When my friend and contributor Donielle emailed me about taking part in her Eat Local Challenge, I was happy to jump right in. Even if I don’t end up following through, I do love a good challenge.
This also comes at a fun time as I am enjoying reading the book Plenty, which is about one couple’s year-long hundred-mile eating challenge. It’s not quite as poetic as Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but I will say that is a bit more of a real-life experience.
Not to mention the fact that my CSA is booming and my garden is just starting to produce as well. Summer is definitely the best time for eating local in my book. So today I just thought I’d give you a small picture of how my family eats local, and what we hope to improve upon.
CSA: The key to eating local
I love my CSA. I’ve written about them before, and really, belonging to one is my main key to eating local. I pickup my box every other week, and try to meal plan for the the two weeks so that I can make best use of my box.
My farm trades with other local farms to get even more variety into our boxes, which means they in turn help other local farms as well.
Garden, farmer’s markets and friends, oh my!
In addition to my CSA, I also get by with the help of my friends. My garden hasn’t produced much yet, but it’s getting close to exploding, at least in tomatoes and jalapeños (salsa, anyone?), but I’ve already received some squash and melons from a farmer friend who I buy eggs from periodically.
I love getting his golden-yoked, local eggs, but I don’t always make it over to his place regularly. It’s a treat when I do. Gigi especially loves having a green egg when have his eggs on hand.
I’m hoping to get in a groove of hitting up one of the local farmer’s markets on weeks when I don’t pickup my CSA box, mostly to supplement our fruit stash and also just to support more of the local growers.
We don’t live in an area where we have access to local dairy products unfortunately, but the local produce and eggs are definitely doable, and for sure taste better and fresher. When I shop at the stores, I always choose Grown in California over Grown in Chile, when I have the choice.
Final thoughts: why bother?
Donielle shares four great benefits to eating local that wholeheartedly agree with. And here’s one more that as a mom, I add to the list.
My kids are learning where food comes from by my choice to eat local. And as Barbara Kingsolver would say, she is developing an actual food culture in a society that standardly doesn’t have much of one.
Just the other day when one of my kids was acting blah-blah about eating a tomato (which she loves) on her sandwich, when I pointed out that it had actually come from Granny’s garden. Immediately she perked right up at the thought and was happy to add a slice to her lunch. At five, she seems to already value the food that was grown by someone she knows.
I still feel like I’m an amateur in eating local, but it sure feels and tastes good to be doing more and more.
How much of your food is locally-sourced? If you’re up for the challenge, head over to Naturally Knocked Up and sign up, and follow along with us on Instagram and Twitter with #EatLocal.
About Nicole
Oh, I so want to eat locally, and I have my kitchen garden with vegetables, too, the problem is that the Norwegian summer kinda ruins it. I don’t even have flowers on my pumpins yet. May have to get a green house, actually.
But you’ve reminded me that I need to figure out if there are free range hens somewhere around here, so I can get some eggs. Or maybe even buy a hen and put in someone elses hen house.
We’ve been given a lot of local produce by friends from church lately. Our daughter likes hearing that this tomato came from Mr. Mark’s garden or that zucchini came from Miss Rhonda.
I had such high hopes of having an amazing garden this year, and that didn’t really work out. This is the first year in 5 years we haven’t had a summer CSA, so it has been a bit of a struggle. My little city has recently opened a co-op, which is more of a local bulk buying club right now, and everything they carry is from our state – Maine.
I am also trying to use the farmers’ market more, but it is right at the start of our rest time…and by the time I get there right before they close everything that I need/want is gone! I am trying though
Great post!
I’m reading Plenty, also. Some friends just let us borrow the 100 Mile Challenge on DVD last month, so fun to watch. We recently found some local sugar and love the fresh produce and eggs we get from our organic farmer friends. There’s just nothing quite like fresh! Our garden was blah this year. Bummer.
I have a garden & finally it is producing! We have had a terribly dry year but I have done 2 batches of salsa & hope to do some sauce also. It is definitely worht it!