corporate farms. The rise of organic farming and intensive rotational grazing is a sign that people are starting to taste the difference, and man is it delicious!

The first time I ever tasted real butter I was with my father’s family in Switzerland, eating butter that had been made from cows that ate from the alpine pastures just up the mountain… it was the most amazing butter EVER, and it was a major AH-HA moment for me!

Soil is the stuff that sustains life on this planet- along a million other parts of this beautiful ecological web. But is the soil is depleted and contaminated it won’t matter how much good water and sun beckon plants. Without fertile soil, plants won’t produce.

Skip the Herbicides + Pesticides + Fungicides

I like knowing what is in my food. Way back in 1987 the EPA considered 60% of all herbicides, 90 percent of all fungicides and 30 percent of all insecticides carcinogenic. The numbers waver after that, I wonder why. Big chemical companies (YES I’m talking to you MONSANTO & DUPONT, and all the other mega-agri companies listed HERE , are out to sell more product, not grow good food.  Children are also more susceptible to these toxins in their food as their bodies are still developing.  If you’ve ever cringed because you got that chemical taste in our mouth because you didn’t wash your conventionally grown (heavily sprayed) apple off well enough you know what I mean.

Late season harvest of kale was the sweetest yet!

Healthy Food = Healthy People

Which brings us back to how food tastes.  The better tasting the food, the more we eat. Foods like kale, Brussel sprouts and broccoli taste a million times (2nd grader approved math) better when fresh.  We all know we need to eat more fresh fruits and veggies. If we want to get the next generation moving in the right direction, offering them delicious food is a good place to start.

My oldest excited for his first bite of home grown celery

I want to get our next generation (my kids included) more connected to where their food comes from. Planting a seed and working with the earth to help it become food is not just a hipster trend- it is the way humans survive.

Local food- growing it and/or finding farmers who grow it is a passion of mine. And I’m still far from fully local (because bananas, olives, chocolate, Chipotle etc.). We’re all busy with daily life, and we’re all at different places on the food path. We also all choose our food at least three times a day (aren’t we lucky!). So if we all chose a few things to grow on our own, or buy local it would, over time swell to a sea change that would be felt over all the land. And really, I want this land to be here to feed my kids’ grandkids healthy food too.

But mostly, I just like digging in the dirt, eating good food and meeting farmers

Just remember, Food Should Taste Good and if it doesn’t it’s time to ask ‘why not’?

I hope we can keep Digging In to local food, one meal at a time- together.

Michelle

The post Local Food For Thought appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

My front stoop this year- laden with pumpkins and squash

I love pumpkins!
Carving pumpkins.
Eating pumpkin treats.
Slurping pumpkin soup.
Crunching pumpkin seeds.

And I am not alone.

You guys: Americans really love pumpkins.

By best estimates in a finder.com article:  154,000,000 Americans planned on carving pumpkins this year! Whoa, that’s a lot of fruit on our front stoops. (Yes, pumpkin is technically a fruit.) Which equals close to a billion pounds of pumpkin!

Everyone loves carving pumpkins!

Let’s deal with the aftermath of our slaughtered Halloween pumpkins responsibly, and preferably before they’re all moldy and gross (we’ve all been there right?)

This is one of those times when, if we each do a little, it will make a big impact!

Don’t forget, all these pumpkins will come back to haunt us year after year… if we don’t use them well

Let’s break down some options.

Do NOT throw pumpkin into your garbage!

Think about the extra greenhouse gasses emitted by adding 154,000,000 pumpkins to landfills across our country. Spooky. Some landfills have taken measures to capture the methane emitted by the organic matter, a step in the right direction, but far from any finish line.

Here’s my PSA for my Minnesota readers:
“MN State law prohibits leaves, grass clippings, brush and other plant material from being mixed with your trash.”

