Seasonal Production Cycles

This goes hand in glove with the philosophy of bioregional food sufficiency that we spoke about last week, because it speaks to disciplining our desires to be compatible with nature. As soon as we require unseasonable production, the costs of production increase dramatically as well as the caloric production requirements. Why should we import tomatoes (and other warm season vegetables)from California to our northeastern region of the USA in the middle of the winter? The extra demand for year round vegetables in colder climates puts a strain on the relatively small areas that are able to produce in winter and the transportation requires huge amounts of petroleum to get it here. Why not freeze, can, or dry the extra tomatoes we produce in the summer – at much lower prices – and eat them during the winter?

While we certainly depend on the modern concept of freezers to store our summer meat and dairy production, we refuse to attempt off-season production in most of our enterprises. Raising chicken on pasture produces a product that is completely different from it’s confinement counterpart and simply cannot be duplicated in the winter. Therefore we start our production in the spring and shut it down in the fall which not only allows a consistent product but gives us a break in the workload. The same goes for dairy, our cows calve naturally in the spring when all wild herbivores have their young which lessens the winter workload and brings production into sync with the ebb and flow of the grass growth. Bucking nature’s system takes a toll on quality of product, efficiency, fun, and economy.

Quote worth re-quoting...

Don’t go where the path may lead, go where there is no path, and leave a trail. -Unknown