Local Food First!
It has recently been brought to my attention that subscription food services like Blue Apron or Hello Fresh are growing in popularity among folks in the Greenbrier Valley. Though these businesses thrive in bustling lifestyles where consumers choose ease over natural values, there are many ways to reduce the hassle of shopping locally. Positive results of a strong local economy can be seen much quicker on a small scale than on a large urban scale.
Unfortunately, businesses that ship “fresh” food to your door market their products using words that suggest local harvest in accordance to you, when in fact, many of the produce included in your delivered boxes traveled thousands of miles to reach you. We’re smarter than to think this food is local, and we’re not just someone who doesn’t have time to read more than a few words and purchase an order. After all, you can’t be local to nationwide!
Here are a few reasons for buying local food first!
We all know that buying local food helps create a robust local economy. The economy you encourage will provide stable benefits for your needs through local businesses; How wonderful!
Something else we know is that buying local food helps support local farmers. Whether you buy local produce from markets or farmers directly, the money circulates within the community allowing farmers to keep farming instead of supporting an overgrown, impersonal, international, system that requires chemicals, low working wages, and many natural resources.
Did you know that buying local food can create independence from international food insecurities as well as food imports? While this is true, it takes longer to see than the bountiful plate of fresh veggies and meats you can whip up in a night after visiting a local farmers’ market.
Though we understand how buying local food is a beautiful act, it’s easy to run into issues with buying only local food or finding the ingredients year round that recipes call for. So, let’s go over the why and how of buying local food first...
1. Does your supermarket look like this? Well, it should.
If we all realized how much control the consumer (that’s us) has over what lines the shelves of our supermarkets, we could start a healthy, happy, local food revolution! Ok, stepping back, we could seriously make a few changes so we wouldn’t have to drive to the farmers’ market to get fresh greens, drive to Kroger to get “fresh” seafood and a big jug of olive oil, and then drive to a local bakery for some fresh bagels just to make our own lunch.
If we all start with asking our local supermarket staff, “Where is all the local food? Where are the local potatoes and tomatoes? You don’t have them?! Why not? “, we could collectively make significant changes in the food marketplace.
2. Your local restaurants should serve local food. It should look like...
Photo taken at Stardust Cafe in Lewisburg, WV
If you’re not aware of Greenbrier Valley Grown, you should be. This branding certification connects consumers with farmers AND restaurants that serve local dishes. If you want to buy local food but are wary of searching for ingredients at the local farmers’ markets and then having to cook a whole new recipe, go out to eat at one of our many restaurants that serve local food and get a taste of what is possible with food grown and raised here! Aren’t you ready to stop going out to eat and paying outrageous prices, just to have some bland meal over seasoned after being shipped frozen from who knows where??
3. Foods taste best when they’re harvested ripe.
Photo taken at Bootstraps Farm in northern Greenbrier County, WV.
Make your own menus based on what is in-season. We can help! Launching next month, you’ll see signs of our Local Food First campaign around the Greenbrier Valley. Foods that are being harvested each month will be featured across the valley in numerous restaurants so be on the look out. Meanwhile, there are a ton of books and websites available with recipes for cooking in-season foods. Check out All Recipes’ Season Cooking Recipes, or BBC’s food seasons page.
4. Preserving food is easy.
Vacuum- sealed, frozen fruit.
There’s nothing better than a fresh local hot apple pie on a snowed-in day. Do you know what I mean? If you don’t, you better start preserving your local food when it’s in season. You can dehydrate, freeze, can, salt cure, etc. to keep your larder stacked for the off seasons. Preservation can help free you from the grocery store and all that foreign produce that looks like plastic during the winter. That is, if you let it.