"Local" is as local ...?

According to the LocalHarvest web site, there are more than 125  farms (community supporter agriculture and others), farmers markets, restaurants, grocery stores and "other" that offer "local" food. We can't find any widget on the site that allows us to understand what "near" means to LocalHarvest. The vision for the organization states:

LocalHarvest connects people looking for good food with the farmers who produce it.

Buying local is about enjoying real food, grown yourself or purchased from people you trust. It's about developing strong local economies and producing food on a human scale. It's about eating seasonally, practicing the art of cooking, and sitting down to enjoy meals together. It requires ample local and regional producers, processors, and distributors. As we see it, the goal of the local food movement is to create thriving community-based food systems that will make high quality local food available to everyone.

one of our local farmers markets

Photo by J. Harrington

"Community-based" reinforces our concerns about how "near" is defined. Yesterday we explored a little some potential boundaries we might  use to help define a "foodshed." Our Congressional District is too large, there's more than 250 miles between Stacy and International Falls. That exceeds by about 150 miles what we generally consider local. Taking these and related caveats into account, it would be more than helpful if LocalHarvest allowed one to pick a radius to be searched, the way some other sites do. What kind of community are we referring to, geographical proximity or interest-based, or both? Is an online connection a real connection or is it strictly transactional instead of relational? There's much to consider here.

our local bison herd has been sold

Photo by J. Harrington

We fuss about this because one of the challenges we've encountered in "going local" is finding reliable, readily searchable, conveniently organized information about what's available where. I know where the local grocery stores are. I know, generally, what's available in each. It's not nearly as convenient to find  what I want to eat on line. We've used an online farmers market with some success, but found the quality  of meat more variable than we liked and the information on quantity in a package (how many chicken wings in a pound?) to be limited. Trying to balance buying local with not wasting food by purchasing only the necessary amount is another challenge under these circumstances.

We were looking at some writings on systems this morning and one mentioned "Before you can ‘solve’ anything, you must first understand it. Our brains have the tendency to want the reward of fixing things. This is a great cognitive trait, but it can limit and cloud the curiosity mindset that will help uncover the dynamics and hidden secrets of a system." I recognize that tendency and am working on understanding a local food system before I try to solve what it should look and work like. Meanwhile, I'm making some observations as we explore, so we don't lose track of the problems we are trying to solve.

Draw Near

By Scott Cairns

     προσέλθετε

For near is where you’ll meet what you have wandered 

far to find. And near is where you’ll very likely see 

how far the near obtains. In the dark katholikon

the lighted candles lent their gold to give the eye

a more than common sense of what lay flickering

just beyond the ken, and lent the mind a likely

swoon just shy of apprehension. It was then

that time’s neat artifice fell in and made for us

a figure for when time would slip free altogether.

I have no sense of what this means to you, so little

sense of what to make of it myself, save one lit glimpse 

of how we live and move, a more expansive sense in Whom.

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