By Shawn Dell Joyce

Holiday joy can be a fleeting thing this time of year, as many people feel more like Scrooge, than Tiny Tim. Behind the advertising blitz that bombards us with consumerist images of smiling, well-dressed people giving cheerfully-wrapped packages is the dark truth of depression. The United States tops the list in depression out of 14 countries in a recent World Health Organization poll.

Much holiday malaise can be traced to a sagging economy, and holiday expectations. A parent’s group,  the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, wrote letters to 24 leading toy companies and retailers to express concern about ads aimed at kids. These parents expressed dismay that they can’t afford the pricey toys that toymakers are heavily advertising to our children, and children feel diminished when they don’t get pricey toys.

It is hard to believe that we are descended from settlers’ children, who rejoiced at receiving a penny and a stick of candy as their main holiday gifts. In the 1800’s, our kin earned $1,500 per year, and would have had one nice set of clothes for church, and one shabby set for daily life. We worked twice as hard for a simple diet because we had to grow most of what we ate ourselves. Over the course of 200 years, we have grown an average of 4 inches taller and 20 pounds heavier, our houses have more than doubled in square footage, and we no longer find joy in a penny and a stick of candy.

We need to reclaim our holidays as times of family togetherness and joy, no matter what shape the economy is in. Even if you don’t celebrate the Christian holiday, or the Jewish Hannukah, or African Kwanzaa, you can still celebrate a “Secular Sabbath,” in the words of NY Times food columnist, Mark Bittman. A secular Sabbath is a break from email, cell phones, television, and all the other distractions of modern living that keep us alienated from each other.

“You need not be elderly to remember when we had no choice but to reduce activity on Sundays; stores and offices — even restaurants — were closed, there were certainly no electronics, and we were largely occupied by ourselves or our families,” writes Bittman.

Here are some ways to get more joy from the holiday season:

• Find joy in the mundane moments. Notice the details of the season, new fallen snow, laughing children, glittering icicles and the sparkle of a lit tree.
• Avoid comparing your decorated house with your neighbors’ or your co-workers’ holiday plans with your own and so forth. Instead of comparing, which is almost always unfavorable, be genuinely glad for your fellows, delight in their joy, and you in turn will feel greater satisfaction.
• Be satisfied. Don’t look for satisfaction in material things because you won’t find it there. Satisfaction is a spiritual concept, and cannot be bought or given.
• Find the true meaning of the holiday. A gift of time to the local soup kitchen or “Toys for Tots” program will  deliver a greater feeling of joy than spending more money at the mall. Look for ways to do generous acts anonymously this season. Rekindle a sense of faith in humanity as a gift to your community.
• Cherish family time. Spend more time sharing joyful experiences like caroling, baking, Christmas plays or making gifts together instead of shopping.
• Put gratitude in your attitude. Start your holidays off with a gratitude list noting all the wonderful tangible and intangible blessings you have in your life. Counting your blessings will keep you focused more on what you do have.
• Say “Thanks” by calling or writing a thank you note right away after a gift or good deed. This prolongs your joy, and shares it with the giver.
• Keep the spirit of the holidays in your heart all year. Remember to give often and generously. Make volunteerism part of your daily routine. Research indicates that both the giver and the receiver of a good deed get an endorphin boost from the act.

shawn@zestoforange.com.

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Thanksgiving is a holiday built around food. We gather, we gorge, and sometimes acknowledging the hands of the cook, perhaps thanking the divine, but rarely do we honor the hands that feed us.

Growing the food that feeds our country is one of the most thankless and low paying jobs a person could have. In 2002, the median net income for a U.S. farmer was $15,848, while hired hands and migrant workers averaged around $10,000 per year. Farming has become so unpopular that the category was recently removed from the U.S. Census, and federal prison inmates now outnumber farmers.

