Eating Locally – March Soup

One of the goals of our Entropy Pawsed project is to produce or procure all of our food locally.

We want to know where our food comes from. The widely publicized outbreaks of food borne illness from products distributed not just nationwide but worldwide speak to the wisdom of knowing the origin of our food.

Our preferred food source is our own land. We know what goes into, and what comes out of, our little garden plot, and we know how it is handled, processed and stored. We now how to locate and identify wild edible plants – greens, mushrooms, nuts, berries and other fruit.



Our chickens roam freely (except when our German Shepherd Dog attempts to herd them) and supply us with eggs without hormones or antibiotics.

We tap our sugar maple trees in the spring. A few weeks of boiling down sap results in enough syrup (last year we made 36 pints) to last us a year.

Neighbors with fruit trees and larger gardens share their bounty. We share our eggs and maple syrup. Everyone shares their accumulated gardening and preserving wisdom.

We participate in a food co-op with neighbors. Co-op members buy local meat in bulk, and store it in one member's centrally located freezer. We have seen our local Mennonite butcher's immaculate meat processing facility that sits behind his house on his farm.

There are several local bakers who produce whole grain breads, bagels, and granola along with the occasional decadent sweet treat. We enjoy the aromas from the ovens when we stop in the bakeries.

A nearby farmer brings his dairy products to the local library. We have watched his cow basking in the sun, contentedly chewing the bright green grass in her pasture. Since health department regulations prohibit the direct sale of milk products to the public, we buy a “cow share” from the farmer. This “cow share” enables us to receive fresh milk, butter and yogurt, and supports the cow's pasture-al lifestyle.

Yes, these local products are usually more expensive than the mass-produced, high food mileage, high fructose corn syrup and preservative laden varieties available at big box grocery stores. And they are vastly superior in quality, taste and nutrition. And our food dollars support the local economy.

Eating locally contributes to our sense of place. We know our neighbors, the farmer, the butcher, the bakers, the chickens and the cow. We know what the land produces in what season. We know that what we put into our bodies comes from the local soil, water, air and efforts of local producers.

Here is our recipe for “March Soup” made (except for the optional salt and pepper) entirely from local foods:

½ pound each ground sausage and beef

4 medium potatoes, scrubbed and cut into bite-sized pieces

1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into bite-sized pieces

1 quart canned tomatoes

1 quart canned green beans

1 tsp each dried parsley, sage and basil

1-3 Tbs maple syrup (optional)

salt and pepper to taste


Throughly brown the ground meat. Add remaining ingredients plus enough water for desired consistency. Bring to a boil, then simmer until potatoes and squash are soft, usually 20-30 minutes. Turn off heat and allow to stand to 1-2 hours (or store overnight in the refrigerator) for flavors to blend. Bring to a boil again for 10 minutes. Served garnished with fresh chopped chives or other green. Serves 6-8.

Gardening in January

“To plant a seed is to believe in the future “



In our part of the Northern Hemisphere, January is a time for garden planning. The soil is hard and snow-covered, the compost pile frozen, the soil amendments stored away for the winter. There's not much visibly happening outside.

Inside, near our warm wood-burning stove, we study seed catalogs, read and re-read garden advice books, and look through the newest garden calendar from the West Virginia University Extension Service.

We gauge the square footage in our garden, keeping vertical space in mind, as many plants such as tomatoes, beans and cucumbers grow well on trellising. We make a list of what we want to grow, based not only on what we like to eat, but also on what is easily grown and preserved and has the most nutritional value. We consider what can be grown in pots on window ledges and on the porch.

We draw a diagram of the garden, thinking of what to put where. The hard-neck garlic is already in, planted in October to be harvested in July. There are still potatoes in the ground; with heavy (~6 inches) mulching, we have found this is an easy way to store them over the winter. We have three patches of Jerusalem artichokes, also known as sunchokes. The roots of these self-propagating perennials can be an important emergency food source.

We decide what else to plant. Here is a list of 11 superfoods from a New YorkTimes Blog, Tara Parker-Pope on Health. We cannot grow all these foods here, but we can grow beets, cabbage, chard, blueberries and pumpkins. We also like tomatoes, beans, butternut squash, kale, spinach, brussel sprouts, and potatoes (Kennebec's are the local choice for our surprisingly short growing season here in the mountains). Our final selections will come from the above named foods.

We order most of our seeds from two catalogs: Seeds of Change (www.seedsofchange.com) and Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsavers.org). These catalogs offer certified organic and heirloom seeds, and provide detailed descriptions of the varieties listed. These organizations obtain their seeds from independent growers and plant collectors dedicated to preserving heirloom plants. We have also purchased from Turtle Tree Seeds (www.turtletreeseeds.com), which offers bio-dynamically produced seeds from the Camphill communities (www.camphill.org) .

Over time, we hope to propagate as many of our own seeds as possible. Not only does this save ordering and buying each year, but over time the lines of plants we cultivate will adapt to the specific conditions of our site.

Gardening books we have found helpful include: “How to Grow More Vegetables (than you ever thought possible on less land than you can imagine)” by John Jeavons; “Four Season Harvest” by Eliot Coleman; “Gardening When It Counts (Growing Food in Hard Times)” by Steve Solomon; and “Seed to Seed,” a book about seed saving, by Suzanne Ashworth.

Winter is also a good time to clean and sharpen garden tools. If replacements are needed, they can be found in an unhurried way versus a rush when they are needed, and are frequently less expensive in the off season.

So even though activity in the garden in January appears to be at a standstill, for the successful gardener, it is a month of planning and cultivating a vision of future success as the Earth advances along its orbital path around the Sun.