Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Lori Evesque’s article this month is the third in a series of three on the topic of food choices.
In “Choosing Local Food for Your Health and the Health of Your Community,” which appeared in the February 2008 issue of the CoSozo Newsletter, now CoSozo Living, and “Choosing Foods For Health: Which is Better, Local or Organic?”, which appeared in the March 2008 issue, I discussed the emerging trend and interest in buying and eating locally raised foods, their benefits to your health and that of your community and the environment, and the differences between local and organic foods. In this article, I will delve into the more practical aspects of changing your buying habits and actually converting to a diet of local foods.
Once you have made the decision and commitment to increase your consumption of local foods, you may look at your weekly shopping cart or at your cupboards and wonder how it is even possible to buy locally when it appears that almost everything you currently buy and eat comes from many miles away. It can seem like a monumental task. Take heart! As the saying goes, Rome was not built in a day, and you should not expect to change years of shopping and eating habits overnight either. So relax and enjoy your adventure into the new and exciting world of local foods.
One of the first things to consider when you start your transition to local foods is the time of year. Remember, in the past, even when the food system was primarily local, winter would not have been an easy time to find food unless you had spent the previous summer and autumn stocking up your pantry. After reading my previous two articles, you may have been thinking about local food more, and perhaps started looking around your local grocery stores or food co-ops to see your available options. If you live in a warmer climate, you probably found a strong selection of produce, as many cool-weather vegetables can be grown year-round. In the North, however, options may be very slim. Although it is possible to store some fruits and vegetables over the winter, it is rarely done these days on a small local scale. Northern local food options are often limited to more easily stored fruits such as apples, and root vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, and others. Until you have had some experience experimenting with unfamiliar vegetables, growing and storing your own food, and finding your own local sources, winter may be a very difficult time to make the transition. Luckily, we are now getting to the time of year when the farmers’ markets are starting to open, in a wave from south to north, and adventurous and talented farmers are starting to bring their early produce to market. Spring is the ideal time to start your adventure!
With the tremendous increase in the number of farmers’ markets across the country, starting with fruits and vegetables is generally the easiest first step to converting to a diet of local fare. As the markets begin to open, visit them often to see what is available. Be aware that many vendors at markets, in order to ensure their supply and to compete with conventional grocery stores, purchase a great deal of their produce from wholesalers. Some purveyors are not even farmers and deal only in reselling trucked-in produce. This produce is no different from that in grocery stores, coming from hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Although some markets are beginning to restrict sellers to only those who deal in local produce, these markets are still the minority. Get to know the vendors, asking questions about their products to determine which are raised locally and which are trucked in from wholesale markets. Be patient, as the early local sellers—usually the farmers themselves—have only limited supplies and selections of spring produce.
The more you learn about the foods available locally and the seasons in which they are available, the more you will notice that there are many food items commonly served together that aren’t actually available locally at the same time. Welcome to the notion of seasonality. Eating locally is an exercise not only in changing buying habits. It is about changing how you think about food, how you cook, and ultimately how you manage your kitchen and pantry.
If you page through the average food or cooking magazine, you will see recipes combining all kinds of foods. For example, some recipes suggest fresh tomatoes in the springtime or asparagus for Thanksgiving. Many of these resources evolved in the era of the supermarkets and worldwide access to any food at any time of the year.
With the increase in the numbers of people living in urban environments—and therefore very removed from the impact of seasonal cycles on growing food—comes a lack of knowledge about what foods are available at different times of the year. The best guide to seasonality that I have found thus far is a website created by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in which the user chooses the state and season and gets a list of what’s available in that month. You can also get a list for the entire year for that locality. These lists do not indicate all the vegetables that may be available, just those most commonly found.
Other guides, such as a chart published by the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) are written from the perspective of a particular climate, that of San Francisco, so people in other kinds of climates will have to adapt the chart to their area. For example, avocados, while they are available in the supermarkets much of the year, cannot be grown in the North.
The CUESA website also has seasonality charts for nuts and fruits. You can also check seed catalogs for information about maturity dates in different areas to get more of an idea of when vegetables and fruits will be available for sale in your area. As you get to know the vendors and growers around you, ask them what will be available and when. Understanding the seasonality of foods is one of the most important aspects of making a local diet successful.
One of the best options for the novice locavore to find and experience local fruits and vegetables is to join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm (see our brief overview about CSAs in the March 2008 issue of the CoSozo Newsletter, now CoSozo Living). A CSA is a way to get a weekly box or basket of seasonal produce from a local farmer or group of farmers. The purchaser pays for a season of produce in advance, thus giving the farmer the capital to start the season. The purchaser is also accepting some of the risk that the farmer generally shoulders on his or her own for crop failures, weather-related problems, and other unforeseeable difficulties. Many CSAs, to help their subscribers adapt to some possibly unfamiliar foods, include recipes, stories, and other interesting information along with their baskets of food. Some ways to find CSAs in your area are by visiting farmers markets and food co-ops and asking friends and neighbors. Many farmers advertise on bulletin boards at local stores for new subscribers. The website http://www.localharvest.org is an excellent resource for finding CSAs and other local food sources.
There are a number of local food cookbooks now available that you can use to learn more about seasonal cooking. One that I have used and like very much was produced by the Madison, Wisconsin-area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition. It is called From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce. (I have also listed other resources at the end of this article.) To be truly seasonal, you will have to look at the cookbooks available to find one that most closely matches the climate in your area. Even cookbooks from other areas can be used as guides and inspiration as you become better at substituting for ingredients that aren’t available in your area or at the time of year you’re cooking.