Migrant pickers often put in long hours, up to12 hour days, earning about 45 cents for each 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. This amount hasn’t risen in over 30 years. At that rate, workers have to pick two-and-a-half tons of tomatoes to earn minimum wage. Most farm workers don’t get sick days, overtime, or health care. Some farmers often don’t fare much better.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. If we stopped putting such an emphasis on “cheap” and instead put an emphasis on “fair” maybe those hands that grow our food could afford to eat as well. Raising farm wages would have little effect on supermarket prices, mainly because farmers and farm workers are paid only about six to nine cents out of every retail dollar spent.

If we raised farm wages by 35 percent and passed that cost to consumers, it would raise the retail price by only a few pennies according to the Center for Immigrant Studies. The total cost to consumers for all fresh produce would add up to less than $34 per year, per family. If we raised wages by 70 percent, that cost would be about $67. Divide this over 52 weekly trips to the supermarket and you’re looking at spending barely a dollar more each week. Wouldn’t you spend that much to know that people didn’t suffer to feed you?

In January 2001, the U.S. Department of Labor informed Congress that farm workers were “a labor force in significant economic distress.” The report cited farm workers’ “low wages, sub-poverty annual earnings, (and) significant periods of un- and underemployment” adding that “agricultural worker earnings and working conditions are either stagnant or in decline.”

For agriculture to be sustainable, it must provide a living for those who work our land. Let’s honor the hands that feed us by restoring the dignity of a fair wage to farmers and farm workers.

Buy your produce from local farms where you can meet the farm workers and see for yourself if they are treated fairly. The smaller the farm, the more likely they are to treat workers well, and often have only family members working the farm.

shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Josephine-Louise Public Library in Walden signed on for the Ten Percent Challenge and is taking measures to reduce its energy usage by 10 percent. Director Ginny Neidermier describes the library’s motivation as mainly to replace many of the old windows in the building. “For a very long time we knew the windows on the first and second floors, and the balcony doors of the second floor had to be addressed. Due to the deterioration of the wood, many of these windows and doors either failed to open or close securely, rendering them essentially useless, and causing significant energy loss.”

Neidermier notes that “as the windows began to deteriorate, it became difficult to keep them open, and they certainly were not air tight. Storm windows were old, with some storms missing. During winter months or cases of extreme wind, the windows and doors would offer their seasonal rattle!  Every year we would get out our duck tape and try and seal the spaces! Needless to say, there was significant heat loss. A NYSERDA audit was completed around 2008 with recommendations and proposals for the Municipal Building. As with everything else, it would cost the Village money that simply was not there.”

Many municipalities face the same budget crisis that the library has: They would like to replace old windows and be more efficient, but efficiency costs more upfront and pays for itself over time. Right now, NYSERDA is offering free and reduced-rate audits for municipalities but will be doing away with this program within the month. Municipalities have to move quickly to take advantage of the free audit incentive before it expires this year. Sustainable Montgomery has a link to the audit application on their website at sites.google.com/site/sustainablemontgomery/audits-more

Neidermier is very resourceful and community-minded. She and her staff were able to find a way to replace the windows in the public library without having to raise community taxes. The library filed for a matching grant through the Division of Library Development. The library shares the Municipal Building with the Police Department and the village offices. The grant funds were only available for the library portion of the building. The municipality is already looking for ways to fund changing windows, fluorescent fixtures and other energy leaks in the rest of the building.

The project for window replacement and restoration is almost complete, and Neidermier is tabulating the results of their efforts using this season’s upcoming heating bills, and reducing the use of air conditioning in milder weather. Neidermier says, “We are hopeful the reduction will be more than 10 percent. However, we have already experienced a difference. The drafts from the windows and doors from past years are non-existent, as well as the “street noise.” The windows are also treated with a “uv ray” coating, protecting some of the book collection from long-term sun damage.”

For Josephine-Louise Public Library the Ten Percent Challenge has been a win/win situation. Neidermier says, “It seemed a natural fit to sign on. This year we have applied for the same matching grant from the Division of Library Development and are currently waiting on the final outcome of funding. The goal of this project is to upgrade some of the electric and plumbing on the first floor library, making energy improvements where possible and allowing more efficient use of water and conservation.”

