Your Stories
So you're having a crack at the 100-Mile Diet. Tell us about your first meal. What local foods did you discover? Where did you find them? And what did you have to do without?
“Buy Local� Map Unveiled in Ontario
WELLINGTON COUNTY, ON — JUNE 27, 2006
By Kate Vsetula
The 2nd edition of our “Buy Local! Buy Fresh!� map is available free at regional public libraries, township offices and select restaurants and health food stores across the county. The map highlights farms in the county that sell direct to customers as well as agricultural fairs and special farm events in the region.
The 59 farms on this year’s map offer everything from sheep cheese to elk meat, eggs to maple syrup, trout to fresh picked strawberries. Last year’s map won the Epic Award from the Association of Ontario Health Centres. For more information about the project contact 519-823-9734
100-Mile Dinner in New Brunswick
SAINT JOHN, NB — JUNE 27, 2006
By Bob Ewing
The group I’m involved in, www.relocalizesj.org, is hosting a 100-Mile Diet dinner on Thursday, July 27, 2006, at the Gothic Arches. We want to talk about the relationship between the 100-Mile Diet and community relocalization, especially the potential to revive urban communities through the growing, preparation and eating of food grown within the 100-mile radius.
Wheat a Puzzle in Oregon
CORVALLIS, OR — JUNE 27, 2006
By Cathleen Hockman-Wert
While researching the cookbook Simply in Season, I learned a lot about local eating in Oregon. I wouldn’t have thought it would be so hard to find local wheat. In fact, Oregon produces a lot of wheat, mostly in the drier, eastern part of the state. In 2005 wheat was Oregon’s sixth-highest value commodity. However, the Oregon Wheat Commission states that 85 to 90 percent of our wheat is exported, and most of it ends up in Asia. You see, this is soft white wheat: the kind used in noodles, flatbreads and quick breads. The yeast breads we eat here use hard red wheat varieties that grow well further east.
Both the organic and conventional pastry flours from Bob’s Red Mill up the
valley near Portland are made from soft white wheat from Oregon and Washington.
The good folks at Oregon Tilth led me to Azure Farm, a 2,000-acre organic wheat
and cattle ranch in the foothills east of Mount Hood. Their website tells the
story of how the family stopped using chemical pesticides and fertilizers and
gradually saw the soil increase in health. Under the name Azure Standard the
business now markets a wide variety of organic products all over the country.
Yes: they do mill and sell their own flours locally.
I chatted recently with a friend who has been experimenting with growing wheat
for his own family’s use at his home in the Oregon Coast Range. They’ve found
that soft wheat works fine for the sourdough bread they like to bake in their
wood-fired cob oven. (Bread machines, no.) When I listen to the process of
sowing, harvesting and threshing the grain - then separating the wheat from the
chaff by throwing handfuls from one end of a long tarp to the other - wow, I have
to be grateful for the farmers that bring me those precious bags of flour.
Lured by the Eggs in New York State
DANBY, NY — JUNE 27, 2006
By Joey Diana
I just read your log on going through the conversion of being near-vegans
to eating local eggs. My boyfriend Crow and I just went through the same thing. We moved across the street from the owners of a local CSA [Community Supported Agriculture]. Yippee! They had free-range chickens, so in addition to buying
a CSA share we are now getting eggs. I am also getting some ground nuts (a local perennial native plant that’s a good source of protein) from an extension-agent friend. Our garden is full of edible perennials that take eating locally a step further.
Doubts in Alaska
TOK, AK — JUNE 27, 2006
By Kath Olding
Where I live foods don’t grow very easily. I would have to wait all summer long to enjoy any fruit of the crop if it managed to survive the summer. The nearest farming community is 100 miles from our town and potatoes are the only thing you can get, perhaps beef and chickens. Raising my own I have done many times, that and turkeys and pigs.
We have to purchase grain from feed stores 200 miles away, and of course it’s not locally raised at all. The community 100 miles from us charges a lot more for their grain because of lack of supply and too much demand. Locally grown grains are barley and oats only.
Fruit doesn’t grow anywhere in our state. Some places can grow strawberries, as can we - but you may or may not have a surviving crop. We only have about three months of growing time. If it doesn’t grow in that time you have no chance till the next summer. Nada.
