Mendolonium

The past week was hectic and I didn’t get around to making the change I intended (I’ll save that one for this week) nor did I write about the change I did make, but we did make a change. The change is a commitment to buy only local produce from now on.

There are many good reasons for supporting local agriculture. The foremost, in my mind, is to reduce fossil fuel usage; specifically the fuel that is used to transport the food from the farm to your door and everywhere in between. Food that does not have to travel a long distance can be picked when ripe rather than when “green”. Naturally ripened food is both better tasting and higher in vitamins and minerals. Local agriculture also helps to preserve heirloom fruit and vegetable varieties that do not ship well. Eating local generally encourages safe, sustainable farming practices. It is much easier not to think about the pesticides and fertilizers being dumped on our food or the conditions of the workers harvesting them when such things occur far from our view. Finally, local agriculture also helps to preserve open space and build community.

The average grocery store’s produce travels 1500 miles from the grower to the store. For our purposes, I am initially going to define local as 250 miles with a goal of 100 miles by the end of the year. Clearly, closer is better, and that is one of the main reasons that we are endeavoring to grow as much as our own food as possible. How much more local can you get than your own backyard? I am including not only fresh produce but dehydrated and canned fruits and vegetables as well. I plan to fold in frozen items (of which we buy very little of) at a later date. I am going to make one significant exception for Thomas’ sake – bananas. Bananas are one of the few high calorie foods that Thomas will reliably eat. Hopefully, by next year we will be growing our own bananas, but for the time being I will buy Thomas fair-trade, organic bananas. Only for Thomas, however, none for us.

In addition to growing your own there are a number of good ways to procure local produce. Farmer’s markets are an excellent source and also provide a great opportunity to actually communicate with the people who grow your food. To find a local farmer’s market check out the Local Harvest website. You can also go pick your own produce at a local U-Pick farm. Finally, some grocery stores, including Whole Foods, are now labeling their produce as local. Each store has its own standards for defining local though, so check with the produce manager for specifics.

This past weekend we thew ourselves into this change in a big way by going out to a local organic cherry orchard, Big John’s Cherries, and picking an insane amount of cherries. We invited everyone we know and had a fantastic time. We ended up hauling home 33 lbs of cherries! In my next post I’ll detail how we preserved the cherries so that we can enjoy them all the way through to next year’s cherry season.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 10:46 pm and is filed under Change of the Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.