I've been checking out Local Harvest, which is a site devoted to helping people find local farms, farmers markets, CSAs, etc. It's a little disappointing where I live - there are not that many things very close to me (the local farmer's market listed for my town has pretty much closed down). But I was excited to see a new-ish organic farm in Sherman - I've emailed them to ask for directions and I may take a Saturday and go visit them for produce.
Local Harvest also sells some stuff online.
Including wool roving and yarn. No, I don't need any more. But sometime in the future I'm going to go back and look and see what they have.
I like the whole "eat local" philosophy but - if I'm having to drive 30 miles one way to buy "local" eggs, and 40 miles another way to get "local" produce, I begin to wonder if it's REALLY less wasteful of resources than going to the grocery store and buying stuff that's been trucked in en masse.
It's certainly more wasteful of my time resources to trek all over creation, and I'd argue that my time's worth SOMETHING. For me, shopping organically/local-grown/health-food has to be as much entertainment as it does food-procurement, because the places that fit into those categories are all so far from me. (And with gas as high as it is...) People with less time/money resources than I have (for example, families with several young children), it would just not be feasable for them to do it here.
I don't miss much about living in Ann Arbor but they did have a large, diverse, and good Farmer's Market. You'd think that living in such a rural area as I do, there'd be lots of farm stands and farmers' markets, but there really aren't. I think that's maybe because what farming is done is done for "production" and the product sold to processors...also, the climate here is not generally conducive to a lot of truck-farming type crops; it's too hot and too dry in the summer for it to really be profitable - you'd have to have a good well or something to irrigate. (And a lot of the cities have watering restrictions that are pretty strict, and well they should be, given the droughts we've had just since I've lived here.)
2 comments:
It's a bummer that you don't have more options for local produce and whatnot. We're really enjoying the CSA we joined a month or so ago. It is really helping us diversify our diet and be creative about using veggies. Before the CSA, we ate about 5 different things, over and over again.
I agree, however, that if you have to drive all over creation to collect your local produce and whatnot, it's not really worth it.
If you live in a rural area where everyone has a garden, there's no client base for your farm stand. Everyone is "growing their own." The only way a stand would make sense would be if there were a lot of traffic past it of folks who don't grow their own.
Charlotte
Post a Comment