I guess we all will have to just eat regular produce then.

Really? ALL of us, even the snobs? I doubt it.

Walmart will sell its organic produce to Kroger, and both will make money. I have a bag of organic carrots from some western desert place, and they are only marginally better than regular. Not clear why consumer want these things.

My carrots are wonderful, but we are going through a ten days stretch of sub-zero temperatures. I will see my carrots in March.

Home grown carrots is a grossly overlooked crop for the home garden, imo.

There's a world of wonderful tasting carrots out there (especially the non-storage types that keep well as long as they're in the ground anyway).

A lot of people either don't consider them or they want to grow "unique color" carrots that don't have the wealth of flavor/sweetness of some the overlooked orange varieties. Yes, carrots weren't always orange and all that, but the breeding stock and some of the best come out of the orange lines.

A lot like you can tell a "supermarket tomato" from a "homegrown tomato"...there's some really good carrots that seem just as night/day.

I never got around to putting square bales of hay over my carrots, so yeah they may well wait till March along with yours. (the square bales can be kicked over anytime I want to dig, but leaves of hay are just snowed under.)

That article was interesting, but funny to me because they were talking about a shortage of things that are out of season for most of the US (even eggs -- free running chickens around here sure don't lay in the winter) and at the end of the article suggested eating greens and winter squash, which are not in short supply right now (duh). It seems we need some lessons in eating in season.

During WWII the gov't exhorted people to eat more eggs in the spring time when farmer's chickens were laying a lot. I wonder if today's populace would be willing to eat in season like that. They could launch a "Springtime is Frittata Season" advertising campaign. :)

NC interesting comment about the carrots. I'll have to try planting some carrots this year. Haven't had carrots from the garden since I was a kid.

Could the carrots that are a deeper orange be higher in beta carotene? Is it just looks? Maybe the deeper orange is also more productive. What do you guys think? NC?

Yeah, they're higher in beta carotene...it's part of what gives it it's color. It's a pigment and a vitamin precursor (Vitamin A).

Most of the reason there's a lot more diversity in options for the orange carrots is they're the type that's been in heavy seed-saving and development for centuries. It's just got a more broad genetic base to choose from when it comes to breeding/hybridization.

There are some really awesome short-storage sweet carrots out there...most are orange. They're not sugar sweet, but they have a whole lot more going on that your normal supermarket long-storage carrot that's selected to be grown for market weight.

IME, most people will not eat in season if they have an affordable alternative - which they do. Beyond myself (and a few cyber-friends) I only know one other person who eats in season consistently.

PN so do you mostly eat locally grown then? Do you have local farmers markets in your neck of FLA?

About to make a carrot smoothie!!!

I tend to be seasonal and local, but of course there are exceptions: seaweed (a necessity in the goiter belt), olive and coconut oil, frozen meat and preserved tallow (we buy meat locally only once a year), seafood, coffee. Obviously right now the vegetables are stored roots and squash, and sprouts. Those carrots I deplored were bought as we got home from overseas, but I have local ones now. I am waiting for a day in the 20 to venture under the hoop houses, where there are numerous collards (hopefully alive).

There are no sources for raw milk (it is illegal), so we also end up buying parmesan and grass fed butter from Europe. And of course the eggs I eat are from chickens that are currently subject to artificial light and possibly heating, not to mention an unnatural diet centered on grains.

For me, half the fun of the garden is growing enough so that we don't buy any veggies and not much fruit for the whole year. We don't cook meat or seafood, so meals are veggie based.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle to grow the right stuff in the right amounts, and preserve it or store it well, to get through the winter until the first salads and greens of spring are ready.

And if stores are running low, there's always ramps and dandelion greens!

Gl, here while in FL I am of course less a localvore - though honey and raw milk are local. My cooking greens are out of the garden. I bring some storage crops with me.