What to do with Your Carved Pumpkins

• When you’re carving pumpkins, be sure to Roast the Pumpkin Seeds!
• Roast and eat them- they’re great in curries.
• Puree roasted pumpkin for soups or  freeze for baking.
• Add them to your existing compost pile, (I do love some good composting). Chopping up into small pieces first is recommended.
• Bring the carved pumpkins to the County Yard Waste sites.  Map of Ramsey County locations HERE.
• You can also cut up the pumpkin into pieces and leave out for wildlife.  In our case we leave some out for our chickens!
• Make Dog Treats with the pumpkin puree (there are tons of great recipes)
• Donate to Food Shelf
• Feed Farm Animals

Some Farmer’s markets collect the ‘used’ pumpkins for feeding animals, or for bringing back to add to their farm’s compost pile.

Some grocery stores collect the carved pumpkins, usually in connection to a farmer that hauls them back for animal feed or compost. (Kowalski’s Market in White Bear Lake used to do this, if enough of us call do you think they’d bring it back?!?).

Do you know of any local drop sites? Share with me and I’ll share here!

Just Eat It

If you didn’t slice into that beauty yet, roast the whole thing…

Even though these “carving pumpkins” or Jack O’ Lantern pumpkins have been grown for size, shape, smooth bright orange skin, and their handle like stems more than flavor they are still totally worth cooking up.

You can roast it whole, or slice in chunks and roast in the oven, (after saving the seeds) and use the puree in soups, smoothie and baking recipes. So much better than the store bought canned stuff! Making pumpkin puree is as easy as cooking or roasting it, then pureeing in a blender.

And then you can make my favorite Pumpkin Spice Cake!

Roasted Pumpkin Soup with onion and thyme

I will admit, pie pumpkins are more dense and sweeter, but I am a waste not want not kind of gal.

Looking for a more flavorful variety to grow and/or eat try next year? Try ‘Sugar Pie’, ‘Autumn Frost’, or even Kabocha varieties. Seeds available from many online seed companies! Yum.

The Seedy Side

When you’re carving pumpkins, be sure to Roast the Pumpkin Seeds!

I love roasted pumpkin seeds for snacking. Favorite Tip* boil  the seeds in salt water for a few hours (or up to a day) before roasting*. There are also ‘naked’ seeds or hull-less varieties you can grow (like the Kakai sold HERE).

…Or just save some of the seeds for planting your own pumpkins next spring!

Think of it as your treat to the earth to give back what it already put into growing your Halloween carving pumpkin.

Hopefully this takes some of the scary out of Halloween clean up.  What do you do with your old Jack O’ Lanterns once you’re done carving pumpkins?

Dig In!

Michelle

The post What to Do with Pumpkins After Halloween appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

We’ve added chemicals, herbicides + pesticides, shipping, packaging and waste in general. Which has taken away: flavor, nutrition, freshness, humane animal care and connection to where it came from or who grew it.

As I see it, our food system is broken.

I’m on a mission to get back to simple local food that’s delicious and doable. I’ll be interviewing local farmers, talking about the food they grow, sharing simple, healthy recipes, and showing how to preserve local flavors for the winter. And since real hunger exists even with all this amazing food around us, I’ll be sharing ways to connect local food with people who need it.

I’ve always loved digging in the dirt. To be able to coax flavorful food from the dirt, then harvest, prepare and eat it with family and friends; there is something simple and significant in that process. And while I can’t find a soul who has extra time on their hands, we’re still drawn to slow food.

As a mom of two young boys I was searching for easy, balanced, realistic ways to use the best of all the competing food ideals; local, sustainable, organic, clean eating, fast, nutritious, tasty. But I couldn’t find any one place that collected local common sense food information so we can improve our own food situation. Feeding our families should not be guilt or fear inducing. Remember when food was fun? (…and you didn’t know about High Fructose Corn Syrup, Monosodium Glutamate and Trans Fat?)

And really, what’s more fun than visiting a farm!? Just getting in the car to drive there sets me smiling; no matter if we’re heading to a produce farm, dairy farm, vineyard, historic farm, apiary or pizza farm (pure genius there). These are my happy places and farmers are my people- except SO much harder working than me.