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, a benchmark business in the Ten Percent Challenge. shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Right now many of us are planning our Thanksgiving Dinner. We have a big decision; to sit in front of a meal of imported ingredients, grown around the world in places where the Pilgrims never set foot, or, skip the supermarket and source all the ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner from local farms, mills and growers.

Eating local embodies the spirit of the first Thanksgiving, where Puritans and Wampanoags sat down together to share a meal that consisted mainly of shellfish, eels, wild fowl (including swans and eagles) and other local foods that they could gather or grow. When we source our foods locally, we eat in season, and celebrate what’s grown in our region. Absent from the first Thanksgiving feast were modern traditional dishes like corn on the cob (all corn was dried by that time), pumpkin pie (they had no sugar), cranberry sauce (no sweetener other than maple syrup), and stuffing (they served pudding).

We have altered the menu over the years to the point where we rehash and serve the exact same dishes over and over. This year, have a real Thanksgiving by celebrating the local harvest and the hardworking hands that grew it. Buy your dinner ingredients from local farms, and prepare what is seasonally available in our area. Your food dollars will stay local, nourishing the farm family, farm hands, and local community. This is an act of gratitude that bolsters your local economy during tight times.

Right now, you can find turkeys that live the way nature intended, chasing bugs, scratching in the grass and frolicking in the fall leaves instead of penned up one-on-top-of another in factory farms. These turkeys will cost a little more than their supermarket counterparts because they are not mass produced, or government subsidized.

As a matter of fact, none of our small local farms are government subsidized, so when you pay a little more for local produce, it is because you are paying the full cost to grow the food at a fair rate. Large farms that wholesale to chain grocers are subsidized by our tax dollars lowering the cost of goods on the supermarket shelf. This makes non-local groceries appear cheaper than locally grown foods, but there are hidden costs that must be paid in the long run by someone else. Like the loss of soil fertility, social costs of cheap labor and environmental devastation of shipping food over thousands of miles.

This year, as you and your family gather around the Thanksgiving feast, offer a prayer of gratitude for our small farmers and farm workers. Give thanks that we still have people in our region willing to grow quality food in a market flooded with cheap imports. Support these hard-working folks by eating locally grown foods at the holiday table, and year round. Let’s reject our national food system that makes “cheap” the highest priority, at a deep cost to the environment, the farmers, and future generations, and spend a little more on quality local food and farms.

—–To find local Thanksgiving Dinner ingredients:

www.localharvest.org

www.eatlocalchallenge.com

www.100milediet.org

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Many local businesses are discovering the benefits of taking the Ten Percent Challenge and lowering their energy use and cost by ten percent before the winter rise in energy costs. One of those businesses is Al Valk’s Garage in Walden.

Valk says: “As a small business in a struggling economy we have been researching all the rising costs of doing business, insurance, taxes, licenses, fuel electric, etc. Our electric bills for last July through August were $960.00, and with the winter season just around the corner, our electric bills will more than double. The idea of the Ten Percent Challenge is real to us; because of the rising costs of doing business, we are trying for more.”

Valk contacted his utility, New York State Electric & Gas, and had an audit through their in house energy audit program called Enerpath (www.enerpath.com). NYSEG sent an auditor to Valk’s Garage and recommended that he replace the old, out-dated fluorescent fixtures and bulbs with more efficient newer ones. The work has not yet been completed, but Valk has been assured that it will be in the next few months and will start saving him more than $113 per year, and $566 in the next five years in spite of rising energy costs. Valks’ current annual lighting expense is $371 per year, and one simple lighting upgrade of 24 bulbs and fixtures, which will cost $1,025, will pay for itself in 42 months and give a return on investment of 28 percent. Icing on the cake is that NYSEG kicked in more than $600 towards Valk’s lighting upgrade, reducing his costs to just over $300.

While Valk reduced his electric bill by more than 30 percent with one simple upgrade, he’s not stopping there. “We plan on resealing all the 17 overhead garage doors,” notes Valk, as well as having all the “heating units serviced and cleaned, with a possible upgrade on a heating unit – if money is available.”

