It's Still Cool to be Grown In The USA: Buying Local Food

Much ado is made these days about buying "local" food.  I was confused at first, wondering why I wasn't buying local food. What was I missing?  Here I am a Texan and I buy my oranges from Florida farmers and my strawberries from California farmers!  After several back porch conversations on this subject with the Farmer I Kissed, I discovered that I do buy local.  It's just that my "local" runs from sea to shining sea.  I buy food from American Farmers.  I consider that about as local as you can get. 

We grow cotton...doesn't make for a really great bar-b-q menu!

What I wonder is when did we all stop being neighbors...when did it stop being cool to buy "Grown in the USA?"  I have traveled a lot and met American Farmers from many different states.  They are all just like the Farmer I Kiss: hard working family farmers.  So when I buy cranberries, blueberries and potatoes,  I buy "local"  from someone like the farmers I have met from Maine or Georgia or Idaho.  It doesn't matter to me if my cranberries, blueberries and potatoes come from their farms, from their friend's farms, or from their brother's farms.  I trust that my cranberries, blueberries and potatoes were raised by American Farmers who love the land, care about my food and adhere to strict, regulated  guidelines while raising that food.  Besides, we are cotton farmers living on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert!  We can't raise cranberries, blueberries or potatoes.  Someone tell me how the heck you have a 4th of July picnic without cranberry Jell-O surprise, blueberries decorating the cake and Mom's potato salad? 


Can't have a proper 4th of July picnic without this!!

There are lots of folks who want to personally know the farmer who grows their food so they can know how he raises that food.  I think that's cool.  I could get up at 6:00 AM on Saturday and stand in line to buy tomatoes from one of my friends who sells his garden produce at the Concho Valley Farmers Market.  Frankly, I would rather sleep.  I know farmers, I kiss one of them and I trust the kind of people who are out there raising my food and fiber all across this incredible nation.  I also trust that agriculture will continue to adapt and change to answer American's needs and concerns so that once again everyone can feel as good as I do about buying "Grown in the USA" anywhere and everywhere across America. As for right now,  I'm going shopping, to a grocery store, to buy "local" pineapples from the farmer I actually met while I was in Hawaii (or who knows, maybe it will be from one of his friend's pineapple farms.)  I'm going to use it in my frozen drink this afternoon as I help the Farmer I Kissed get our back porch cleaned up for that 4th of July Picnic.


Happy Birthday America!

Be Careful What You Wish For

There is a saying I have heard farmers repeat all my life:  It's always too wet and it's always too dry.  Well, low and behold, after the driest year on record out here, we are now at twice our normal rainfall.  This morning's front page story says that instead of the 6.2 inches we normally have received by this time of year, we are at 12.6 inches. 

Before the rain came last week, Daniel and I were in one of our back porch discussions about how early to start planting.  Being a scientist at heart, I have a theory for everything and when to plant is no exception.  My "Volunteer Cotton Theory" contends that the first day we see the volunteer cotton sprouting out of the ground, get in the field and roll!  Volunteer cotton is seed that will sprout from locks of cotton that were left in the field from the last harvest.  It always seems that those rogue plants load up with way more bolls than the cotton we plant in the rows.  So I say do what the rouge plants do!  Daniel calmly starts to shoot holes in my theory as he points out that those plants are out in the middle of the rows, or along the side of the field, where they can spread out their roots all they want.  The poor little guys we plant in the rows have to compete all year with their next door neighbors for food, water and sunshine.

Since there was not a harvest last year, there will most likely be no volunteer cotton for me to point at and say "See, those guys know it's time to sprout!" and Daniel will get his way.  He likes to plant later, so that the cotton is not trying to load bolls during the very hottest time of the year.  The drought and the rain BOTH helped his cause this spring.  First he could tell me he couldn't plant yet because it was too dry.  Now, he can tell me he can't plant yet because it's too wet.  Looks like he will plant at just the right time, like he always does, in spite of my brilliant "Volunteer Cotton Theory."  

Now that Daniel's choice of planting time is fast approaching, instead of looking up and hoping for clouds coming over the horizon, we are looking up hoping for a few days of sunshine.  Those old farmers are right, it's always too wet and it's always too dry! 

Picture from the Standard-Times May 16, 2012 taken just east of San Angelo at Nine Mile Creek