Back home I average about 60% of calories local. I eat a lot of rice and wheat, so far those are not local, though we aim to change that for both. Protein sources other than beans (cheeses, nut-butters, nuts) are not local. I'd like to change that also but I can't change the climate and keeping a cow isn't too feasible.

localvore. Such a funny word. A funny thing going on in England, and I am sure this is not the only place. The "localvores" insist on eating the local greenhouse tomatoes. The funny thing is it takes more oil to produce those greenhouse tomatoes than it does to ship tomatoes all the way from the sunny climate of Spain. Even after the shipping.....

No, the real locavore eats roots in winter. Tomatoes are for August, except for those that you preserve.

How strict are you with the term "local" to feel good about it? Just curious.

We get eggs from up the hill and honey from around the corner, but then bread flour, oatmeal, cheese, butter, tofu and some other staples are from Frankfurt Farms which gathers local items from PA, WV, and OH and trucks them to a central location (the porch of the Ski Barn, actually,) for families to pick up. Companies like this really help in making the local -- or nearly local -- choice.

Olive oil, of course, must come from Italy.

There is a growing US olive oil industry...oddly, or not.

Spain is top dog for world production with Italy not too far behind. There's a noticeable California industry with Texas and Florida trying to get it going. There's producers spotted around in non-ideal climates like coastal Georgia and even Oregon, too.

The past few years of bumper crops in Spain dumping a lot of cheap olive oil on the market has hurt US growth a bit...along with some consumers not trusting US-produced olive oil...but there's a good amount of farmers out there trying.

I bought a five gallon pail of olive oil from California, and while outstanding (I know that oil is used by some top notch restaurants in San Francisco), it was also 50 dollars a gallon plus shipping. I have a buddy with a pizzeria, and he gives me his oil, $32 a gallon including shipping and almost as good (the oil is from Crete). Helping him get his garden and orchard off the ground surely paid. The Costco oil, at about $31/gallon, is not bad either and I would be happy with it.

Still, US olive oil is here to stay and high quality. Not sure why US oil has a bad reputation. Spain (and France) have industrialized their oil production even more than here. It is only Italy which has one oil mill per village. And large italian producers (Bertolli) have had cases of adulteration. If one worries about adulteration, my guess is that US oil is the best bet.

US olive oil has a lower-than-should-be reputation for the same reason US-made dried pasta has a lower-than-should-be reputation...expectations of where it's supposed to be from equating to higher quality.

The highest quality readily available pasta wheat in the world is US grown durum wheat...of which Italy imports a whole lot of, makes pasta with, and ships it back to the US for consumers to buy because it's assumed to be better if it's from the home of Italian food. Go figure.

The US-produced olive oil issue is one of those things that will eventually be "made right" in the US as foodies praise it and it's own quality is made evident. As you stated, it really needs help in the price department, too. The cheap EU oil flooding the import market lately hasn't helped things.

Yeah there are tons of olives grown in CA. I still buy Berio after trying the CA olive oil.

We've been eating the Napa valley natural coop olive oil for a few years now (Glib, we get the 5 gallon organic pail through United Foods distributor, I believe they have a warehouse in MI, you might check into whether there is a local buying club).

One problem in California is that olive orchards are irrigated. AFAIK, they only need water in May through July, to set the crop. Then, higher quality oil is produced by withdrawing water. But let me mention that if I were to go to say Whole Foods, an oil like the one I bought at $50, from Italy, will cost more. I was not outraged by the price, it is just that buying from a professional restaurateur, at cost, and he gets a whole pallet with big discounts, is better.

I concur with CRN assessment of durum wheat. Now, with global warming advancing, Saskatchewan and Alberta are big producers too. Once I was talking to one of the guys who play soccer with me, who works for Zingerman, about starting a cured meat business, and he said that if you don't have an italian name it does not work. So there's that too.

The very best olives I ever tasted were local when we lived in Sacramento. I was given a whole 5 gallon bucket of fresh picked black olives and a recipe to cure them. Man I can still taste them. We gave a lot away and ate the rest.