Valk thinks the Ten Percent Challenge makes good business sense. “The challenge equals smart business management, says Valk. “We must pay attention to all costs of doing business and living expenses to survive.”

If you want to save 10 percent on your home or business energy costs, watch for news about future Ten Percent Challenge meetings such as the one scheduled for earlier this week in Walden. Sign up and find out how your home or business can do something positive for your bottom line and the community.

Already taken the Ten Percent Challenge? Email me and tell me what you did to save and I’ll write about you in a future column. ShawnDellJoyce@gmail.com

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, one of the flagship businesses of the Ten Percent Challenge, along with the Wallkill Valley Times. Keep following her column to see how other local businesses are joining the Ten Percent Challenge.

By Shawn Dell Joyce
With stocks plummeting, home heating prices soaring and money tight, many people look toward winter with fear and trepidation. One of the best ways to alleviate this fear is to take positive action like having a home energy audit.

Almost half of our energy use goes into heating and cooling our homes. We are already paying an average of 20 percent higher home heating costs, so any way you can reduce your costs will pay for it. A professional home energy audit costs $100 to $300, but through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), homeowners can get this service for free.

If you take out the loan and make the improvements, the money you save on your electric bill easily covers the loan payment, often with plenty left over. If you plan to go solar, or incorporate some form of renewable energy into your home, the same program will pay for half the installed cost. www.getenergysmart.org

Having a trained eye look at your home is invaluable. My auditor spotted right away that my furnace was operating at 80 percent efficiency despite just being serviced. He also found some leaky and uninsulated ductwork.

The blower door is a tool that auditors use to test your home’s envelope. They install a powerful fan that fits exactly into an open outer door. The air is sucked out of your house causing negative air pressure. The auditor walks around with a hand held smoke machine and points out the major gaps and leaks, usually around doors and window frames. If added together, all these gaps and leaks can equal a huge hole in your wall.

Here are a few ways my home energy audit saved us money and reduced our energy use:

–Just by caulking all the gaps and leaks, we could cut almost $1,000 from our annual heating and cooling bills. Even if we hired a contractor to do this and had to pay $4,500 for caulking, we would make that investment back in under 5 years. You can’t get a rate of return that good on the stock market right now.

–One of the most obvious leaks in any home is an uninsulated attic and basement. We were losing much of our heat right though the roof of our house. A modest investment of about $1,500 added six more inches of insulation in our attic and made a considerable difference in how warm the house feels, and how much energy we use to heat it. We reinsulated many of our outside walls at the same time, and were able to cut our home heating costs dramatically last year.

–If you have an uninsulated basement, insulating exposed crawl spaces, ceilings and walls could save you as much as $800 annually, depending on the size of your house. Again, if you paid someone to do it, you would make a return on your investment in under five years. 

–Switching out your incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent or LED lights can save you an immediate 20 percent reduction on your electric bill. The more bulbs you replace, the greater your savings.

–About 14 percent of our home energy use is spent on keeping water hot at all times. Buying an on-demand water heater will save you the cost of that new water heater in about 2 to 3 years.

–Appliances and cooking can account for 33 percent of our home energy use. If you replace older appliances with Energy Star Rated appliances, you can save about $100 per year, per appliance on average. These savings help to offset the cost of the new appliance over the years.

–Replacing windows can be expensive, making the payback period much longer. In my case, we would save $30 to $50 annually with a payback period of 10 years. We opted instead to invest in window inserts to use during the winter. An immediate action you can take is to cover every window with clear plastic window sheeting from your local hardware store. It curbs heat transfer, and will save energy.

Sign up for the Ten Percent Challenge and have a home energy audit. Tell me what you did to reduce your energy usage by 10 percent or more, and I’ll write about you. Next week, we’ll hear from some local businesses that had energy audits and reduced their energy bills by more than 10 percent.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

We are all suffering from the recession, but some communities are suffering less than others. In communities with a strong localized economy, there is less fluctuation and more money flowing from local business to local business. These communities tend to have a higher quality of life, lower crime rates, and a friendlier, more neighborly attitude. What makes these towns different? They think local!

