Last spring, Sweetie and I bought a CSA (community-supported
agriculture) share.  From May until a week before Thanksgiving, we got a
weekly box of organic produce grown on a farm about 25 miles away.  The
boxes usually contained anywhere from half to three-quarters of a
bushel, depending on where in the season it was.  It was some of the
best food I've ever eaten.

Eating so close to home got me thinking and reading, and I eventually
read an article about the 100-mile diet, which led to the site posted
below.  The idea is that you spend some time -- 3 months, 6 months, a
year -- eating only what is produced within a 100-mile radius of your
home.  The article I read had a sentence about a guy in NY state who
planted a coffee bush in his yard.  Interesting stuff, when you stop to
consider that the average bite of food you eat traveled 1500 miles to
get from the farm to your plate.  I haven't tried this yet, but I am
sure going to give it some thought in the coming weeks.

http://www.100milediet.org/

10 responses total.

OMG!!  I'd be eating Saguaro for sure!!

These folks are called localvores.  There's a movement, started in Vermont,
with blogs and other cool stuff that I've been reading.  

I'll find some of those links and share them.

We just brought to a potluck breakfast an assortment of things we dried
ourselves after either growing them or picking them locally (including a
pumpkin we found at the curb in the leaves).  red and green apples (from the
orchard in the nursing home at the end of the street), pears (ditto),
mulberries (next door tree), apricots (our tree), pawpaw chips and leather
(our two trees), roma tomatoes (our yard), sour cherries (Whitmore Lake Rd),
pumpkin.  Traded the leftovers for some home-grown chicken eggs to someone
who also wants pawpaw seedlings.  Other people brought imported pineapples,
pecans, and tangerines.

I think it might be fun to have a 100-mile radius meal once in a while 
but I dont think I would want to do that on a regular basis. 

I think that one of the coolest things to ever happen to humans was 
when we figured out how to ship goods (including food). I think about 
how cool that is every time I suck down more of that fancy mineral 
water from France I buy now and then. 

Here's the article from Wired about Locavores

'Locavores' Dine on Regional Chow




By Paul Adams
02:00 AM Nov, 21, 2006

The first thing I did when my friends invited me to their seasonal potluck
was pull out a map and a sharp compass.


My friends, Jessica Abel and Matt Madden, are exemplary hosts, and the
potlucks they've thrown once a season are pretty casual affairs with just one
constraint: Every ingredient of every dish must have been grown and processed
within a 100-mile radius of their house in Brooklyn, New York.


That means not just no flour or oil, but no beer (plenty's brewed locally,
but the barley and hops come from outside the radius), no cinnamon and no
coffee.


I wanted to bring my favorite apple-buttermilk cobbler, but sugar was well
outside the boundaries. Maple syrup might make a good substitute, but I
couldn't find any in a week's hunting. Finally I abandoned the dessert idea
and decided to go with a nice, hearty beef stew.


Hundreds of "locavores" scattered around the country are celebrating
Thanksgiving this year with their own 100-mile meals.


Local, sustainable eating is a noble cause. As advocates like Alice Waters
and Michael Pollan have labored to make clear, it's good for both eater and
eaten, not to mention the economy and the planet. The 100-mile diet is perhaps
the quickest and cleverest way to build awareness of food miles, and the
pleasures and challenges of local "foodsheds." In just one traditional
Thanksgiving dessert, easily assembled at any supermarket, pecans from Georgia
fill a pie shell made with Oregon wheat and Wisconsin butter, with corn syrup
from Iowa, sugar from Florida, bourbon from Kentucky. If you're eating it in
New York, that adds up to some 6,000 miles for one pie -- 14,000 if you splash
in some Madagascar vanilla.

Your 100 Miles

You won't find a "100-mile" section in your supermarket -- yet -- but here
are some starting points for those who want to go local.


First, find your 100-mile radius at http://100milediet.org/map/ -- it'll
give you a sense of what's included and what isn't. (The mapping feature only
works in the United States and Canada.)


