Eat well, eat local

Thanksgiving is the time when we celebrate the bounty of our harvest, and we have much to celebrate here in south Louisiana. Even those of us who live in town are not far removed from agrarian roots. If we aren’t farmers, the chances are pretty good that our fathers or grandfathers were.

Displays of seasonal fruits and vegetables in the supermarkets in the city remind us that we still live close to nature here – in a place where the Cajun cornucopia overflows. Because of our rich soil and moderate climate we can fill our Thanksgiving tables with nothing but home-grown foods and eat like royalty. The list of what we grow is something to marvel over.

Grains: Rice, corn, wheat, soybeans.

Seafood: Crawfish, catfish, alligators, oysters, shrimp, turtles, crabs, and fish from sac-a-lait to snapper.

Animals: Cattle, hogs, chickens, rabbits, sheep, and goats from the farm, squirrel and venison from the woods, ducks and geese and maybe frog legs from the marshes.

Vegetables: Tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, beets, broccoli, cabbage, greens, eggplant, peas, beans of all sorts, mirliton, peppers ranging hot or sweet, okra, onions, squash, turnips, and more.

Fruits: Oranges, satsumas, peaches, pears, lemons, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, figs, mayhaws, muscadines, and some others I’ve forgot.

And don’t forget sugar, syrup, honey, pecans and other ingredients for dessert.

Numbers tell some of the story. Our farmers and fishermen contributed $6.6 billion to the Louisiana economy in 2012, the last year for which the LSU AgCenter has complete data, and there are indications that 2013’s harvest will be even better. A good harvest and good prices brought increases to farmers practically across the board in 2012. Field crops were up by more than a billion dollars over the year before. Cattlemen led the way as the animal industry was up 20 percent statewide. Seafood continued to show steady progress in a recovery from the Gulf oil spill.

Closer to home, the St. Martin Parish harvest was worth nearly $90 million in 2012. Almost half of that, $40.8 million, came from the cane harvest, but that’s not all that we grow. We pulled 13 million pounds of crawfish from ponds and from the Atchafalaya Basin, adding another $21 million to the parish economy. The soybean harvest added $6 million, rice contributed $3 million. Our honey harvest was worth just over $1 million.

St. Martin has long had a big horse industry and that hasn’t changed. Racehorses, show horses, and horses bred and raised just for riding added $10 million to the parish agricultural economy.

The statisticians didn’t add up the value of the produce that comes from thousands of backyard gardens each year, but if barbershop bragging on the size and quality of those plots is any indication, it would probably be a substantial sum.

We’re told that Thanksgiving is a celebration of food, and that it is the one day of the year when gluttony is not only acceptable but something akin to a patriotic duty.

I subscribe to that theory. Give thanks for our abundant harvest. Celebrate it by eating well, and locally grown.

You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jhbradshaw@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.