Many towns are realizing that local independent businesses return more money to the local economy than the national chain stores. Towns that are able to grow a good amount of their food, and source many of their consumer goods and services through local manufacturing and businesses are much more financially stable in uncertain times. They are also more sustainable, and have a lower carbon footprint.

Local businesses are not shipping goods over thousands of miles and paying the higher fuel costs, also they tend to bank local, advertise in local papers, purchase local, use local contractors, and pay good wages and benefits to local people. That keeps money bouncing around longer in the local community. Each time that money passes through another pair of local hands, it improves the local economy a little more.

A recent study revealed that $1 earned by a local farmer had the impact of $2 on the farmer’s community because it changed hands so many times locally.

“About 42 percent of our economy is “place based” or created through small, locally-owned businesses,” notes Economist and author Michael Shuman. He estimates that we could expand this figure to 70 percent or more, by localizing some of our main expenditures. In the process, we would boost our local economy, and save money at the same time.

—–Local Food-Most of our urban areas are surrounded by farms that produce lots of local foods, that are shipped thousands of miles away. Ironically, 75 percent of fresh apples eaten in New York City come from Washington State, and foreign countries. Meanwhile, a few miles upstate in New York farmers grow 10 times more apples than the Big Apple consumes. If we all started eating closer to home; say within a 100 mile radius, eating in season, and lower on the food chain, we could localize our food system.

—–Local Electricity-The electricity for our houses and businesses most often flows through hundreds of miles of power lines from the source to our home. Imagine if cul-de-sac residents teamed up and purchased a communal wind turbine, or set up solar panels on all the southern-facing garage roofs. We could create a series of small-scale energy providers that could potentially meet their own power needs.

In my community, a waste recycling entrepreneur has found a way to generate electricity from bagged household garbage.  Also, a farmer has developed a way to turn old hay and agricultural waste into pellets for home heating. Two huge leaks in my local economy could be met locally if we start using heat and power more efficiently.

—–Suburban Renewal-If we relocalized our towns so that residents could walk to the farmer’s market, hardware store, library, and post office all in the same area, we wouldn’t have to drive so much. Driving is expensive, and environmentally devastating. When you walk or bicycle, you go slower, appreciate the architecture and history, wave to the neighbors, and possibly engage in conversation. This kind of walkable downtown encourages local spending and reinforces community bonds.

—–Local Currency-If you want to stimulate economic growth in a geographic region, one tried-and-true method is to generate a local currency. It functions like the good old dollar, but is not legal tender; instead it is more like a local barter. The people who use local currency make a conscious commitment to buy local first. They are taking personal responsibility for the health and well-being of their community. This also distinguishes local businesses who accept the currency as ones who have made the same commitment.

The state of Vermont recently issued its own currency; Vermont Freedom Currency, which is a silver coin worth 10 Credits.  Vermonters can use the coin for any service, fee or tax through the state, or as barter currency accepted by certain individuals and businesses. These coins circulate through Vermont and have proven to be a real economic stimulus as people have less qualms about spending the Vermont currency freely.

While you may not be able to buy everything you want locally, chances are if you can’t find it in a local store, at a yard sale, or www.Craigslist.com-you could probably do without it.

Shawn@zestoforange.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce
Picture in your mind the food ladder. Starting at the bottom rung, we have the most abundant and free source of energy on the planet; solar, which is consumed by plants (next rung) to make food energy, which is consumed by animals (next rung) to make protein, which is consumed by man. Except in a few rare cases involving bears, sharks, wild dingoes or cannibals, the food ladder ends with us humans.

Each rung on the ladder represents about a 10 percent loss of resources. The plants waste 10 percent of the sun, growing things the animals won’t eat. The animals waste 10 percent of the plant by growing things like feathers, fur and bones that we won’t eat. You get the picture. What does that innocuous 10 percent really look like?

