It’s early February, temperatures are in the l0s and 20s, there is a foot or more of snow blanketing the veggie garden.

What’s a Localvore to eat?

Despite what dedicated local eaters in warmer climates may think,
Vermonters can survive on a totally local diet even in the dead of
winter and live to tell about it come summer. After all, that’s
what people in Vermont did when the state was first settled, and in
large part up until 60 years ago when food started to become an
industrialized commodity.

To eat a mostly local diet in the winter does take some planning.
The earlier in the growing season that you begin that planning, the
better you will eat in the winter. Many people start thinking
about what they will eat in the winter in October as the gardens start
to die back and the end of the garden season becomes a cold
reality. But, folks who start planning so late in the season are
going to be eating a lot of root vegetables and winter squashes.

June is when the instinct for surviving on local food in the winter
needs to really kick in. One approach might be to double up on
many veggies that you buy at the farmer’s market and plan to eat one
portion now and preserve the other portion for the winter. Sure,
it costs twice as much, but come winter, many days you will be eating
for free. Lots of great veggies freeze really well with a little
pre-freeze preparation. Other vegetables can be canned;
high-acidity foods such as tomatoes or fruits are the easiest because
they can be safely put up with a simple water bath method. Then
there are more traditional preservation techniques such as
lacto-fermentation (think sauerkraut and kimchi) and drying, which use
less energy than freezing or canning and often provide a more
nutritious ingredient than the raw vegetables or fruits alone.

One of the biggest challenges people face eating locally in Vermont in
the winter is salads. However, there are actually plenty of
satisfying alternatives once an eater gets past the bias that a salad
has to consist of tender greens and tomatoes. Delicious, crunchy
and fresh-tasting salads can be made with cabbage, carrots, apples,
daikon radishes, salad turnips, celeriac, and rutabaga, many which can
be stored until early spring if handled properly.

Of course, for meat eaters eating local year round is even easier, with
a wide variety of local poultry, pork, lamb, and beef readily available
in local co-ops and many grocery stores. Eggs also make a
nutritious and cost-effective meal, not just for breakfast but for
lunch and dinner, too.

Becoming a year-round Localvore is actually easy once you change some ingrained
ways of thinking that have been propagated by our industrial food
system. By eating more like Vermonters did 100 years ago, we not
only support out local economy and keep our neighborhood farmers in
business, but we also gain a much better appreciation for what each
season has to offer for our tables.