We know that what we eat matters for our health. What might be a surprise is that our relationship with food, where it comes from, and who we eat it with are just as important. Exploring these things and being intentional with our eating patterns can help us develop healthier habits and improve our overall quality of life.
The path to eating well doesn’t have to involve kale smoothies or vegan nut cheese, it will look different for each person. That’s why we included many different ways for eating well in our This Way to Well-Being map. (Information about the map and related campaign can be found here.)
You may have tried eating healthier in the past without much success. The key to changing our habits is to find our own “hook.” Do you enjoy being outdoors? Do you want to have more energy? Are you interested in supporting local businesses? Your path to well-being involves exploring activities that are meaningful and interesting to you.
There are several food-related “points of interest” along the Way to Well-Being map, including:
Plant a Garden
Eat More Fruits & Vegetables
Cook a New Healthy Recipe
Visit Food Roots (Storefront in Downtown Tillamook)
Visit a Farmers Market
Do any of these appeal to you? Maybe you have been thinking about growing your own food for a while and just haven’t taken those first steps yet. Or perhaps, you have thought about supporting local farms or buying locally sourced foods but weren’t sure where to start.
Convenience drives our behavior and decision making. If we know where to find food at the local grocery store, we may not be willing to invest the time in finding local products in other locations. The Food Roots storefront in downtown Tillamook has year-round sales of local produce, eggs, meat, sea salt, honey and other products. Farmers Market season is just around the corner and markets are located throughout the county. Scheduling a visit to one of these locations before doing your regular grocery shopping ensures you get fresh, locally sourced products into your weekly meal plan.
Knowing where our food comes from – who is tilling the soil and bringing these nutrients to our plates in our own homes, is important. If we garden, we reap the health benefits of that directly. If we buy from local producers, we are supporting our local economy. Either way, it’s a win-win.
In the same way, preparing our own food changes our relationship with it. The time and care it takes to turn raw ingredients into a soup, salad, or omelet, makes a big difference. Better yet, cooking as a family and teaching our children how to grow their own food and make their own meals is one of the most lasting gifts we can give them. After all, everyone eats throughout their entire life. Encouraging young people to think about how their bodies need food as fuel can help them establish healthier habits earlier in life and could prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes later in life.
When we eat food that we prepare ourselves, we consume less salt, sugar and fat as these are added to commercially processed foods so that we will buy and eat more of those products. It can feel overwhelming to shift our habits, but at the same time, it can give us perspective to grow our own tomato plant and have fresh, sliced tomatoes on a sandwich we pack in our own lunches. There is a deep sense of satisfaction in providing for ourselves and by supporting others in our community. And, of course, there are the health benefits that come from eating more nutritious foods.
For information and resources about points of interest for eating well, visit our This Way to Well-Being page and explore our website. By participating in our well-being campaign, you may be eligible to win a prize. To be entered into a prize drawing, visit Food Roots at 113 Main Avenue in downtown Tillamook, and let them know you are there as part of the campaign. You can also participate by taking an online survey or by posting and tagging us on social media.
AUTHOR: Michelle Jenck, Adventist Health Tillamook Director of Community Well-Being
Oregon’s North Coast is home to dozens of small, independent food businesses including farmers, ranchers, fishers, and value-added producers. This bountiful region is well known for its diverse variety of foods that are harvested, grown, or produced throughout the year, including beef, pork, lamb, dairy products, fish and shellfish, honey, vegetables, and craft beverages. Food Roots believes that a reinvestment in those who produce, harvest, and sell our local food will nourish our families, revitalize our communities, and grow our economy. Since 2006, Food Roots has been working to support small producers in Tillamook County through a variety of programs that increase access and affordability to local foods, promote healthy eating and garden education in schools, and support economic development of small food and farm businesses. Our projects and activities are divided in three main programs: Farm to School, Local Food Equity and Producer Support. Read below to learn more about our role in Tillamook county’s local food system and how you can support our mission!
Farm to School Program: The National Farm to School Network has summarized research that shows the benefits of Farm to School programming including increasing students’ preferences for fresh fruit and vegetables, improving performance in school (science in particular), and impacting positive social behavior. The programming we provide is rooted in this research: we focus on hands-on activities that encourage inquiry and critical reasoning and prioritize activities that complement Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core ELA and math standards.
