Your Personal Location for Food

[freemotion]

In MA, on the CT line, we have lots available. There are many farmstands that I drive by every day....however, with the median income here WAY above mine, the prices are high! I do go to one stand that has a bargain table and buy lots of twisted cukes and bushels of peppers and acorn squash, and lots of sugar pumpkins the last day of the season when they go on sale.

So most garden veggies are available, except the warmer climate ones. Lots of sweet corn, too, which can be bought by the sack. I usually buy a half-sack once or twice (it is fattening!) and make my favorite corn salad, especially for potluck parties....it is always a huge hit.

Everything else that is available, I grow myself, so I don't buy it unless I am having a bad year. Mostly what is grown here is tobacco and landscaping shrubs and trees. There are a couple of apple/peach orchards in the nearby hilltowns.

In my effort to eat more locally, I also include any foods I can buy when I am traveling. I figure the gas is already being burned, so now whatever I buy counts as local to me! So I bring home all the citrus we can fit into a couple of backpacks on the plane from Miami, and I fill my trunk with grain when I go to Maine. I am stilling trying to find some peanuts, as I LOVE boiled peanuts. The shipping on them is ridiculous. Anyone know....nevermind, I think I'll start a thread on that!

 

[TanksHill]

Hey all, I think the trendy term for this is now called a "locavore". Buying what is grown and produced in your area. I try to shop my farmers market, most of the food come s from central Ca. Which is not really local for me. I do like buying whats in season and preserving what I can. Makes a big difference in cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_food

 

[the simple life]

I live in Massachusetts, as Ann already said there are plenty of cranberries to be had, along with most every kind of fruit and vegetable excluding grapes and bananas.
We have lots of fish markets and plenty of farmstands and farmers markets here.
I hit 2 of them a week all summer long. I also have a stand down the street from me that has incredible prices.
I grow whatever I can and only buy what I don't grow or don't have enough of.
I went blueberry picking in July and I froze enough blueberries that I still have some.
I made blueberry pancakes yesterday and banana blueberry bread the other night.
I went apple picking in september and made and canned plenty of applesauce and apple rings. I made pies that gotten eaten right away but was able to freeze some apple cobblers.
I dehydrate the cranberries to use in my granola, I do the same with the blueberries.
The whole trick is to put up as much as you can to avoid having to buy any from the supermarkets.
I canned a ton of salsa, sauce and bruschetta from my tomatoes this summer and I still haven't had to purchase any.
We have a couple of wineries in our state and I can buy homemade pasta from a family company only one town over.
They sell sauces and breads too, all made by them.
I don't need to buy eggs anymore since I have my chickens but there is a farm a short ride from here that we buy our milk and ice
cream at.
I also buy my honey from a local couple and will do so until I get my own honey from my own bees.
I do what I can to buy locally and support our farmers.
It irks me that we import so much stuff that we could get locally.
When I was at the apple orchard this past fall there was a sign there informing people that all of the applejuice in this country comes from china.
I was really surprised to see that since we have all these apple orchards around here.
So I checked all of the labels at my grocery store and sure enough they were all from china. The closest I could find was one that said product of the US and China.
That kind of stuff drives me nuts.

 

[dacjohns]

In my effort to eat more locally, I also include any foods I can buy when I am traveling. I figure the gas is already being burned, so now whatever I buy counts as local to me! So I bring home all the citrus we can fit into a couple of backpacks on the plane from Miami, and I fill my trunk with grain when I go to Maine. I am stilling trying to find some peanuts, as I LOVE boiled peanuts. The shipping on them is ridiculous. Anyone know....nevermind, I think I'll start a thread on that!

I agree. That is one reason we stocked up on good Wisconsin cheese.



I just remembered that there are strawberry farms here too.

Blueberries at the ag center.

The problem with my location is that even though there are things available regionally I still have to travel 25 to 75 miles to get them.

 

[dacjohns]

Hey all, I think the trendy term for this is now called a "locavore". Buying what is grown and produced in your area. I try to shop my farmers market, most of the food come s from central Ca. Which is not really local for me. I do like buying whats in season and preserving what I can. Makes a big difference in cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_food

But you have avocados. I miss the fresh local avocados.

Does Vista still have strawberry farms? And citrus groves?

 

[TanksHill]

Yes, we have tons of little orchards mixed into he hills. Not so many big commercial places any more. There is a bunch of orange groves out off hwy 76. We have a couple little strawberry fields the big ones are in Carlsbad along the coast. Most avocados are up in Fallbrook.

I usually "borrow" avocados from my neighbors orchard. He has persimmons as well. He is trying to sell hes property so I recently planted some avocados of my own. I didn't realize it took 7 years for them to fruit. I would have planted them some time ago.

 

[poppycat]

I am so lucky about the food thing. There are so many awesome foods farmed or caught within 100 miles of where I live, it could be a challenge to eat them all.

The only things I can think of that can't be had locally are tropical fruits and olive oil and other fancy imported stuff. Oh and coffee.

We've got strawberries, asparagus, cane berries, every orchard type fruit you can imagine. Walnuts and hazlenuts. Salmon, trout, crabs, shrimp, oysters (my fave!) Beef, pork, lamb
Plus wheat, oats etc.

I'm probably omitting a bunch of stuff, like I said I'm really lucky.

 

[patandchickens]

Right immediately around here (like within 10 miles of my house) the main market-garden crops are strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, sweet corn, and pumpkins/winter squash. There is also a lot of wheat and soybeans and canola and field corn being grown, but AFAIK it all gets shipped half- or all the way across the continent to be made into other products then shipped back here

About an hour and a half or two hours away, down in the Niagara region, there is a whole BIG lot of diverse market gardening and fruit production. Which is convenient since a lot of the stuff they do well, like peaches, is not hardy where I am

There's a certain amount of beef being sold from the farm around here; I'm told someone also sells their own pork but I dunno who. A certain amount of fish come out of the Great Lakes but I for one would not eat it, no way nohow.

Good number of small honey producers around here, that's nice.

That's about what I can think of at the moment.

(e.t.a. - while standing in the barn filling buckets and trying to take my mind of the fact that I should have peed before leaving the house, lol, I realized that I have omitted two other significant things: there are a decent number of small commercial apple orchards around, and about 30 min to the W is the Holland Marsh which is a not overly large but VERY intensively farmed patch of muck soil that produces a lot of onions, scallions, carrots, and probably other things (I want to say cabbage?))

Oh, and all my milk and other dairy products come from a dairy coop based about an hour away from here, with a small chain of milk-and-icecream stores.)

(edited a second time to add: like poppycat, I consider myself quite fortunate to live in an area with such diverse food production) (especially Niagara peaches and pears and plums, mmmmm <drool>)

(e.#3.t.a. oh yeah and blueberries and commercial cranberry bogs a couple hours north of here, too)

Pat

 

[the simple life]

I heard there was a lady that produced cheese in your area.

 

[mom'sfolly]

The big ones here in this part of Texas are peaches, pecans and beef. But seasonally in my local farmers market I can get citrus, all sorts of "truck" produce, and various meats and dairy, and honey.