‘Locavore’ Movement Taking Root in Region: The Challenge to Eat Only Locally Grown Food Means Accepting What’s in Season

By Leigh Hornbeck, Albany Times Union, N.Y.

Sep. 23–Imagine if you knew the life story of every bite of food you ate: what kind of soil your salad lettuce grew in, where the cows grazed and how they were slaughtered before you had that hamburger, who picked the tomatoes in your BLT.

Imagine if, along with calling yourself a vegetarian or an omnivore, you also were a locavore — someone who ate only what was grown within an afternoon’s drive of your kitchen.

The locavore movement is gaining momentum in the Capital Region and across the country. The motivations are both big and small. Supporters of the 100-mile diet — a challenge to eat only what is grown or raised within a 100-mile radius of your home — point to the dwindling amount of oil in the world and the cost of transporting food across the country.

U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-Greenport, who worked on the new Farm Bill in the House, said eating locally is a matter of national security. “If we keep thinking regionally with our farm policy, what happens if there is a terrorist attack on one region and all the other regions are left without access to food?”

But for others, the reason to eat local is basic: locally grown food tastes better.

“I love food. I couldn’t be doing this if I didn’t love food and want to be in kitchens,” said Kirk Childress, a sous chef and modern-day green grocer.

Childress works long hours in a Saratoga Springs restaurant kitchen. But the 26-year-old slides behind the wheel of his SUV at dawn to make daily runs to farms, where he picks out fruits and vegetables he then delivers to restaurants in the Capital Region.

The delivery idea occurred to him as he tried to juggle produce orders from the kitchen. He knew he wanted locally grown food, but it was hard to manage deliveries until he took matters into his own hands.

Childress’ break came when friends put him in touch with Will Roy, executive chef at Union College, who asked Childress to gather locally grown ingredients for student meals at the Schenectady college.

Childress buys from 40 farms, and works a 60-mile radius for six or seven restaurants.

One of his clients is Tim Meaney, chef and owner of the Beekman Street Bistro in Saratoga Springs. Only the salt and the olive oil served at the 40-seat restaurant are imported. Everything else is local, and Meaney said he never orders from U.S. Food Service or Sysco, the big food distributors in the Capital Region.

“I can do it because I’m small and I’m flexible,” Meaney said. “If I’m serving a dish that comes with a side of green beans and the farmer who supplies me with green beans runs out, then I use fennel or something else instead.”

Generally, Americans expect everything to be instantaneous, Meaney said. “They don’t eat to enjoy their food. The general public eats because they have to,” he said.

You won’t find heirloom tomatoes at the Beekman Street Bistro in January because they’re not in season. Meaney’s tomato and mozzarella salad isn’t on the menu year-round. In the winter he serves beets, squash, potatoes, rutabaga. He buys a whole pig and works his way through the cuts each night, from the shoulder to the porterhouse.

But not everyone can afford to dine at Beekman Street Bistro, where the entrees run between $17 and $28. Beyond the effort of gathering the materials to eat locally is the price. Food is generally cheaper at the local Wal-Mart Supercenter than at the local farmers market.

Environmental writer Bill McKibben, who ate only food grown near his Middlebury, Vt., home for a year and wrote about it in the book “Deep Economy,” suggests community-supported agriculture, similar to a co-op.

Members of a CSA buy shares that pay farmers to grow their crops. Each shareholder then receives a portion of the harvest.

“Eating a little differently helps,” McKibben said. “My experience is that the only thing that’s markedly more expensive is meat, and so I learned to cook with meat as a flavoring, not a slab.”

The author also pushed for the use of federal food stamps at farmers markets.

Berkshire Grown, one of the early advocates of eating locally, supports the Share the Bounty project, which donates a portion of CSA shares to local food pantries.

Barbara Zheutlin, executive director of Berkshire Grown, a Great Barrington, Mass.-based nonprofit, said eating locally means rethinking your food choices.

Simply buying what’s convenient because it’s cheaper doesn’t factor in the health care costs that could come later on, Zheutlin said.

Albert Sheldon, 57, has spent his life tending to the land. He is a sixth-generation potato farmer, and the fruits of his labor at Sheldon Farm in Salem, Washington County, grace plates in fine restaurants from Albany to Lake George.

His wife, Pat, a Boston transplant who missed the social life in that city when she moved to Salem to marry Sheldon, loves the idea of people gathering for good food just steps away from centuries-old potato fields.

One August afternoon, Rocco Verrigni’s torta di farro filled the summer kitchen off the Sheldon farm stand with the delicious smell of baking cheese. The Sheldons invited 42 people to eat together on long tables next to the house where Albert Sheldon grew up. Verrigni, a professor at Schenectady County Community College, prepared beef grown at Manx Station in Greenwich (bistecca fiorentina) and chicken raised at the Garden of Spices farm in Greenwich (pollo al mattone). The green beans and other vegetables were grown on the Sheldon Farm.

In Columbia County, the chamber of commerce has jumped into the locally grown game to promote agribusiness. This summer, it published a guide to restaurants, retail farms and farmers markets.

The chamber also launched Columbia County Bounty to encourage networking between farmers and chefs. More than 55 restaurants and farms participate, including Mexican Radio, a restaurant with locations in Hudson and New York City.

“As a result of Columbia County Bounty, we have been able to expand our relationships with local growers including Holmquest Farms, who have been specifically planting hot peppers, tomatillos and other produce for our restaurants,” said owner Lori Selden.

Leigh Hornbeck can be reached at 581-8438 or by e-mail at lhornbeck@ timesunion.com.

Become more localized

Here are six things you can do to support local farming:

Join a CSA (community supported agriculture) farm. Buy a share of the harvest at the beginning of the season and pick up fresh food once a week at its peak harvest time.

Go meet a farmer. Farmers markets enable farmers to keep 80 to 90 cents of each dollar spent by the consumer. Buy at local farmers markets or farm stands, or pick-your-own farms.

Ask for locally grown food and/or plants wherever you eat or shop. Keep asking. Explain why locally grown is better for the community, better for the environment and better for you.

Share the bounty. There are hungry families among us. Buy a share in a CSA farm and donate it to a local food pantry.

Share the word. Invite your friends and neighbors over for an “eat locally grown” dinner.

Shop differently. Plan your meals around a farmer’s harvest.

Source: Berkshire Grown

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