Besides seasonal cookbooks, another necessary resource will be at least one cookbook that explains how to make things using basic ingredients—not prepared food products. As you expand your use of and commitment to local foods, you will probably find that you need to learn how to make many of the items you are now used to buying, like sauces, baked items, and salad dressings. For this, the best suggestion would be to spend some time in your local bookstore looking at the cookbooks and their recipes. Take a list of the types of baked goods, sauces, dressings, and other items you typically purchase to find recipes for making them yourself. Look for recipes that call for basic ingredients like flour, sugar, and oil, rather than a can of this or a package of that. For example, a recipe for green bean casserole should not include a can of cream of mushroom soup. It should include a recipe for making a seasoned mushroom white sauce.
Once you have located local sources of the fruits and vegetables available in your area and have learned a bit more about cooking seasonally, you will probably find yourself interested in buying other kinds of foods locally, such as meat, dairy, grains, dried fruits, and other products. Again, local food co-ops and natural food stores are good sources for these items. Check the bulletin boards of the stores, as there are often local or regional very small-scale animal farmers with meat for sale. This is often available in bulk. For example, if a farmer raises beef cattle, you can often buy by ½ or ¼ of a steer. If this is too much for you, ask your friends if they want to split the meat with you. If you are having difficulty finding sources of local meat, ask the owners of the stores, as they often have knowledge beyond what you may find on your own. Sources of local meats, cheeses, eggs, and milk products can also be found at your local stores, and small-scale and artisanal dairies are becoming more and more popular.
Besides visiting local markets, food co-ops, and other options you know of, you can take advantage of some tools available on the Internet to find more sources. One of the best Internet clearinghouses for finding local foods in the United States is http://localharvest.org, which was mentioned earlier in this article. Local Harvest was founded in 1998 and is, as it says on its website, “the number one informational resource for the Buy Local movement and the top place on the Internet where people find information on direct marketing family farms.” Local Harvest has about 9,000 members, including growers, processors, markets, and informational members, all having something to do with local foods. You can search by city name, zip code, type of seller (farm, farm market, retailer, etc), or specific product to find a particular item.
In Canada, there is a relatively new website that is developing along the same lines as the Local Harvest website, called http://www.100mileradius.ca/, which, although in its infancy, is providing many sources of local foods for Canadians. Any Internet search with “local food” and your location will result in many resources for finding local foods, and in many areas of the country, there are groups forming to act as resources about local foods.
In my state, Michigan, there are several groups in various regions with websites that offer information, contacts, and even ordering options for local foods. For example, in northwest Michigan, Taste the Local Difference, which is part of the Michigan Land Use Institute’s Entrepreneurial Agriculture Project, has a website that lets you find local farms, U-pick opportunities, restaurants, farmers markets, wineries, events, and other activities featuring local foods.
Sometimes in areas where there seems to be little interest, expressing the desire to find local foods can make you feel like you are very alone. If finding others with like interests seems difficult, you can consider email list groups as a possible forum. On http://groups.yahoo.com/ and the Local Harvest website, you can search for others in your region or state interested in local foods. There are some groups in Cincinnati, southwest Michigan, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and other areas.
Sometimes the groups are difficult to find, but using key words such as “100-mile diet” and “local food” can help locate them. In my area in southwest Michigan, the yahoo listserv EatLocalSWMich, which started early this year, has discussed everything from what to do with beets and rutabagas, to raising chickens, to the merits of the Farm Bill and the challenges of getting a small goat milk dairy running. If you can’t find a group, start your own. Hand out information to friends and let the word spread. Chances are there will be more people than you can imagine interested in finding healthy sources of local foods.
There are also national and international groups interested in making local food more available. Some of these groups include Slow Food USA and Slow Food International (see “Slow Food: An Introduction to the Movement” in the March 2008 issue of the CoSozo Newsletter, now CoSozo Living), Chefs Collaborative (a community of chefs, farmers, fishers, educators, and food lovers dedicated to promoting sustainable cuisine), and American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. Many of these groups have joined together on a project called Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT), a conservation endeavor designed to document, restore, and celebrate the incredible diversity of America's edible plants and animals. A major part of the project relies on making the foods available to people to eat and enjoy, and as these foods are not well suited to the industrial food system, the way to eat and preserve them is through the local food system. Getting involved with any of these organizations will offer you opportunities to learn more about food systems and how to develop them and make them healthy in your area.
As you can see, this journey of discovering local foods is not as simple as merely changing your diet. The more you learn about local foods, the more connected you will become to the people around you, your community, and the earth itself.
The secret to what may seem to be an overwhelming task is to start small, take it one food at a time, and, most importantly, enjoy the journey. As you change your eating habits to a fresher, more local, less processed diet, you will find yourself feeling healthier and more alive, connected to others in ways you never thought possible.
May your year be full of fresh local foods.
Cookbooks:
Blake, S. (2007). Seasonal Food: How to Enjoy Food at Its Best with More Than 200 Recipes (A Cook's Bible). London: Duncan Baird Publishers.
Hockham-Wert, C., & Lind, M. B. (2005). Simply In Season (Whole Community Cookbook). Canada: Herald Press.
Allrich, K. A. (2003). Cooking By The Seasons: Simple Vegetarian Feasts. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
Fletcher, J. (1997). Fresh from the Farmers' Market: Year-Round Recipes for the Pick of the Crop. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.