Going local: food

Our summer season share of our community supported agriculture [CSA] membership starts this week. For the next eight weeks, each week we'll receive 3/4 bushel of some combination of "vine-ripened tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, beets, summer squash, zucchini, string beans, kohlrabi, melons, and sweet corn.... [plus] kale, collards, mustard greens, and chard – plus herbs – garlic – onions, potatoes and more. All specialty and heirloom varieties!"

home made red beans and rice

Photo by J. Harrington

This year's shares at the Amador Farm are sold out, but if you're interested in going local and sustainable with more of your food purchases, you probably want to take a look at Bev Dooley's recent book, The Perennial Kitchen. You could also consider shopping at or becoming a member of one of the area's food co-ops.

artisan sourdough bread

Photo by J. Harrington

During the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic we decided to extend our definition of local and began purchasing meat in bulk from local producers. We've purchased first a 1/4 hog [chops, roasts, sausage, etc) and, months later, a 1/2 hog from a hog farmer in Spooner WI who specializes in pasture-raised heritage [Mangalista] hogs. For beef, we collaborated with the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law to purchase a whole beef {1/2 for each family] from a Minnesota rancher. We're fortunate to be able to afford artisan solutions as our personal blow against the proliferation of confined animal feed operations [CAFOs] springing up like mushrooms after a wet spring. Despite the fact that our approach means I have to eat more vegetables more often than I'd like (typed Mr. "meat and potatoes'), it aligns nicely with my interest in baking artisan sourdough bread and our interest in living more sustainably and locally.

We're not naive enough to believe that our neoliberal, global problems like loss of biodiversity and climate weirding can be solved at the individual or family scale. We are optimistic (stubborn?) enough to do what we can to support and help develop the systems needed to offer more and more of US a viable alternative to corporate consumerism (typed the former red-necked hippie). Dooley's book has an interesting, and helpful, listing of additional resources "who are creating a sustainable, regenerative, and resilient food system."

Canned Food Drive

By Kathleen Lynch

We lived in the lucky world— 

not the far place where flies 

sipped at eye corners 

of children too weak to cry. 

A camera showed that world to us 

on posters. But we were children. 

We wanted most to not be those 

others, with their terrible bones. 

We spoke of them wide-eyed, with 

what we thought was tenderness. 

But our words came in a different register,  

as if to speak of such betrayal  

by the grown world could bring  

a harm of great immensity 

upon us too. We got to choose 

from the cupboard. We gave 

what we hated—beets, peas, 

mushrooms. Our dreams 

were not of rice. The moon 

laid light on our bicycles propped 

against the porch. Sycamores 

became our giants standing guard; 

the overgrown shrub, our fort. We thought  

we understood what was required.  

Even crouched beneath our desks  

during drill, we said one prayer  

for the fear, one for recess.  

McClellan Air Force Base  

sent forth big-bellied planes  

that rattled the windows 

of our houses. Evenings, we took  

to the streets shrieking  

with joy, rode madly fast  

around the block. We collapsed  

on the lawn breathless, the earth 

cool beneath us & pounding hard,  

as if it had one great heart.  

As if it was ours.

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