We currently partner with five different schools for the 2021-2022 school year: Garibaldi Grade School, Tillamook Junior High, East Elementary, Nestucca Valley Elementary and Nestucca Valley Early Learning Center. Every week, our farm to school educator visits classrooms to bring enriching garden-based lessons. We also organize school-wide tastings that feature a vegetable grown by a local producer and organize field trips to local farms. Every month we are engaging with over 750 students!
Producer Support: Food Roots is a provider of Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). IDAs are a matched savings program that enables low to moderate income entrepreneurs to save money to either start or expand a food system business. Food Roots’ IDA participants receive a 3:1 match on their IDA savings, meaning that for every $1 a participant saves, the program will match it with $3. Participants can save a combined total of $12,000 in savings and matched funds over three years. In addition to consistent monthly savings, participants learn important business skills such as cash‐flow projection, financial management, and marketing through free, required classes provided by partners like the local community college, Oregon State University Agricultural Extension, and local financial institutions. Once participants have reached their savings goal and completed the required classes, they can use the money to finance business‐related expenses.
In the past few years, we have expanded our support to producers with the opening of our brick and mortar storefront, Food Roots Marketplace (formerly FarmTable). Opened in February 2018, Food Roots Marketplace has proven a popular outlet to connect our community and its visitors directly to our area’s food producers and their products. We feature over 50 local vendors and a variety of value-added products and fresh local produce that are stocked weekly. Customers can choose to visit our storefront (open weekly from Tuesday to Friday from 2-5:30pm) or shop online by visiting our website foodrootsnw.org (click on the “Online Marketplace” button on the top left). The online ordering window opens every Tuesday at 5:30pm and closes on Saturday at 11:59pm. The addition of the online platform has created an efficient system that allows producers to only harvest what they have sold. Producers update their inventory with produce that is available on the farm. Once the ordering window closes on Saturday, farmers check what they have sold on Sunday and bring all the orders to the store on Monday. When the store opens on Tuesday, all the orders are packed and ready to be picked up at our store! As part of our mission of making local food more accessible, we have also added a delivery program that brings online orders to the customer’s front door or to one of our 3 pick-up site locations spread across the county (Wheeler, Netarts and Cloverdale).
Local Food Equity: We believe everyone in Tillamook should have access to healthy, fresh, local food, so we have a few programs to increase affordability. Double Up Food Bucks (DUFB) is a SNAP (formerly called Food Stamps) matching program that incentivizes federal benefit food dollars to be spent on locally grown food at farmers markets and grocery stores that sell local food. At Food Roots Marketplace, we expand on Double Up Food Bucks, by doubling the matching program and expanding it to all SNAP-eligible food items. Using additional internal funds and community fundraising, SNAP shoppers can save up to $20 on every order!
Through this savings program, SNAP shoppers can also save up to $250 on CSA shares. CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, is a model that provides customers with weekly boxes of fresh, seasonal produce, while supporting farmers with income early in their growing season. We partner with local farms to make CSA shares available at Food Roots Marketplace. CSA shares generally run from June through October or November. We will soon post sign-up information for CSA shares on our website, so stay tuned!
Finally, we partner with various organizations that serve socially-disadvantaged groups to provide bounty boxes- a limited time subscription to locally sourced, seasonal products that are delivered weekly. SNAP shoppers that sign-up for a bounty box receive half-off.
Food Roots relies on our strong community partners to accomplish our mission. Food Roots is the north coast hub lead for the Oregon Farm to School and School Garden Network, a member of the Oregon Community Food Systems Network, and a leader in the Tillamook County Wellness coalition, a ten-year initiative to reduce and prevent diabetes through access to healthy food, physical activity, workplace wellness and screenings. Without volunteers and community support, none of these programs would be possible. Please consider donating and/or volunteering or contact Food Roots for ways you can help us in our mission to cultivate a healthy food system in Tillamook County.
AUTHOR: Carol Parks, Program Manager at Food Roots
Since the Food Stamp Act passed in 1964, qualifying low-income Americans have had access to benefits to buy groceries. Known now as SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program also provides nutrition education and obesity prevention under its SNAP-Ed component. The goal of SNAP-Ed is to improve the likelihood that persons eligible for SNAP will make healthy food choices within a limited budget and choose physically active lifestyles consistent with dietary guidelines. Oregon SNAP-Ed supports this goal by providing evidence-based educational programming, using social marketing, and supporting or implementing policy, systems, and environmental changes that affect the food and activity environments where people live, learn, work and play.
