5% of All Food Consumed

7 August 2012
8:16 PM

Sunrise at	5:13 AM	in direction	47°	Northeast
Sunset at	10:37 PM	in direction	313°	Northwest

Duration of day: 17 hours, 24 minutes (6 minutes, 56 seconds shorter than yesterday)

Gary is supporting the International Congress on Circumpolar Health (ICCH15) meetings this week. ICCH describes itself as ...

"The International Congress on Circumpolar Health (ICCH) is a unique international meeting that brings together health professionals, researchers, and indigenous representatives from Canada, Greenland, Denmark, USA, Russia, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and other countries interested in circumpolar health".

It's focus is ongoing challenges that face health care professionals in this region.  One of those challenges is finding ways to increase local food sources for balanced, appropriate nutrition.  Gary listens to many of the proceedings as he is in the hall attending to sound and lights.  He told me this morning that of all food consumed in Alaska, only 5% of it is from local sources.

Surprising, because I eat more locally grown food here than I have anywhere else in addition to local meats and fish. I am thinking of this because Gary and I had hamburgers tonight and the meat is from Delta, raised locally without hormonal interference and pesticides.  Yet, only 5% of all food is consumed locally.

It is true that our growing season is very short, but it does produce high quality food quickly in that short time span.  The garden where we pick up vegetables on our way home is planted sometime in early June. They are harvesting carrots, peas, lettuce, bell peppers and squash in abundance right now.  We could all be doing that to a least feed ourselves over the summer. I am also thinking that I could resurrect my grandmother's skill at quick frozen foods.  We are still capable of preserving summer foods for the rest of the year.  I just need to cultivate patience to do it.

I started composting our raw vegetable matter last winter.  It was a pretty rough to start; I put it in black plastic bags and let it freeze outside. We moved all that stinky mess to an actual compost bin this spring while I repeatedly assured Gary the smell would dissipate once it was mixed with air and soil.  Fortunately, that is the way it played out.  We keep these scraps from rotting in plastic bags at the landfill. The next step is to make good use of it. I need to think about this more .. it means taking out trees.

It always comes back to cutting more trees, drat it.