Salmon is available if they are running good. But the river may be over 100 miles from town.And if you have a way to get there and a way to catch them, that’s great. Most people don’t. I am one of the few that has a family with wheels. Anyhow, that’s the scoop. I’d die of starvation on an all-protein diet. The 100-Mile Diet sounds neat, but it’s just not always practical for some places.
Ohio Produce Stall in Peril from Big Business
PLEASANT PLAIN, OH — JUNE 27, 2006
By Therese Fitzsimmons
I read the article about you in USA Today and loved it.I usually try to eat fresh, local foods also. I live just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, and my neighbor has had a fruit and veggie stand at their house for 40 years. It’s really a nice one with lots of fresh, ripe produce.Unfortunately, I think business has died out for them since some of the big groceries have moved in.I’m glad that you are looking out for local farmers.Living in the country I appreciate them and don’t want them to close. Here’s their address:
Keller Produce
9615 State Route 132
Pleasant Plain, Ohio 45162
(513) 877-2253
Local Eating is Fiction in New Hampshire
SPOFFORD, NH — June 23, 2006
By Kim Robert Nilsen
My first novel, called Yellowstone, takes local food production and local food consumption to the extreme.
In the book, 200 people in Independency, New Hampshire, erect 40 large solar greenhouses to become self-sufficient. Utilizing vertical growing-tower culture (pioneered in Israel) and covered “clouche� systems inside the greenhouses (pioneered by Eliot Coleman of Harborside, Maine - see his book Four Seasons Harvest), the residents develop an abundant local agriculture deep in the White Mountains and sell their surplus to people within the region (about a 100-mile radius).
I tell you this because I have an intense interest in the revival of local agriculture everywhere. Using the above techniques, small farmers can produce large quantities of food in all seasons.
When Yellowstone caldera (the largest volcanic structure on earth) erupts catastrophically, the resulting aerosols disrupt the climate for a decade, dropping the mean temperature of earth by more than 10 degrees. While agriculture in the northern hemisphere is severely curtailed, but the people of Independency suffer no real hardships due to the freezing summer temperatures.
Here in the real world in Hew Hampshire, we tend a very large garden and are putting up a simple greenhouse based on Coleman’s work. We intend to grow spinach, mache, chard, beet greens, turnip greens and 10 other cold-hardy plants inside the greenhouse all winter long without any additional heat source.
What you are doing is sensational. Best of luck and keep eating local foods.
Where’s the Beef? It’s in Virginia
MCDOWELL, VA — June 23, 2006
By Sarah Chaney
Against the Wind Ranch natural beef was developed in response to an ever-increasing demand for a healthy, natural source of beef for private buyers. Our objective is to produce wholesome, great-tasting beef from animals raised in natural and humane conditions. We raise our beef in our two locations: Clarksburg, Maryland, and McDowell, Virginia.
Our beef has been “certified humane,� which includes a nutritious diet without antibiotics, or hormones; and the animals are raised with proper shelter, resting areas, sufficient space and the ability to engage in natural behaviors. For more information on these standards visit certifiedhumane.com.
Walk the Talk in New Brunswick
SAINT JOHN, NB — June 23, 2006
By Bob Ewing
Last Friday, June 2, I made the decision that, from this day on, my lunches will only consist of items that are available within 100 miles of where I live. So far flour is a major challenge. However, as a permaculture designer and community food security activist - basically, someone who believes we can revitalize local communities through re-localizing food production - this is a way I can walk my talk.
Pests in New York State?
POUND RIDGE, NY — June 23, 2006
By Eliza Mutino
May 21 I began my all-local diet and I will continue until the end of September. It’s for my school science research class, and also a personal endeavor - and I love it! I’m having pesticide levels monitored in my blood at the beginning and end of the diet to see how they change.
The first week was a bit rough before I found local flour. I cooked a whole lot of rhubarb with honey and consumed many more eggs than I usually do. My grain came in the next week so now I have pasta, bread, the works. Another great alternative I’ve found is cornmeal, made into cornmeal mush with maple syrup. Delicious! I also tried venison that a friend hunted along with lots of radishes and plenty of other memorable meals.