The Oregon State University Extension Service developed the Food Hero initiative to support the State’s SNAP-Ed program. On the Food Hero website at www.FoodHero.org you can find information on food safety, how to cook for a crowd, cultural toolkits, activities for kids, instructional videos, recipes and much more. All recipes on the website go through testing. In addition to being tested for overall flavor, color, and texture, recipes with low-cost and easy to find ingredients, easy to follow instructions, and a reasonable preparation time are selected. Each recipe is tasted and rated by several people before making its way to your kitchen.
In addition to the Food Hero site, a monthly newsletter called Food Hero Monthly has great information that is helpful for the season like how to freeze garden veggies in the summer, or healthy holiday dishes in the winter. OSU’s SNAP-Ed also provides in-person classes and talks. Take a moment to check out the site and you can become your own Food Hero.
Spring is just around the corner! You may be using this time to clean out last year’s garden beds, or to collect seeds for this summer’s harvest. But many of us lack the space or flexibility around our homes to enjoy the process of growing our own vegetables. This is where container gardening comes in – many plants can actually grow well in containers placed on a porch or patio, a method that also allows you to extend the growing season. You can start your garden indoors in the spring, move the containers outside during the summer, and then shift them back indoors in the fall to protect them from frost.
So how can you get started with a container garden? Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Choosing a Container: It’s important that your containers have holes in the bottom so that water can drain out. Most vegetables will do best in containers that hold 2 to 5 gallons of soil and are at least 12 inches deep. You can use a variety of things as a container: barrels, flowerpots, milk jugs, bleach bottles, window boxes, baskets, tile pipes, cider blocks, etc.
Adding Soil: It is recommended to use commercial potting soil for container gardening, but this may be too lightweight to provide adequate support for plant roots. You can try adding soil from the ground or compost to provide bulk and weight to your potting soil.
Planting Your Seeds: Carefully clean out the container and fill it with your soil, leaving a ½ inch at the top with a slightly dampened soil. Plant your seeds and water gently, taking care not to wash out the seeds.
Keeping Your Plants Healthy & Happy: Check your seed packets to see how much sun and space your plants need, and make sure to water your containers whenever the soil feels dry. Container plants tend to dry out and lose nutrients faster than plants in the ground so it is important to keep up with watering and fertilizer. Try using a water-soluble fertilizer every 2 to 3 weeks.
There are some vegetables that grow particularly well in containers. Oregon State University in partnership with their Food Hero program has collected a list of these vegetables, along with some growing tips:
Beans and peas: Plant one sprouted seed or seedling in a 5-gallon container for best results. Provide a pole or trellis for pole beans and peas.
Beets: Choose a container at least 12 inches deep.
Carrots: Choose a shorter carrot variety and plant in a container at least 12 inches deep.
Cucumbers and summer squash: For best results, choose a bush variety rather than a vine variety. A pole or trellis in the pot will help support the plant and allow air to flow around the leaves.
Herbs: Many herbs grow well in containers, including basil, chives, cilantro, mint, oregano, parsley, sage and thyme.
Peppers: All peppers like to have support, but it is especially important for varieties that produce large peppers. Use a stake or tomato cage to keep them upright
Potatoes: Containers should be at least 18 inches wide and 3 feet deep to allow the most potatoes to grow. Look for varieties of certified seed potatoes that mature in 70 to 90 days.
Radishes: Containers 4 to 6 inches deep work well for this cool-season vegetable that grows quickly.
Salad greens: These cool-weather vegetables can be grown from spring to fall but may need shade during the heat of the summer. Cut the outside leaves when young and they will grow back for another harvest.
Tomatoes: For best results, plant varieties designed for containers. They may have the word dwarf or patio in their name. Provide extra support with a stake or tomato cage.
It could end up feeling a little overwhelming to have dozens of pots on your front porch, but you might find that you enjoy having one or two vegetables in easily accessible containers. There’s a simple joy in being able to pick a few cherry tomatoes from your front porch the next time you’re putting together lunch.
8 to 16 cups fresh or frozen vegetable scraps (see Notes)
herbs and spices (optional, see Notes)
water
1/2 to 1 teaspoon salt
Directions
Wash hands with soap and water.
Put vegetable scraps and herbs and spices, if desired, in a large saucepan or cooking pot. Add enough water to cover them.
Heat pan on high until water boils, then cover pan and reduce heat. Simmer for at least 30 minutes or until all scraps are soft. Stir a few times and add more water, if needed, to keep scraps mostly covered.
Turn off heat. Scoop out as many scraps as you can with a spoon. If you want, press on scraps to remove more liquid. Throw away or compost them.