In truth, this blog started in part as an excuse to fill my days (and my kids’ childhoods) visiting with and learning from farmers, petting some goats, chasing some chickens, walking beautiful land and making meals with this local food when we’re back in the burbs.

Our family also raises a few hens, grows fruits and veggies, boils maple syrup and ‘puts up’ a winter’s worth of local flavors, but I know I’ve only scratched the surface. I’ll pass along my mistakes so you can skip over some of the mess and frustration.

*Disclaimer* I still buy packaged food off the shelves of big box stores. I am on this food journey lugging along two kids, a meat and potatoes husband and my own sweet tooth. And (gasp) I’m quite sure I’ll never eat only local food, I crave that crisp grape crunch in the middle of winter too. And if I ever home make pasta from locally grown grains, it will likely be a first and last *fun-filled* experiment. But if you find a local company that makes pasta from locally grown grains, please let me know!

That leads to a little explanation of the blog’s name, Forks in the Dirt.

‘A fork in the road’, the common phrase, speaks to my belief that there are many paths to food integrity- and each of our paths will look different. My goal is to show you some of the paths to eating better so can choose one and start walking the walk. We don’t have to take every path, just A path! But I have the plural ‘forks’ because as a Gemini, I always have many ‘irons in the fire’- or many “Forks in the Dirt”.

More than anything I am striving for balance here. Growing what I can, buying locally what I can, preserving what I can, thinking about where my meat and produce comes from, and giving my food waste back to nature to decompose (or let the chickens recycle it). Carbon footprints, methane gasses and packaging aside, all these things need to be easy enough to do that I’ll keep doing them, sustainability only works if we keep wanting to do the actions that leas to it.

Not to mention, the food my family eats needs to taste as good if not better than what we were eating before- oh and it shouldn’t cost us (much) more. Sounds like a tall order right?

Well, I’m not letting perfect get in the way of better anymore. I decided to get my forks dirty and to post what I learn right here.

And food is a whole different kind of struggle for those without enough. Real hunger is happening right in our neighborhoods, in the middle of all this overproduction of food (and 40% food waste from farm to table). But, there are inspiring initiatives linking gardeners and farmers with people and food shelves who are ready to receive the food and put it to good use. I’ll let you know how you can join in any efforts that call to you.

I hope the stories inspire you to meet a farmer or two, eat more local, organic foods and trust in our abundant and solid Minnesota food system.

It all starts with the soil, so…

Let’s Dig In!

Michelle

The post Get your Fork in the Dirt! appeared first on Forks in the Dirt.

Here goes my first official Forks in the Dirt blog post; all about COMPOST! Here we cover all the composting basics you need to get started.

(Hope it doesn’t stink…ha)

*Updated 4/1/25 with some new photos and stats*

Some people make their own, some buy it in bags, some take advantage of county-run sites and pick it up by the bucket or truck load. Whichever way you get compost into your soil, it will boost your plants without adding synthetic chemicals. Equally important is keeping your food and yard waste out of landfills! The Natural Resources Defense Council has great articles and ways to get involved in reducing food waste!

the EPA estimates that, “in 2019, 66 million tons of wasted food was generated in the food retail, food service, and residential sectors“

EPA article

Those are numbers that need changing.

So let’s get composting!

Here are some different ways to let decomposition do its thing and create the fuel to grow our plants and not make extra methane in landfills.

Home Brew

Having your own compost bin is hands down the most efficient way to deal with food and yard waste. No transportation, (except a wheelbarrow) and you can manage your own supply based on your demand.

Composting Basics

For compost newbies; what should you put into the pile?
The simple answer is ‘greens’ and ‘browns’.

The ratios are simple: 2-3 parts brown to 1 part green.
Try to keep more browns than greens in your pile or it might stink, and take longer to decompose.

