So after my last post on food goals, I got some helpful info from several folks, including Chelsea, Ashes, Di, and Liz!
As far as locally-raised meat goes, Ashes mentioned that she buys from Karl Baer, who sells @ the Ypsi FM during the summer and evidently still sells out here every other weekend! I tracked down his phone number, and I'm going to call him and find out some more info! I also looked up some farms on Local Harvest (great site, by the way) and found a few more meat/animal product farmers. Haven't checked them out extensivley but I will be excited to:
Imagine Cattle Company- Belleville, MI
Mira's Egg Farm- Ann Arbor, MI
Firesign Farm- Whitmore Lake, MI
Casa Del Pollo Contento- Dexter, MI
Also, thanks Liz for the article about lead and Urban Gardening! I will definitely have my soil tested, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that you could still grow things in raised-bed gardens, if you line them with lanscaping fabic that helps block the lead from being absorbed. It also said you could treat your soil with lime, but I don't want to raise the pH any higher than it already is- that could affect the types of plants I'm able to grow successfully. Plus I think Michigan already has a pH of 7ish, which is supposed to mitigate lead absorption.
So while I still want to get our soil tested to make sure, it seems like I will be able to grow something, in some way, as long as I am up for pitching in a little extra bit of money-good to know :)
I was reading some interesting books I got from the library on vegetable gardening. One topic I am interested in learning more about is root cellars. I think my mudroom is cold enough that it could totally store some root vegetables for a few months- Ashes and Sara and I had apples in there for at least a month or two and they were totally good!
Hmm.. so many exciting things to think about! :) Thanks for all the input- it's great to be able to share information with fellow foodies and hippies.
Check these out, really helpful resources that we use for canning, drying, and for building our root cellar!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/store/wisc_vegetables.pdf
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/
Hey thanks, these are really helpful! :) I'm probably going to ask you questions once I read them so be prepared haha :)
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