Eat Well Guide has a tool that can generate a list of farms and stores in your
area offering local goods. The lists are incomplete and quite meat-heavy, but
full of finds nonetheless. FoodRoutes offers a similar tool.


Eat Local Challenge offers tips on every aspect of eating local, from general
philosophical issues to area-specific strategies and events. There may well
be an organized movement near you -- Vermont, San Francisco and New York state
have their own.


Word of mouth turns out to be the best way to find both ingredients and ideas.
At New York's Greenmarket, I learned all about the beef I bought, picked up
some local popcorn and even met a man who has a tiny coffee bush thriving on
his property upstate.


The idea was popularized by Gary Paul Nabhan in his 2001 book, Coming Home
to Eat, a description of his yearlong project to eat nothing from outside a
250-mile radius of his Arizona home. In his book, Nabhan waxes perfervid about
the joys of wolfberry salad and rattlesnake fritters.


Other locavores, like Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, have tightened the
radius and softened the rhetoric: As documented on 100-Mile Diet and in their
forthcoming book, the couple ate within 100 miles of their Vancouver, British
Columbia, home for a year starting in March 2005, and remain active advocates
of local eating. A San Francisco Bay Area group put together an "Eat Local
Challenge" in August 2005, and the blog they started has become a community
and clearinghouse for local-minded eaters around North America.


Personally, I find local products more eye-openingly delicious than their
factory-farmed counterparts, but 100-mile cooking appeals most to the
puzzle-solver in me. Improvising a meal under such tight strictures reminds
me of the constrained literary projects of Oulipo, under whose auspices, for
instance, Georges Perec wrote his novel La Disparition without the letter "e."
My host Matt, by no coincidence, has a similar bent: His 2005 book, Exercises
in Style, tells the same comic-strip story in 99 different styles.


In the same way, 100-mile cooks are forced to come up with creative solutions
to the hurdles they encounter. With nutmeg and allspice forbidden,
ethnobotanist Leda Meredith spices her pumpkin puree with spicebush berries
and peppergrass seeds; MacKinnon replaces coconut with taste-alike green
hazelnuts, and sprinkles dried kelp in place of salt.


I usually flavor my beef stew with a magical triad of wine, beer and coffee,
but beer and coffee were off-limits, so I had to substitute a thinner New York
state wine for the hearty Californians I prefer. I would ordinarily dredge
the beef in flour before browning it, and add prunes at the beginning and
mustard at the end, but all of that went by the board. Nonetheless, with local
pasture-fed beef, carrots, potatoes, parsnips, turnips and pearl onions, the
stew turned out to be a hit.


Matt mixed cocktails with pear brandy, Jessica cooked a souffl and a buttery
potato galette and Bryan capped off the dinner with a pear-chestnut ravioli
dessert.


With the ground frozen, winter's meal is going to be tougher, but I embrace
the noble challenge. I'm already planning a February fishing trip.

Most of our fruit comes from within city limits, and our vegetables (what we
do not grow ourselves) from within 40 miles (farmer's market).  Our county
grows corn and soybeans and we mean to eat more of those, also soft wheat (the
hard wheat is imported from Canada etc.).  Most of the grain grown around here
it not for human consumption and if cows and pigs and chickens were eliminated
there would be lots of land to grow grains and beans. 

Thanks for posting the article, cmcgee.  That's the one I read.

I recently read another article in some "Backwoods Home"-type magazine
which gave instructions for assembling a hydroponic system using vinyl
fence posts, plumbing-grade PVC pipe, gravel, and an aquarium pump.  It
has me thinking about possible ways to grow non-indigenous foods in an
apartment.  

My experience growing food indoors is that the insect pests take over, unless
you want to raise insect predators (wasps).  I could try sterilizing the soil.

What if you use gravel instead of soil?

Gravel does not have a lot of nutrients in it, so you would have to add
phosphorus, potassium, nitrogen, calcium, magnesium, etc.

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