'Localvores' Just Eat
What’s Right at Hand
By Sandy Cooch

Herbivores eat plants; carnivores eat meat; omnivores will eat most anything, and "localvores" only eat foods grown within a 100-mile radius of wherever it is they live.

Localvores around the state have banded together this August to promote the benefits of eating locally, and to assist one another in making it through a month without chocolate, tuna fish, produce from California or South America, and, for that matter, most anything on supermarket shelves.

That may sound tough, but for local localvore Anita Kelman and some of her West Brookfield friends, the "August 2006 Localvore Challenge" was more inspiration than ordeal.

First off, Kelman readily confesses that she, as many others who took up the challenge, did a "Marco Polo" version, or in Kelman’s case, the "caffeinated Marco Polo" variation.

The spices and salt that Marco Polo brought from the Far East made life in Europe a little more pleasant, and likewise most localvores made their month a little more palatable by including a few specialty items, such as salt, baking soda, cooking oil, and that morning cup of coffee.

Kelman has extensive experience, locally, fruit- and market-gardening on a commercial scale (she now grows blueberries) and she enthusiastically launched into the localvore challenge earlier this month, with several neighbors.

The "hard parts" of the regimen quickly became apparent.

"I missed chocolate, and olives, and dates—that sort of stuff," she said. "If I’m running around on the road, I love to pick something up (to eat)."

Kelman noted "You can’t find anything that’s whole, a lot that’s good for you, let alone local," at any chain convenience store.

Then there was the "having to think about it."

Localvores can’t "just come home and mindlessly open a package" of mac-n-cheese, or pull out a box of cereal for breakfast, she pointed out.

The Grain Issue

The major wall Kelman hit, a few days into the endeavor, was the total lack of any grains in her diet.

"The first three days, I wasn’t organized and didn’t have any local grains and I really missed it. I could not just eat cherry tomatoes and zucchini," Kelman said. "Everything got better once I got local grains," she said.

Tapping into sources of grains grown within 100 miles wasn’t exactly easy, but localvores like Kelman found help, once they took the time to look for it.

Pat McGovern, the chief organizer of the Vermont localvore challenge, gave Kelman a five-pound bag of local cornmeal, and received some of Kelman’s blueberries in exchange.

A large-scale grower of organic grains in Vermont—who now sells all of his products out of state —donated a quantity of his wheat pastry flour to the localvore challenge, and samples were distributed for free.

Kelman said the farmer indicated he’d be happy to sell his product in state, if there were a market for it.

Eating locally for a month, she added, "Has really opened up my eyes to a few things, one of which is the grain issue. We have only a few grain growers in Vermont, and they’re all middle-aged," she said.

Kelman has done market gardening for years, and she has two degrees in agronomy, and did a thesis on large-scale commercial soybean production.

But she has never, until now, attempted to grow her own grains.

She’s ready to start, in partnership with some neighbors, using an acre of land she formerly used to grow strawberries: Kelman will broadcast winter wheat early in September, and next spring she’ll sow spring wheat, oats, and buckwheat.

Harvesting will be with a scythe, and threshing will be "primitive," with tarps and plastic baseball bats the likely equipment, she said. "But I will need a grain mill."

Ready To Commit

For her part, Kelman is ready to make localvorism a part of her life, though not so stringently as during the last month.

The goal is "to make the bulk of my diet local, and regard the other things as extras and treats."

A longtime gardener—she even grew tomatoes indoors all last winter—Kelman has a good head start on the challenge. However, she is excited to learn more, including how to grow hardy greens in coldframes.

Kelman noted that the Randolph Cooperative Market has made an effort to tag foods that fit the "localvore" criteria, and hosted a successful localvore potluch brunch last Sunday.

A Vermont Tradition

The localvore phenomenon "is not just a ‘crunchy granola’ thing," Kelman insists.

"It actually goes back to the traditional Vermont way of life; it’s not just the province of treehuggers," she continued. "It’s something that everybody can embrace.

"If you’re going out to get a deer to feed your family, if you’re raising beef in the back yard, or have 40 chickens running around, or a garden—it’s all the same."

Some Thoughts To Chew On

Anita Kelman may have jumped on the localvore challenge without a lot of planning, but ask her why she did it, and she reels out a persuasive list of reasons, without a moment’s hesitation. Here are some of them:

• The local economy. "When you support local agriculture, you get to put your money where your mouth is, literally," Kelman says.

"If you buy agricultural products grown locally, the money stays local and keeps agriculture viable, supports farms, and keeps the working landscape."

Kelman concedes that August is "a perfectly delightful time" to eat local, but that even in winter, Vermonters could do more of it. And, more demand for local food "would stimulate more local production," she added.

• "Another big reason is that the quality and taste is unbelievable," she said. Kelman said she has noticed, in particular, a difference in using local, freshly milled grains to make pasta or bread.

• Health: "If you think about it, if you’re eating a totally local dinner, you have no sugar, transfats, preservatives, no artificial colors or flavors, and packaging is minimal—it’s about as healthy as you can get."

• A huge reason is energy consumption.

"Most of our food comes to us from an average of 1500 miles away: It’s an incredible waste of our resources—which are limited," Kelman said.

"Basically, every time you buy food that has come a long distance—produce from California or Chile, as opposed to the next town—all the petroleum used in transport also results in greenhouse gases being emitted."

According to Bill McKibben, who teaches at Middlebury College and lectures and writes books on the environment, it takes 97 calories of fossil energy to bring one calorie of iceberg lettuce from California to Vermont.

• Eating locally is also cheaper, but does require a bigger time commitment, Kelman said. Rising energy costs, she notes, will likely improve the economics of locally-raised foods in the future.

Find more information at www.eatlocalvt.org.