Food Gathering in Finland By Donna Harrington  Sade' remembers her uncles farm, in Finland. When she was growing up there her family got most of their food from the farm. Her uncle raised grain crops, rye, wheat barley, but not corns, it was too cold there and the growing season is too short. The main foodstuffs are berries, grains and fish. Fish is the staple of the protein portion of the diet. Their bread is unlike our soft, fresh bread here. Its texture is grainy and hard, and sourdough rye is a favorite. Their basic diet is rather bland, spices like allspice, salt, onion, dill, and parsley are used most often, and hot spicy foods are not common there. The growing season is rather short, from May to August, and most of their vegetables consist of root crops. The first frost sweetens the late fall crop of berries, which grow all over Finland in the wild. Open-air markets are commonplace their, but they also have the same type of supermarkets that we have here. In the past 10 years most all the farms in Finland have downsized greatly. After Finland joined the European Common market system, Finland imports most of its food from Europe. Sade's husband is a research scientist for Duda here in Florida. Duda is an agricultural company that supplies fresh produce to retailers. Their native diet is a very healthy diet, which my friend sticks to here in the United States. They eat very little junk food, and their children, all five of them, are very healthy (therva, in Finnish).