Ten Reasons I Eat Local

1. The food is amazing. Have you ever eaten one of the summer’s first blackberries right off the vine. It is nothing like one that arrives in a little plastic box from Chili. In every instance where I’ve chosen local food over food shipped a distance I find the quality is better, usually much better. There is even a study that proves Oregon Strawberries are better. Here’s a link http://www.oregon-strawberries.org/

2. You get to meet farmers. I like Willamette Valley farmers and look for any excuse to meet them. People who make their living growing flavorful, nutritious food are almost always interesting, intelligent, exceptional people. They risk everything to do it too. Variations in the weather, the soil and the market can easily wipe them out and yet they work endless hours to fill our plates with wonderful stuff.

3. You get to check out farms. Touring a farm will teach you that some of the world’s most innovative people who are leading the way on renewable energy, water conservation and land preservation are farmers.

4. You get to pay a farmer directly. It makes me feel good to know who is getting my food dollar. In 1950 farmers got 40 cents of every dollar that was spent on food, now they get around 20. If we want people to keep growing great things for us we’ve got to change to make sure they can make a living at it.

5. It’s good for the local economy. One study from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture concluded that if an additional 10 percent of 28 common fruits and vegetables were grown and sold in Iowa, it would result in $54.3 million in sales for Iowa farmers (based on wholesale prices).

6. It’s good for the environment. The Leopold Center also determined that a common dinner of roast, potatoes, carrots, and green beans could travel a collective distance of 5,375 miles through conventional channels before reaching the dinner table. I have all of those things in my freezer and cupboards right now and none of them traveled more than 20 miles.

7. The food is more nutritious, really it is. Again from the Strawberry Commission website. A study conducted by Dr. Mary Ann Lila of University of Illinois, suggested that the climate of the Northwest creates berries that are higher in health benefits because the plants are exposed to more stressful weather conditions and as a result produce protective phytochemicals that are beneficial to humans and help the plant ward off disease. Here’s the scoop on some of our other berries http://www.oregon-berries.com/common/docs/BERRY101.pdf.

8. It connects me to where I live, the seasons, the weather, the soil, the water. When the summer is cool I wait longer for blueberries and am crazy for them by the time they arrive, when it’s too cool in the spring for bees to come out at the right time I pay more for the few peaches that arrive, when it’s a perfect season for cherries I rejoice in the abundance.

9. The coolest people are into eating local. I don’t mind putting myself in the same club as Barbara Kingsolver, Lin Rosetto Casper and famous chef Alice Waters.

10. There are so many choices of local food in the Willamette Valley, even in winter. Here is a list of currently available local foods from Ten Rivers Food Web in Corvallis.

Fresh: kale, leeks, beets, fennel, carrots, turnips, spinach, celeriac, parsnips, broccoli, parsnips, kohlrabi, rutabaga, cauliflower, mushrooms, red and green cabbages, Brussels sprouts, Chinese cabbages, mustard greens, hardy lettuces, Swiss chard, apple cider, corn salad, collards, endive, arugula, Boc choi, cilantro, kiwi. Storage foods: garlic, onions, shallots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, dried beans, dried corn, walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, amaranth, quinoa, honey, wheat, rye, oats, spelt, barley, kamut, wild rice, yakon, apples, flax. Dairy: milk, cream, butter, yogurt, ice cream, buttermilk, sour cream, cow cheeses, goat cheeses, cottage cheese. Eggs. Meats: beef, goat, pork, lamb, rabbit, buffalo, chicken; Fish, seafood. Dried/Frozen/Canned: (virtually anything!) jams, jellies, juices, all fruits, all vegetables, mushrooms, pickles, meats, fish, seafood.

Midway Farms - Winter Oasis

Thanks to Midway Farms, my favorite winter farm stand, I just had the best lunch. It was sautéed kale and onions with two poached eggs on top. Fresh, organically grown, kale is one of the best things and the pastured eggs from Midway Farms are just too tasty to mess with so I poach them for the purest flavor.

Midway Farms is my favorite year-round farm stand. I found them while on a search for pasture raised eggs. They have so much more than amazing eggs, they are one of the few farm stands open all winter selling fresh local produce.

Yes, Cynthia, owner of Midway Farms, has figured out winter vegetable farming in Oregon. Not with a big giant green house full of out of season tomatoes but with real outdoor beds growing the many things that grow here during our generally mild winters. Midway farms has an abundance in the summer but it’s in the winter, when the farmers markets are closed and the grocery store has nothing but produce that has traveled thousands of miles or sat for months in cold storage, that Midway Farms feels like an oasis. When I arrived in their farm stand in the end of February last year I stood in front of the cooler in awe. There were fresh greens of all sorts and root vegetables everywhere, there was a cooler of the eggs I’d come for but the vegetables so amazed me that I left only when I’d spent all the cash I had and a half hour talking to Cynthia. We talked about the farm, about children learning where food really comes from, about the value of local produce to the community and about how we can help small farmers make it.

Midway Farms sits midway between Corvallis and Albany on HWY 20, hence the name. It’s the kind of farm your great grandparents might have grown up on had they lived the self sufficient farm lifestyle of the early 1900s. It’s got all the vegetables you can imagine, it’s got blueberries and fruit trees all around, it’s got flowers everywhere, it’s got at least 100 chickens, it’s got a cow for milk, it’s got geese and if you want to teach a group of school children where food comes from, call Cynthia, she’ll happily show them.

Cynthia told me a story during my first visit about taking her children out to eat, a rare occurrence for small farmers. When her daughter got her meal with chicken she asked Maggie, “Whose chicken was this?” Maggie was initially confused and told her it was her chicken but her daughter insisted she wanted to know whose chicken it had been. You see her daughter was so used to knowing where her food comes from that the concept of a chicken whose owner you hadn’t known was new to her. This made me think about my freezer and how now, after spending a year buying much of my food direct from farms, I know whose chicken I have, and whose berries and whose beef.

When you visit Midway Farms you come away with so much more than great food, you come away knowing that you have had a part in building a more sustainable future for all of us. That and the best eggs you will ever eat.

Midway has a website at www.midwayfarmsoregon.com

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