Living in Dryden

Eat local

Last week, I wrote about how our food supplies don't necessarily connect to our neighborhoods. I also wrote a bit earlier on the possibilities we'd open by looking locally, and I'd like to push further that direction.

Tomatoes on their way.

Angelika and I have decided that effective August 1st, we're going to eat local foods. For the first year, we'll define 'local' as New York and Pennsylvania, since it's not too hard to find food which is labeled by state. (Vermont is practically a brand unto itself, and would in some ways be easier, but it's a lot further away.)

If that works out, we'll strive to make 'local' more local, figuring out where we can get foods from more immediately around here. There's no reason why everything we eat couldn't come from Dryden - except that the world isn't organized that way any longer. New York State still has tremendous agriculture, though, and we hope it's organized enough for us to find our way.

The one major exception in the experiment - the 'Marco Polo rule' - will be for spices, which are low-weight goods that have traveled for centuries. We're not granting such exceptions for chocolate, bananas, or oranges, however, unless people give them to us. (Angelika's parents send wonderful Christmas and Easter chocolates, for example.) Similarly, we'll eat out at restaurants and other people's houses if other people invite us, and we're not going to carry a suitcase of local produce when we travel.

Herbs coming up.

This is going to mean departing from most processed food, because the processors don't tend to say where their ingredients came from. For some lightly processed food, I'll need to figure out where those ingredients come from. New Hope Mills is just up Route 38, but is the grain for the flour from New York? The midwest? Champlain Valley does both, though I don't know what ends up where. I'll find out, and let people know when I find local options.

Seasonality is going to be a big problem, so I expect we'll learn about freezing and canning, especially of fruit. That fits well with Angelika's plans for her orchard, but it's a lot to figure out. Storing root vegetables is going to be another learning process. Our cooking is going to have to change a lot, and we'll be doing a lot of the processing we used to let companies do for us. Our garden will also be contributing more and more, but we're not nearly crazy enough to depend on it now.

Some things should be easy - dairy, eggs, meat, u-pick fruit, and vegetables in season. New York grows lots of onions, too.

A few of the items I'm hoping to keep in our diet but need to find suppliers for, include:

• Cooking oil - New York grower and processor?

• Sweeteners - New York produces 34% of America's beets, but how many are sugar beets? And is there a processor here? Honey and maple syrup are much easier.

• Cereal - I can make granola out of grains and fruits grown in New York, but I have a lot of looking to do to find them. Or maybe someone else is...

• Yeast - Maybe I can do sourdough, but I'll confess to a fondness for spoonfuls of yeast. Where does that stuff come from?

• Vinegar - I guess we can make it ourselves, but it seems like there must be some small local place doing it.

Some things I know I can get at Ludgate Farms or Greenstar in Ithaca, as well as the farmstands in Dryden and the farmer's market in Ithaca. Back to Basics sometimes carries very local food from the surrounding farms. We'll also be looking at Community Supported Agriculture around here. I have a lot of research to do.

Carrots getting started.

Angelika also wants us to bicycle to B&B Farms and Ludgate Farms, which will add some extra work to this but have lots of other benefits, especially when the weather is nice. (I don't think we'll do that in winter.)

For now, and perhaps for a long time, we're going to leave the dogs and cats out of this experiment, except when they get leftovers.

I'll post updates - and recipes - here regularly. I also hope to find out more about what this costs, and ways to lower the cost. It doesn't seem like local food should be more expensive, at least in New York State, so long as you're willing to accept seasonality. I suspect it'll cost more at least at first, though, as 'local food' is just getting started. I'll report on the costs - both time and money - along the way.

(To some extent, this is inspired by a chapter in Bill McKibben's Deep Economy, in which he tries a year of local eating in Vermont. I'll be writing more about that book along the way too.)