Fill a large container or clean sink with ice and some water to make an ice bath. Put pan into ice bath for about 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes to release heat. If you were unable to remove all scrap pieces, pour broth through a strainer into another large pot.
Stir in salt to dissolve. Use broth for soups or stews, or in place of water for cooking grains or beans.
If not using broth right away, store in refrigerator or freezer. To freeze, pour into recipe-sized freezer-safe containers and label with date.
Broth can be stored safely in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days. For best quality, use frozen broth within 2 to 3 months.
Notes
Label a freezer container with “Broth Scraps” and the date. For the next several days or weeks, after preparing vegetables for any use, save scraps in the container until you have enough for making broth. Also wash and save any vegetables that have passed their peak freshness but are still safe to eat.
Vegetable scraps to save include ends, peels, stems, leaves and pieces of vegetables and herbs such as carrot, celery, garlic, leek, mushroom, onion, tomato, parsley and thyme.
Vegetable scraps to limit or avoid:
Asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower and leafy greens can add a bitter flavor if too many are used.
Beets will add a dark color and bitter flavor.
Potato, sweet potato and winter squash flesh can make the broth too thick.
Scraps that are moldy, slimy or otherwise unsafe to eat should never be used.
Optional herbs and spices:
1 or 2 bay leaves
1 or 2 teaspoons peppercorns or a dried chile
4 to 8 cloves unpeeled garlic
1 leek or unpeeled onion, cut in large pieces (if not included as scraps)
The calendar doesn’t say spring, but gardeners are ready to go. Turning vegetable seeds into plants helps satisfy the urge to put hands in the soil. And the seed catalogs are showing up in mailboxes.
It’s best to seed cool-season crops such as lettuce, cabbage, kale and broccoli in flats in late February to early March in western Oregon. Warm-season crops such as tomatoes, peppers and eggplant should be sown in late March to early April.
Back up your seed-starting date from the dates when you want to transplant, for most crops that would be just after the last frost date in your area. In Tillamook County that is generally Mother’s Day, but there are various “micro-climates” in the county. For example, closer to the beach there is less likely chance of frost after the end of April, but up the river valleys, there could be a hard frost in mid-May. Check with the OSU Extension Office in Tillamook for more information about seed starting.
Germination starts when the seed takes up water, a process called imbibition.
During this fragile time in the life of a plant, it’s critical that seeds receive appropriate amounts of water, oxygen and light. At this point, starting seeds becomes a balancing act.
Seeds need enough water for imbibition, but if they get too much it can suffocate the developing seed or lead to root rot. If the soil temperatures are too cool, the seed won’t germinate and cold soil temperatures could also lead to damping-off, a disease caused by soil fungi.
To successfully start seeds, first select and clean the right container, such as plastic flats or repurposed yogurt containers with adequate drainage. Sterilize the containers if they have been in contact with soil in a bleach solution of one part bleach to nine parts water. It is possible to grow seedlings in biodegradable pots fashioned out of newspaper or eggshell cartons, but the material takes a long time to break down in the soil after transplanting and the plant starts might not become well-established.
Next, find a seed starting mix at your local nursery or garden supply store. These mixes are not actually soil, but rather a sterile growing medium used to support growth, generally consisting of organic materials such as peat moss or coconut fiber and perlite. The seeding material will retain water for seed germination and seedling growth and also drain well. Place the flats on a seedling heat mat, which can be purchased at nurseries and garden supply stores. The mat will heat the seeding material to promote quick germination.
It’s important to have enough light. Use high-input grow lights or standard shop lights with fluorescent bulbs. Position the lights about 2 inches above the flat and move the shop lights up as the seedlings start to grow.
To tell if the seeds are getting enough water, the growing medium should always feel damp to the touch just under the surface. Using a spray bottle is the most efficient way to water.
As they get larger some plants like tomatoes and melons should be “stepped up” from flats into a 4-inch pot and then potentially into a gallon-size pot prior to transplanting.
Local garden coach, Master Gardener Karen Matthews, has been teaching seed-starting workshops at Alder Creek Farm for more than a decade. For a comprehensive video about her tried and true methods for seed starting, see the video below for tips and how-tos: https://youtu.be/kYB-ocGihBc
The OSU Extension guide also offers additional advice on starting seeds and a calendar of dates for planting various vegetables. Explore more resources from OSU Extension here.
Source: Kym Pokorny, OSU Communications
AUTHOR: Laura Swanson, Tillamook County Pioneer Editor