To produce a pound of wheat takes about 25 gallons of water, a lot of sun, and less than an acre of land. Yet it takes 16 pounds of that wheat (plus soy), and 2,500 gallons of water fed to a cow to make one pound of beef. More than half our farm land and half our water consumption is currently devoted to the meat industry. A 10-acre farm could feed 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn but only two producing cattle, according to the British group Vegfam. We eat most of our grain in the form of meat, 90 percent actually, which translates into 2,000 pounds of grain a year. In poorer countries, grain is consumed directly, skipping a rung on the ladder.

“Imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak dinner,” writes author Frances Moore Lappé in Diet for a Small Planet. “Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls in front of them. For the ‘feed cost’ of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains.” We Americans don’t often see the unappetizing effects of eating 260 pounds of meat per person, per year. We waste 90 percent of the carbs, fiber, and plant protein by cycling grain through animals for meat.

Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer estimates that reducing meat consumption by just 10 percent in the U.S. would free enough grain to feed 60 million people. This year, about 20 million people, mostly children, will starve to death.

We don’t often see the hungry and malnourished in our culture, so it’s difficult to make that connection when standing by the grill waiting for your hamburger. Consider ways to replace meat for two or three main meals a week. Marge Corriere, a Blooming Hill Farm customer, said recently: “Treat meat like a condiment. Use just a small amount for a meal, much like they do in other countries.” By eating lower on the food chain, even just a few meals a week, we reduce our risks for heart disease, obesity, hypertension, colon (and other) cancers, and save valuable resources that could be put to better uses elsewhere.

“It boils down to a simple equation,” says Alan Durning, head of the Northwest Environment Watch. “We currently consume close to our own body weight in natural resources every day. These resources are extracted from farms, forests, fisheries, mines and grasslands, all of which are essential to the health of the planet — and to the health of human beings.”

Adding more vegan meals to your diet, and treating animal products (meat, dairy, eggs) as condiments and using very little, improves your health and the health of the planet.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com

By Shawn Dell Joyce

Many scientists agree that we have waited too late to address climate change and are now suffering some consequences. What is debatable is how severe, and long-lasting those consequences might be.

We still have a chance to act now to reduce the impact on our children and grandchildren. It is only a matter of time before a carbon cap is legislated, and we begin to reduce emissions. Atmospheric carbon can have up to a 100-year lifespan, so even if we stop all emissions today, we will still have an impact on climate for the next century.

So how can we adapt to our changing climate and prepare our communities for the weird weather we are enduring? Adaptation at a local government level begins with reducing emissions then preparing for drought, or deluge (depending where you’re located), rising sea levels, changes in agriculture and growing seasons, and the loss of livelihoods. There is an organization that helps local governments learn where they are vulnerable, and to take steps to reduce the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

ICLEI (which doesn’t have an acronym) is an international agency that thinks globally but acts locally to help communities. Annie Strickler, ICLEI communications director, suggests that “you can’t just choose mitigation or adaptation strategies; they go hand-in-hand. While we’re working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many if not all communities need to prepare for impacts that are currently happening or will happen in the years and decades to come.”

Strickler also notes that it is much cheaper to adapt now, than try to catch up later or pay to clean up the consequences of not adapting. To help local governments, ICLEI cooperated with the Climate Impacts Group and King County, Wash., to produce a free guidebook.

The guidebook “takes the mystery out of planning for climate impacts by specifying the practical steps and strategies that can be put into place now” to help communities adapt.

One ICLEI success story is Keene, N.H. Keene is in a low area that is experiencing terrible flooding. In 2005, more than a third of the city was submerged, causing massive evacuations.

Scientists are predicting more frequent extreme precipitation for the Northeast, and so, Keene got proactive and worked with ICLEI to assess how to adapt now to avoid catastrophes.

The process engaged all city department heads, medical, social, and emergency personnel in brainstorming and goal-setting. What they discovered is a need for better storm water management, green building codes, and a way to feed the community when all the roads are washed out by flooding.

