How to Get Your Healthy On — for You & the Ecosystem

Seasonal Eating Guide: Fall Edition 2023

Welcome to the Fall Edition of the Seasonal Eating Guide, from your year-round farmers market! 

In this segment of the Fall Guide, we’ll take a closer look at how eating seasonally puts your body in sync with what Mother Nature provides, season by season. Not only is Ma Nature’s plan healthier for you, it’s also healthier for the ecosystems we depend on for food. 

For more insights and tips on seasonal eating, be sure to check out the Fall Guide’s other segments:

• If It Grows Together, It Goes Together draws on ancient wisdom to help you make the most of eating seasonally this Fall.
• It’s Soup Season! goes on a deep dive into Fall’s number one comfort food, complete with recipes, including bone broth.
• Farmer Spotlight introduces you to the young Amish family of Spring Creek Meadows, who rely on manpower, horses, and regenerative farming practices to raise their livestock. 
• Benefits & Uses of Fall’s Produce Powerhouses lists Fall favorites, their nutritional benefits, harvest time, and the different ways they can be used.

First Up: A Healthier You

The nourishment we need changes throughout the year, so Mother Nature dishes up foods perfectly designed to give our bodies what they need to stay healthy during each season. If we eat what she provides, that’s seasonal eating, and it helps keep us healthier. 

Get it from a local farmer and you boost the health benefit – local, in-season food is fresher and therefore has more nutrients than food that has to travel farther.

In the FALL, the high fiber and pectin in apples contribute to cleansing the intestines. They also support the digestion of fats. That’s important, because…

…with the onset of WINTER our bodies will need more fats and protein from meats, fish, nuts, seeds, legumes, root vegetables, and winter squashes. Winter’s cold, dry weather can dry us out and foods that are rich in protein and fat restore moisture to our bodies and make us less susceptible to colds and flu.

When SPRING rolls around, we need to detoxify after processing all those fats and heavier foods that we ate all winter. So nature provides bitter greens like arugula to help clean out our livers.

In the SUMMER, we’re outside more and usually more active. That’s when we need the extra energy we get from carbohydrates and sugars in warm-weather fruits like peaches and strawberries. Produce like cucumbers and watermelon help us hydrate more, too. 

Meanwhile, raw fruits and veggies deliver cancer-fighting antioxidants year-round. All this is just a tiny sample of the vast benefits of eating in tune with Mother Nature. Her rotating kaleidoscope of nutrients helps reduce the risk of chronic diseases, improves digestion, and tastes delicious!

Next Up: Healthier Ecosystems

Sustainable agriculture contributes to healthier ecosystems. You can support sustainable farming practices by choosing to eat seasonally from local farms. 

Eating local helps REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT. Local food doesn’t travel as far as most food you find in the grocery store.

Compared to the global industrial food complex, food from local farmers and artisans uses less fuel and produces less CO2 – 17 times less! So local food belches fewer greenhouse gasses and helps FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING.

Supporting local farmers also saves nearby farms from getting paved over and developed. That’s especially helpful when you’re saving small family farms like Spring Creek Meadows, featured in the Farmer Spotlight. Because they farm differently from factory farms.

Factory farms plant miles and miles of monocrops. That’s unnatural, and it forces them to fight nature with more pesticides and artificial fertilizers. It also destroys habitat, leaving less and less room for wildlife and the wild plants it depends on to survive.

Our family farmers use sustainable methods that WORK WITH NATURE. Sustainable methods create healthy ecosystems that are good for the soil, water, and air – a rich patchwork of fields, meadows, woods, and ponds. That kind of greenspace actually takes carbon out of the atmosphere. 

Plus it’s the perfect HABITAT FOR WILDLIFE to co-exist. You’ll find woods and wildflowers bordering our farmers’ fields and pastures.

So eating what’s available locally each season pays off for you AND the ecosystem. It’s good for your health, and good for the ecosystem we’re all a part of.