Meet Dave, our local ring-necked pheasant. He are his partner, Betti-Ann, roam the areas around Transition Garden looking for bugs and seeds. Their diet is 100% local and provided to them courtesy of their local habitat. You can say that they have a ‘zero-mile diet.’
In 2007, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon published the book called “The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating,” describing their journey of one year eating only from food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver home.
We are coming into a time when we need to get serious about where are food comes from – how far away. Most big box stores provide little or no information on the source of food. At best, you can ascertain the country of origin by the labels on some of the produce. We have lost track of who grows our food.
When you produce food from your own garden, you not only know who grew it (you and your family), but also how it was grown and under what conditions. You can have confidence in eating it and in knowing what it takes to grow more. It’s also good to know your area farmers and buy products from them, whether through a CSA weekly box subscription or visits to them during harvest season to stock up on storage items for colder seasons.
At Transition Garden, we plan for production so that not only is there always something coming fresh out of the garden for salads and many recipes, but also for larger quantities of produce that can be frozen, canned, fermented or cold-stored.