www.eatlocalchallenge.com

Report from North Carolina

The Eat Local Challenge got some press today in the Southeast in the Greensboro, North Carolina centered News and Record.  What a nice way to finish the month!

The market for local foods in this area seems to improve with each week.  If you love to cook, your choices are nearly limitless.  Nearly every kind of sustainably raised meat and poultry is sold at the farmers' markets, and a couple of vendors bring fresh seafood from the coast.  There are several farmers who raise vegetables in hoop houses and greenhouses, extending the seasons.  Delicious baked goodies and jams and jellies abound.

The biggest challenge that I have seen is connecting the restaurants with the local farmers and cooperatives.  Hopefully our local Slow Food convivium will be successful in bringing more of these together.  I missed eating out for lunch, and I found out that a couple of restaurants that I thought served local foods did not - after I was seated, unfortunately!  In one case, I discovered that the staff thought that buying from a locally-based food distributor meant that they were buying local food.

Cornbread, biscuits, and cheese grits

by Jamie S.

Welcome to my world.

Let's be honest: This is no Vermont. Have you ever noticed how many organic, small-farmed, value-added products originate in Vermont? I think we in the South need to do what the railroads did in the mid-1800s: recruit by all means necessary. We need to paper New England with flyers describing what an idyllic, easy life can be had amongst central Georgia's granite quarries and pine tree plantations. Just show up, bring your chevre and your micro-greens with you, and we'll give you 40 acres and a mule.

Okay, I'm exaggerating. But we do have to do a little more digging to find small local producers. Their wares aren't found in most grocery stores, but the producers are out there. And one of the things our local producers do best is grist milling.

Regional repasts

by Jamie S.

When I declared my intentions for this year's Eat Local Challenge, I wrote: "I will use the Eat Local Challenge as an opportunity to emphasize the flavors that are native to the American South." Why? Because although the South has lost much of its small-farm network (in most people's minds, CSA stands for the Confederacy rather than for a weekly box of fresh vegetables), it still has one of the country's most vibrant local cuisines.

I'm a northerner. This isn't the cuisine I grew up with, so why celebrate it? Well, I like it, for one thing. But also, it's far easier to do the Eat Local Challenge if you work with local tradition rather than against it.

Lamb's Quarters

by Laurie O.

Now that I've discovered them, I may never go back to spinach.  They're free, they're delicious, they're easy and fast to cook, they're good in salads.  They're nutritious.  They store well. You can freeze them.  They grow like - weeds.  I mean, really.

Lamb's quarters are growing all over the community garden.  I gathered some last Sunday, washed them and stored them in the refrigerator in a plastic bag, then gathered the rest of the ones in my row yesterday.  The ones in the refrigerator were just fine to cook today.  I bagged them stems and all, and maybe that made a difference.

In the chapter about lamb's quarters in Stalking the Wild Asparagus, Euell Gibbons mainly takes issue with another nickname for this fine wild food, "pigweed."  But he does have a bit of advice for the wild foods cook: "There are few better wild potherbs than this close relative of garden spinach. 

Field trip report #1: Strawberry fields forever

by Jamie S.

I've been living in the South for...let's see, six years now. And still it catches me off guard. If I hadn't been involved in the Eat Local Challenge, I might never have noticed that Georgia's strawberry season is in full swing right now. It's over by the end of May--I could have missed it by mistake, which would have been very unfortunate indeed.

So yesterday, while I was in town, I decided to take a break from my errands and pick some strawberries. Washington Farms is tucked in among some of the University of Georgia's myriad agriculture demonstration sites. It's an unassuming flat spot with a few novelty livestock pens and a couple of acres of raised, black-plasticked strawberry rows.

The State Drink of Virginia is Milk

by Jasmine

Virginia lists Milk as the state beverage.  The Virginia General Assembly passed the bill declaring this in 1982.  You would think that means that dairy is an important industry that the government would want to support.  However, according to Barnie Day, Virginia's dairy herds are diminishing at record numbers as the state continues to import milk. 

Milk production in Virginia was $275 million in 2005 yet dairies continue to struggle.  The only listing I found for Virginia milk that did not contain rBGH - Bovine Growth Hormone went bankrupt in the beginning of 2004.  As for large milk production both H. P. Hood and Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative have plants in my food-shed, they are both huge corporations accepting milk from producers up and down the East Coast. Shenandoah's Pride has been bought out by Dean Foods I could hardly consider any of these local.

A suspicion

by Jamie S.

I'll admit it: Down here in middle Georgia (the lower edge of Zone 7), we have it easy. Most of our sturdy greens and root vegetables can be overwintered, and our spring planting season starts in March. May is a shoulder season--down with the old, up with the new.

(I won't mention the bugs and the heat. I know it comes off as whining. World's tiniest violin, etc.)

If you live in a colder zone, you may be worried that there won't be much of anything at your local farmstand in May. But remember that some of your local farmers have greenhouses. I have a plastic hoophouse, and it makes me feel pretty darned clever. You can push the seasons ahead by a month at least. The plants grow in the same soil and battle the same bugs; the only difference is a little extra solar heat.

Full Circle, Almost

by Laurie O.

In the swamp country of southeastern North Carolina where I grew up, it was common for each family to have a small vegetable garden in which they grew food for their own consumption.  Our cash crops had already moved to the monocultures of tobacco, field corn, and soybeans, but you could count on eating fresh, frozen, and canned vegetables from the garden all year long.  Plenty of swapping went on as well - neighbors gave us sweet potatoes and collard greens, and they were free to pick blueberries in our bountiful patch. 

We lived near the coast, and my father was an accomplished fisherman of red drum. He bought shrimp directly from the small boats that came to his small marina and mechanic shop near Calabash, N.C.  Eggs came from our next-door neighbor and milk came from Mr. Cook's cow down the road.  Hunters on our farm occasionally provided us with venison.