Meat & Potatoes

Though I try to limit my intake of pototoes, I find the use of them with meat in the title helps me make a point about getting a good, well rounded, cost effective diet in a world of increasing costs and declining nutritional food options and availability.

We take food availability for granted. We figure food will generally be available for purchase, except in special cases. Amercians used to eat and plan meals seasonally. Fruit and vegatables are usually availale in the spring, summer and fall. Winter is a down time for many food types. Global food markets have helped fill in the gaps because the Soutern Hemisphere is in its Summer season during our Winter time.

This idea of year ‘round food availability has worked reasonably well, but today is a new day. With wars, closed ports, inflation, energy disruptions, quarantines and open borders, the reasonable expectations of a consistent food supply have vanished. Even in America, processing plants have experienced back logs and farmer’s ability to get animals to a processor on a timely basis has disappeared. This is June 19, 2022, and it has been necessary for Attadale Farm to have already scheduled animals all the way through 2023. It is impossible to predict our demand in 2023, but it has become necessary to guess as good as we can.

Attadale Farm has meat readily available for what appears to be in the far future. But, we eat fruit and vegatables as well. We are not certain of our vegatable and fruit supply beyond now. Well, we do have a high tunnel and are growing vegatables now, but how about you? We usually plant seeds and grow our plants from seed. But we can’t really depend on a seed supply next year, can we. We will need to take special care to allow some of our crop to mature and grow to seed. We will need to take that seriously now.

We have been buying some vegatables at the market. We have seen a steady decline in availability and quality. We are not convinced that these foods are worthy of purchase. We don’t believe we can trust the nutritional values to remain high. Making a profit will always be at the top of the list, especially during these unfortunate economic times.

We realize also that there is an abundant source of greens all around our farm, pastures and timber. Many of these “weeds” are actually more readily available, contain a higher nutritional value than store bought items and are well worth Foraging. Harvesting Lamb’s Quarter and Purslane is easy and is quite available. Flavors are great and nutrition is up there as well. These, however, are not the only natural products available for consumption. Many common plants are quite desirable and will still be available when imports quit arriving and our commercially produced foods vanish.

We recommend that you seriously consider Foraging and put that into your things “To Do”