photo: Star Route Farms, Bolinas, CA
Now that I've gotten some perspective on my somewhat extreme pledge to eat (almost) entirely local for the month of May, here are a few of the lessons I learned:
1. I, like all residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, am blessed. Many of the raw ingredients I eat are available from nearby producers who use relatively sustainable methods. The Challenge was a lot easier for me than for participants in places like Colorado and New Hampshire. The climate-moderating influence of the Pacific, the excellent soils, and the culture of food converge to make this one of the easiest places to eat all local, all the time.
This disparity hit me when, towards the end of May, I traveled to Bend, Oregon for a friend's wedding.
I mostly gave up on eating local for those days--I didn't want food restrictions to get in the way of my travel adventure--though I did go out of my way to sample the local beer and wine.
On my third day in Bend, I decided to poke around the Wild Oats natural foods store. I went first to the cheese section. I found a nice local goat cheese: Juniper Grove in Redmond, which you can actually get in CA. I also tried a really unique, wonderful, unforgettable smoked blue made by Rogue Creamery in Oregon, though not near Bend. That one I may seek out here! Next I hit the produce section and found the produce manager. He seemed like he'd be happy to talk about his produce all day. I got the feeling he didn't get asked too often. Most of the signs (thank you, Wild Oats, for labeling the country of origin) said Mexico. The produce guy reported that in his whole domain, there was only one truly local product: some under-ripe-looking hothouse tomatoes. After a disclaimer that they weren't like the ones we get in California, he assured me that they were very, very local and sustainably grown, and that he'd visited the farm and would be willing to eat off the floor of the greenhouses. He also explained that Bend just isn't an agricultural area; it has poor soils, arid climate, and cold winters. But he told me about a wonderful local bakery--the Village Baker--that almost made me want to move to Bend! It was clear to me that if I did live there, my Eat Local Challenge month would have looked a lot different. I could ALMOST live entirely on bread, cheese, and tomatoes (and beer and wine)...
Lesson #2. It's very time consuming to prepare every single meal myself! Ultimately, it's not sustainable for me. I got pretty burned out on cooking by the end of May. I am now even more appreciative of restaurants that use local ingredients. I also am grateful for minimally processed local foods for on-the-go snacks (such as Lundberg rice cakes with Lagier Ranches or Full Belly almond butter). And I'm relieved that, fun though it was, my Challenge is over and I can balance eating what my conscience tells me with eating what's called for by time, convenience, and hankerings.
3. Everything is a gray area. I make the best choices I can, but I can't get too uptight about eating only products that are purely local. The Eat Local Challenge was a game with arbitrary rules. We defined local as within a 100 mile radius, and we each chose our own exceptions. But I came to realize that nothing is black and white. For example, I was shopping at the farmers' market and found some locally grown sprouts. I was thinking about buying them, but then I realized that the seeds couldn't possibly all be local (I should have asked!). Then I realized that most of my vegetables are grown from seed, and I never wondered before where the seed came from. Why are sprouts different? Lower per-seed yield? Where do I draw the line? What about other inputs, like compost, and for that matter, water? What about the local hothouse tomato grower that gets his beneficial, pest-eating insects from Holland? What about the energy used to heat that greenhouse? And the fuel to run a tractor? My mind swimming with questions, I concluded that it was enough to ask questions and make the best choices based on the knowledge I had. The point is not to have the most right or virtuous answer, but rather to ask the questions.
4. Note to self: don't get hung up on the frequently debated question: local or organic. Of course it's ideal to have both. But here's something I learned from Samuel Fromartz, author of Organic Inc., at a talk he gave last week: about 2% of food sold in the US is organic--1% if you include eating out. And 1-2% is local. So if you buy one or the other, you've already got a product that's preferable to the other 98% of our food supply! You are already making a difference, so why split hairs.
5. Learning where things come from is inspiring, and it doesn't have to stop with your food. I've found myself reading labels a lot more, and looking for local sources for items ranging from soap to greeting cards. Also, whether it's local or not, it's nice to find out more about how food is made. I'll give you a couple of fun examples:
Talking to Allison of Divinely D'lish, who sells yummy homemade cookies at the Ferry Building (granola is her primary product, but I'm a sucker for her cookies!), I learned that her ingredients are local and/or organic when possible. In her granola and cherry cookies, which I had on Saturday, her oats come from Oregon, her butter from Spring Hill in Marin County, her flour from Giusto's (not locally grown, but locally milled), and her dried cherries from G.L. Alfieri.
I also learned that Cowgirl Creamery cheese, which uses local Straus milk, gets its rennet from Wisconsin (I think that's where everyone gets their rennet--Wisconsin doesn't have that cheesy reputation for nothin'). But the mold for the rind of their Red Hawk cheese is native to Pt. Reyes! They could just put their cheeses by the window to age. And if they ever move, they'll have to keep a facility in Pt. Reyes or the Red Hawk just won't have that award-winning, unique flavor. My favorite Cowgirl cheese is actually their Mt. Tam. But the mold for that comes from Wisconsin.
So now that the official Challenge is over for the year, I'm going to continue the unofficial challenge that is my everyday life. I'm going to relax, enjoy, inquire, make small efforts, and choose local when I can.
Julie Cummins lives in Oakland, CA and is the Director of Education for the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA).
