Fresh Produce Above the Arctic Circle
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JUNE 24, 2007 - Here's the big problem with greenhouse gardening above the Arctic Circle:you have to watch that the heat doesn't burn your plants.
Surprising, isn't it? Maybe less so when you remember that the "midnight sun" never sinks below the horizon during the longest days of the Arctic spring and summer. And so, according to a June 20 report in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper, greenhouse gardener John Lamb has recently been working on ventilation to actually cool his polar operation.
By the end of the month, an estimated 80 gardeners in Iqualuit, at 63 degrees North latitude, will be able to grow their own fresh vegetables in the 15-metre-long (50 foot) greenhouse. Like local eaters everywhere,they'll do it for the flavour and nutrition - a big change from the tired and overpackaged produce shipped in from afar. They will also seriously reduce the fossil-fuel consumption linked to their food. The long-distance produce can arrive by cargo ship during the warm months, but for much of the year it has to come in by plane.
Using only the sun's heat and passive solar energy, the greenhouse is more sustainable than many further south (see tomorrow's blog for more on greenhouses). It's a fantastic operation, and it will make possible some fabulous, fully local Arctic meals -something most of us can't even imagine. It's worth remembering, though, that polar local eating has always been possible, as indigenous northern peoples have shown for millennia. And while there may not have been any Inuit vegetarians, plant foods were an important part of many northern diets. From the other side of the Arctic comes the book Once Upon an Eskimo Time, by Edna Wilder - Alisa calls it "a Little House on the Prairie for the Arctic," right down to the weird similarity between the two authors' names. Once Upon an Eskimo Time tells the story of Wilder's mother, Nedercook, who remembered a time before cargo ships and air freight. Living just south of the Arctic Circle on Norton Sound, Nedercook remembered eating plenty of meat and fish, yes, but also new willow leaves and shoots, wild sorrel and other greens, wild onions, sour dock, fern roots, seaweeds, many different berries, grass roots, Eskimo potato, and more - some of them even preserved in oil for winter "salads."-JBM