Browns: (Carbon)
Dead leaves
Wood chips
Wood ash
Coffee grounds/tea bags

Greens: (Nitrogen)
Garden + Yard waste- fresh
Grass clippings
Weeds (but weeds with seeds are better on the burn pile)

*Things NOT to add to compost: meat, fish, bones and items like grain, bread, anything with fat.

Decomposition needs carbon (Brown) and Nitrogen (Green), oxygen (air pockets), and enough moisture to keep it rolling. Happy soil bacteria are the tiny workhorses of compost. They start breaking down the plant matter, prepping it for the big guys—worms, slugs, and insects—to finish it off (sterilize it) for us.

The one thing I’ve found that makes or breaks a healthy compost pile becoming finished compost FAST—is turning it over often so it can breathe. Not letting it dry out and covering it during a downpour can help too.

But keep in mind we’re just helping along a normal, natural progression. So lazy composting is completely acceptable; nature will get the job done one way or another.

We have a 4 X 4 foot ‘bare bones’ wood bin (see left), using the easiest plan out there. It is made of timbers cut to 4-foot lengths. Just drill holes through the corners and stack ‘em up on three sides to form the walls. We had some old re-bar we dropped down the drilled holes to secure them in place. We have slats cut for the front wall but never get it on; plus the boys use those pieces for obstacle courses now…

Let Nature Do Its Thing

Six months is a good length of time to let the compost work itself through. Since I’m always focused on everything but compost in the fall, we leave one pile to cook over the winter. So by the time the pile is unfrozen, I’m antsy to get to it.  

We made a simple “sifting frame” with extra wood and some hardware cloth to fit right over our wheelbarrow. I shovel a few scoops into the frame and sift away, ready to roll our homemade garden gold where needed. The bigger chunks of wood, roots, etc. that don’t make it through the sifter get added back to the pile for another round. We get many large wheelbarrows worth of compost every spring using this method. 

Making amazing compost is another reason why I love raising backyard chickens!

Apartment and townhome dwellers rejoice, there are many options for you too! From Bokashi to vermicomposting, there are options for us all to make the most out of our kitchen and garden waste!

Let the Government Work for You!

But if you’re just not ready to experiment with DIY composting, then… 

Did you know most counties around the United States offer yard waste collection and compost pickup? There are seven of these sites in our own Ramsey County alone. Check them out here.

And here’s my Minnesota PSA:
“State law prohibits leaves, grass clippings, brush and other plant material from being mixed with your trash.”

County Yard Waste Sites take more diverse wastes than a regular home compost bin can handle, and more items in general.  

And when you drop yard waste off, you can load up on compost at the same time! (Good thing I have strong + willing helpers.)

The county waste website is updated regularly and they even have a telephone #: 651-633-3279 answered 24 hours a day with a real live person, who knew their stuff on a Saturday morning earlier than my coffee had kicked in.

*Be sure to ask about jumping worm protocol before bringing home any new compost.*

Add It to My Tab

One step further removed from the county collection sites would be to have your yard waste picked up by the garbage collection company. There’s an additional fee, but worth it to us. That way, you can add to the community compost heap just by getting your leaves to the curb. A way better solution than going into the landfill.

Why is it important to keep food waste out of the landfill?

Landfills are not natural settings for decomposition, so without the whole community of microorganisms to help absorb and reuse the chemicals in the food as it breaks down those chemicals only break down part of the way (aka rot) and release methane gas instead of creating useable fertilizer.

Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is shown to have a warming potential of 21 times that of carbon dioxide. From an EPA website article.

Locally Grown 

Local farms are starting to add organic compost to their sales list. Here’s who I found selling compost on the MN Grown website.

I have to add in a plug here for having backyard chickens. They are the original kitchen waste recyclers, but instead of compost you get eggs. And really tasty eggs. 

Now that we’ve covered the composting basics, please share your own composting tips, tricks, and victories!

Let’s Dig In!

Michelle

“Write from the compost of your own life, feelings, experiences, hopes, joys, disappointments…”

-Mem Fox, Children’s Author

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