How Can You Find Local Food?

Don't expect to find very much local food at your supermarket.  You can find 40,000-60,000 items from every corner of the world.  Most of them are identified only by country of origin, if that.  Lists of ingredients often include long chemical names whose sources do not need to be revealed (melamine, anyone?).  Unless you live in a big produce area such as California, you will have a hard time finding local produce, even when it is in season.  You can ask the produce manager.  The more we ask them for local food, the more likely it is that we will get it.  

So, we have the same question: how can you find local food?

1. Start at home.  

--What do you grow in your yard?  Apple trees? Berry bushes?
--Do you have a garden? Can you have a garden?
--Can you keep bees (most cities allow them)?
--Can you keep chickens?  A few hens are a pleasant addition to your yard.  They eat vegetable scraps and create fertilizer and eggs.  

If you live in an apartment, you may still be able to grow a few pots of herbs or tomatoes on your patio.  Perhaps you can find a community garden nearby where you can have a small plot of your own.

The usual growing season is over for 2007, but you can start to plan for next year.  Consider it a Victory Garden--victory in the fight for local, flavorful, inexpensive food for your family.  If you have a garden, you can look into season extenders, cold frames, hoop houses, etc., that will allow you to harvest vegetables earlier and later than usual.  Eliot Coleman's book Four Season Gardening is a good reference.

2. Join a CSA

CSA means Community Supported Agriculture.  You pay the farmers for a share of vegetables at the beginning of the season, and get a weekly bag or box of freshly picked local produce.  Some CSA sell milk, meat, honey, fruit, bread, jellies, or other local products as well.  CSAs are the fastest growing form of agriculture in the U.S. today, and no wonder!  The farmers get to keep the entire sales price of the share--nothing to middlemen, factories, stores, etc. The customer gets fresh local produce, and gets to know the people who grow their food.

Some CSAs offer working or barter memberships, where you contribute your labor to the farm in return for a reduced-price or free vegetable share.

In the past decade or so, thousands of new CSAs have sprung up all over the country.  To find one near you, look in the Local Harvest website:
          http://www.localharvest.org
and enter your own state or zip code.  You'll be astonished.
 
3. Farmers Markets

You can also find a multitude of farmers markets in every state in the union. You can generally find an even wider selection of edibles at markets which have stalls or tables from many local growers and producers.  In some areas of the country, farmers markets run year around.  Here in Colorado, they're mostly done in October.  

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A CSA and/or farmers markets can provide you with wonderful local
produce in season, but most of us don't live in perpetual summer. Just as our grandmothers did, we can preserve the summer's bounty for winter. Fruits and vegetables can be dried, canned, pickled, or frozen. The techniques are simple, the equipment is not expensive. The easiest of all: Many hardier vegetables can be kept in a cool cellar or garage, where they won't freeze, for months.

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4. Find and support local farms

You can use the Local Harvest website, or a number of other similar sites, to find farmers in your area who are raising animals for meat or eggs. Perhaps you have local orchards that sell to the public. There are beekeepers everywhere to supply you with local honey.

You can link up with other people in your area who are interested in local food, and share information about suppliers. You could put together a buying coop for bulk purchases, such as grain.


Grains and Beans

In most parts of the country, grains and beans will be the most difficult foodstuffs to buy locally. Practically all of then are sold through the commodity system, giving the farmer a return of just pennies on the dollar of supermarket sales. Most commodity farmers make ends meet with government subsidies, mainly for wheat, corn and soybeans. Large corporations are calling the shots, and making the profits, on this commerce.

We can turn this around, supporting small local farmers, but only if we work together. Small farmers need to know that there will be a solid market for their grains, flours and beans, in order to invest in the processing machinery and mills.

A final note: Does it make sense to start a 100-Mile diet in November? For us it did. We have a lot of stored food: frozen, canned, and staples. We also have a CSA membership which will give us vegetables until March. I quickly found several good sources of meat, poultry, dairy products and eggs. And we have fruit trees in our yard, and five boxes of our apples in the garage.

Whether or not you are ready to start your 100-mile diet now, you can start thinking about what you might do to prepare for it. Perhaps you want to start in June, with a CSA, buying food at the farmers markets and preserving it. I first thought about local eating last year; it took me nearly a year to decide to jump in and do it. Perhaps you need to prepare your spouse and children for the inevitable changes. You will be doing more cooking.

And a fair warning: once you have really started eating local food, you may lose your appetite for the tasteless tired produce and fruit you were eating before; you may lose your yearnings for junk food; you may decide to drive past the burger palace and go home for a satisfying meal. It's an adventure!