Some of the adaptation ideas included:

–Providing loans to companies that might be affected by a warming climate, such as the ski industry, snow plowing, and maple sugaring industries.

–Supporting local farmers to increase local food security by 20 percent, so that when droughts and floods disrupt outside food supply lines, local farms will be able to feed the population.

–Building stronger roofs to handle wetter, heavier snow in the warming winter.

–Using porous pavement to prevent stormwater runoff, and improving infrastructure such as storm sewers to handle a higher flow.

Keene has forged a path that other cities – including Fort Collins, Colo., and Fairbanks, Alaska – are following, too. Keene City Planner Mikaela Engert points out that “this is something that can be replicated, whether you’re a community of 1,000 people or 1.5 million, it doesn’t matter. You can do this. Ultimately we’re talking about protecting people property and our community.”

Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Orange County, N.Y.

Reprinted from Orange County Bounty, local foods cookbook, available at the Wallkill River School in Montgomery.

By Shawn Dell Joyce

We’re in peak tomato season, and if you’re a lucky gardener or farmer, you probably have tomatoes coming out of your ears. So what’s a lycopene lover to do with an over abundance?

My favorite preservation method is dehydrating fresh produce. You don’t use up all your freezer space, and there’s little chance of improper processing. Also, nothing beats the intensified flavor of a sundried tomato in mid-winter. I use an inexpensive dehydrator, but you can also dry tomatoes in an oven set on “warm” for several hours, or on your roof in a “solar powered” dehydrator made of clean window screens.

To process, make sure you wash the tomatoes well, and lay them out to dry on a dish towel. In the meantime, set up your dehydrator or screens. I coat each tray with a nonstick cooking spray to keep dehydrated produce from sticking. This is essential if you are using window screens. Quarter the tomatoes, and slide your thumb along the inside to remove the pulp. Lay tomato quarters evenly spaced on the trays so air will circulate around them. When one tray is filled, lightly salt the tomatoes with sea salt. Fill all the trays, and then drape a dish towel over the top tray (or sandwich another screen on top) to keep gnats away.

My dehydrator uses a tiny fan and very little electricity, so I fill it up before bed, and leave it on all night. In the morning, I take out the first few trays and store the crispy dried tomatoes in a jar or waxed paper bag in the pantry. If you like your tomatoes a little softer, take the next few trays out as well. I am leery of soft dried tomatoes spoiling, so I store the softer ones in a small container in the freezer. I have a Greek friend who stores soft dried tomatoes in a jar with garlic cloves and olive oil in the refrigerator.

Toward the end of August, I keep the dehydrator fully loaded and running night and day. It becomes a ritual to gut tomatoes, and trade out the shriveled little morsels for fleshy red wedges. It’s a little work and takes about as much time as a phone call to a friend. You also have the added benefit of a warm tomato smell infusing your home.

Tomatoes are not the only fresh produce that is exceptionally tasty in its dried form. Zucchini is exquisite when crisped in a dehydrator. Peaches make a wonderful dried fruit snack. Strawberries, blueberries and raspberries are also good, but I puree them in a blender and spread the pulp on waxed paper in the dehydrator tray. A few things that flopped were green beans, corn, bell peppers and cucumbers. A big hit from the dehydrator was homemade organic, pasture-raised beef jerky. It’s an expensive treat, but much better for you and the environment than its store-bought counterpart.

Preserving the harvest is one way to ensure your family gets the best local produce year round. Canning or freezing are equally good ways to savor the abundance of summer, long into the winter. Whatever your favorite preserving method, do it now, while produce is at its peak in nutrition and flavor. For a little extra time and effort today, you can have a higher quality, better tasting alternative to winter imported produce. Processing the harvest now is also better for the environment. Precious little fossil fuel is burned by home preserving compared to the barrels of fuel needed to haul imported fresh produce from overseas or across the country.

Shawn Dell Joyce is the director of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, N.Y.