Check out Hood River Organic's

feature in the latest edition of

Columbia Gorge Magazine!

Heirloom Vegetables

Heirloom vegetables are defined in several ways. Some consider heirlooms to be any vegetable cultivars that have been grown for a certain length of time. Other people consider vegetables to be truly heirlooms only if being passed down by a family or group has preserved them. Heirlooms are always open-pollinated, since hybrid seed can not be maintained by ordinary means. However heirloom vegetables are defined, interest is increasing in our edible heritage.

Why Grow Heirlooms

One reason to grow heirloom vegetables is simply that they are a taste of the past. Many varieties, which had been prized and maintained for generations, have been lost in recent decades as fewer people save seed year to year. For many gardeners, saving an heirloom cultivar is a connection to their heritage.

Many gardeners grow heirlooms that have superior flavor. Heirloom varieties that have been selected for taste and tenderness through several generations are often tastier than cultivars that have been selected for ease of shipping, uniform appearance or ability to grow well throughout the country.

When gardeners save the seed of the best-tasting, best-performing plants in their gardens each year for a number of years, they gradually select their own special cultivars. Those selections will be suited to their own growing conditions and tastes. Open-pollinated seed that has been grown and harvested for generations in a region or microclimate becomes adapted to that area ’s soil, climate and pests.

Many people grow and save old cultivars because they save a lot of money by avoiding the purchase of new and expensive hybrid seed each year. Hybrid seed will not produce similar plants when saved from year to year.

Another vital reason to maintain heirlooms is to keep their genetic traits for future use. When old varieties of food crops are not maintained, the gene pool grows smaller and smaller. This may lead to increased disease and pest problems.

Ark of Taste
Saving Cherished Slow Foods, One Product at a Time

Slow Food's Ark of Taste has cataloged hundreds of extraordinary products from around the world. This project has made an important contribution to the documentation of the existence of diverse traditional foods, but it was not enough to guarantee their survival. For this reason, Slow Food has created the Presidia, the working arm of the 'Ark of Taste.'

If Ark products can have an economic impact, they can be saved from extinction. This is the simple reasoning behind the Presidia; small projects to assist groups of artisan producers. Sometimes, it takes just a little to save an artisan food; it's enough to bring together producers, help them coordinate marketing and promotion, and establish quality and authenticity standards for their product. Other times, when the production of an artisan food is closer to the brink, it takes more: building a slaughterhouse, an oven, or reconstructing crumbling farmhouse walls. Slow Food Presidia work in different ways, but the goals remain constant: to promote artisan products; to stabilize production techniques; to establish stringent production standards and, above all, to guarantee a viable future for traditional foods.

The Presidia products have not only conquered cooks and gourmets, but have won over everyday consumers as well. The success of the Presidia has been highly esteemed, but the most important result of the project is that it has proven that consumers are willing to pay fair prices for Ark products, and that their production can be an economically viable activity.

Check out Slow Food's website at http://www.slowfoodusa.org/ark/index.html.

Why Eat Local?

1. Taste the difference.

At a farmers’ market, most local produce has been picked inside of 24 hours. It comes to you ripe, fresh, and with its full flavor, unlike supermarket food that may have been picked weeks or months before. Close-to-home foods can also be bred for taste, rather than withstanding the abuse of shipping or industrial harvesting.

2. Know what you’re eating.

Buying food today is complicated. What pesticides were used? Is that corn genetically modified? Was that chicken free range or did it grow up in a box? People who eat locally find it easier to get answers. Many build relationships with farmers whom they trust. And when in doubt, they can drive out to the farms and see for themselves.

3. Meet your neighbors.

Local eating is social. Studies show that people shopping at farmers’ markets have 10 times more conversations than their counterparts at the supermarket. Join a community garden and you’ll actually meet the people you pass on the street.

4. Get in touch with the seasons.

When you eat locally, you eat what’s in season. You’ll remember that cherries are the taste of summer. Even in winter, comfort foods like squash soup and pancakes just make sense–a lot more sense than flavorless cherries from the other side of the world.

5. Discover new flavors.

Ever tried sunchokes? How about matsutake mushrooms, quail eggs, or huckleberries? These are just a few of the uncommon flavors you can find when eating locally. Count the types of pear on offer at your supermarket. Maybe three? Small farms are keeping alive nearly 300 other varieties–while more than 2,000 more have been lost in our rush to sameness .

6. Explore your home.

Visiting local farms is a way to be a tourist on your own home turf, with plenty of stops for snacks.

7. Save the world.

A study in Iowa found that a regional diet consumed 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet based on food shipped across the country. The ingredients for a typical British meal, sourced locally, traveled 66 times fewer “food miles.” Or we can just keep burning those fossil fuels and learn to live with global climate change, the fiercest hurricane seasons in history, wars over resources…

8. Support small farms.

We discovered that many people from all walks of life dream of working the and–maybe you do too. In areas with strong local markets, the family farm is reviving. That’s a whole lot better than the jobs at Wal-Mart and fast-food outlets that the globalized economy offers in North American towns.

9. Give back to the local economy.

A British study tracked how much of the money spent at a local food business stayed in the local economy, and how many times it was reinvested. The total value was almost twice the contribution of a dollar spent at a supermarket chain .

10. Be healthy.

You will feel better than ever. You will eat more vegetables and fewer processed products, sampled a wider variety of foods, and eat more fresh food at its nutritional peak. Eating from farmers’ markets and cooking from scratch, you will never feel a need to count calories.