Where Have I Been All Summer???

Cheating, cheating, cheating!

After our big move to Acton I thought for sure it would be an exciting time to check out all of the farm stands and local food sources that would be closer to our new zip code. I pictured myself making daily forays and bringing home the wonderful local products that my area is sure to provide. Then I would stand in my new gleaming kitchen with it's meticulously cleaned countertops and whip up masterful meals of fresh vegetables and grass-fed meats while my children played gently and quietly in our spacious grassy backyard. My hair would be perfectly coiffed and my pearls would gleam at my throat. The image was so realistic that I could picture it down to the most minute detail.

Heh heh heh! Hee hee hee! Ha ha ha! Boy am I funny!


So, school has finally begun.










For the next 9 glorious months (not counting:

• Rosh Hashanah,
• Yom Kippur,
• Columbus Day,
  
• Veteren's Day,
• Thanksgiving Break,
• Christmas Break,
• Martin Luther King Day,
• Every Thursday After January 26th when we switch from the Morning Kindergarten to the Afternoon Kindergarten,
• Winter Recess,
• Good Friday,
  
• Spring Recess,
  
• Memorial Day, and
  
• Professional Days),
  

my perfect little storms will be reduced in number (during the hours of 9AM to 12PM) from 3 down to 2. And even more exciting, on Tuesdays and Thursdays we will be reduced from 2 down to 1. Whatever shall I do with all this free time????

I'm sure I know what I should do with this free time. Laundry, dishes, and general cleaning come directly to mind. But hey, let's face it, I haven't had time to do any of that stuff all summer long and we've all survived so why start now? So I'm back on my quest!

Once again I'm consulting the great Eat Well Guide available on the Kiwi Magazine website to find a list of local and sustainable farms and stores from which I can buy healthy, low-impact food items for my family. I am excited and ready. I am focused and determined. I am avoiding vaccuuming. Now, if I can just find those pearls...

Back To Local

Well, we did it. We moved. It's been a long couple of months, and the house is only 1/3rd unpacked. I've pretty much given up at this point. I'm very tempted to just donate the remainder of the unopened boxes. I mean, if I've lived without the stuff for this long, do I really need it?

I haven't had the chance to do too much local food hunting lately. The local Roche Bros does seem to have a nice selection of local produce, and it's nice that they label everything really well so you can tell where it came from. They're also very kid friendly. They have these little pint-sized shopping carts so your kids can have their own to push. Well, they have three pint-sized shopping carts really. And the chances there will be one there when you arrive with your expectant children is pretty slim. Plus if they do happen to have them available they will have one less than the number of expectant children you have and so they have to share (i.e. fight). And if by some miracle there are two of them, you will spend your entire shopping trip yelling at your children to :

• stop racing up and down the aisles!
• stop ramming into each other!
• don't run in to that little old lady!
• get over here next to me or I will make you put that cart back!
• take the king sized bag of king sized Snickers bars out of your cart!
• get over here, now!

And after you've put the carts back as punishment for your children's behavior you can then finally make it past aisle one. Luckily they have a lovely bathroom at the complete opposite end of the store because you will invariably have to visit it sometime between aisle 2 and 3, even though he went to the bathroom before you left the house. Then the baby will start crying because it's close to nap time but you were only supposed to be running into the store for 2 minutes to grab 3 items but now it's been 25 minutes and you've only managed to grab 1 of the items on your list and 19 items that were not on your list but that you needed or maybe needed or were probably going to need soon so you should save yourself the trip.

Checking out is nice. They take everything out of the cart for me, and bag it, and bring it to my car. That way I can concentrate on restocking the candy and gum they keep so conveniently right next to the register.

At least I got everything I needed.

Who am I kidding. I'll be back there again tomorrow.

We may have moved, but some things never change.

More soon.

A Whole New Local

So, here's the thing, my 4YO is going to be out of school in mid May, but until then he's in school for 3 hours a day. My 2YO naps two hours a day...sometimes. My 9MO is sort of thinking about maybe starting to sleep through the night pretty soon. So you can see that I have a lot of free time lately and I wasn't sure what on earth I was going to fill it with. So, we're moving.

An important side effect to this decision is that my whole radius of local is going to change in May. Balance Rock Farm, formerly my hot spot for locally and responsibly produced meat products, open M-F but not on Thursday when my in-laws have the boys, balanced because they have one candy product for every one meat product, is now going to be a 25 minute drive instead of a 16 minute drive. That may not seem like much to the average Joe, but remember I'm coordinating five here. I can't go on Thursdays or during the baby's first nap or during the baby's second nap or during the 2YOs nap which happens after the baby's first nap and during the first 30 minutes of the baby's second nap. I can't go in the morning when I'm dropping the 4YO off at school or around noon when I'm picking him up from school, or at 4:30 when I'm making dinner. After school gets out for the summer I think there's a 56 minute window between breakfast, first nap and lunch when I can maybe slip out with all three kids in tow and drive down there. Assuming, of course, no one poops. Then I lose 4 minutes and it just can't be done.

I have to admit, though that I'm excited to find some new local sources. Kiwi Magazine's website has this great tool where you can put in your zip code and it will help you find local Farms, Stores and Restaurants and it has a good list for me to work on as soon as we're settled. That should get me started in locating the local meat, eggs, and honey that we have grown accustomed to. And with Spring starting it will be nice to get some fresh fruit that hits a little closer to home then Chile. Oh, about that...

I have been buying fruit from Chile. This is a total cop-out on the local front. I'm slightly ashamed but only slightly. I've come to the conclusion that local is a great idea but in practice, in Massachusetts in the winter, it's impossible. My kids will not eat canned or frozen fruit. They will not eat 90% of all cooked vegetables. I've tried serving them over and over and over and over. Even if it is environmentally and morally wrong, I just can't stop buying fresh Chilean blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. I don't know where my fresh green beans come from but I know that once I've engaged my son in a crunching contest (thanks Nanna) he'll chomp them right down. This question that I've posed in my blog title turned out to be more about a family of five having a healthy and nutritious diet more than could I actually find products in a local and responsible way. The answer is unfortunate from my perspective.

I need my kids to eat healthy fruits and vegetables.
I need them to eat them all year long.
I feel I have no choice but to buy them and serve them.

Is this awful? Can I balance out the awful by dedicating myself to buying local produce the second it becomes available in my area? They have carbon offset credits, how about local offset credits. I mean, let's face it, I've never really checked a label before in my life until I started this blog. Now I look at them ALL THE TIME. I've become more conscientious of where my food is coming from and what it contains then ever before in my life. Does this make up for the fact that when I can I buy local, when local's not an option I buy organic, and when organic's not an option I buy from Chile? I don't know. The answer does not seem to be in the California chardonnay I'm sipping. Not yet anyway. There's still a good half a bottle left. Maybe the answer's like the prize in the box of cereal...at the bottom. Didn't your mother tell you you couldn't have the prize until you finished the cereal? I better get drinking. I'll let you know.

Enough Already

All right, enough of the doom and gloom already. I promise my next post will be back on mission, featuring all the highlights of my fun-filled attempts to buy local foods without succumbing to my kids constant and obsessive desire for candy and marshmallows.

Before I move on...

As much as I highly plagiarized Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, there is much I left out. I do recommend you pick it up at your bookstore or library. I never before thought I could be interested in farming, but his description of the symbiosis between animal and vegetation that occurs on Joel Salatan's farm was absolutely fascinating. You will never again find yourself quite so enthralled with cows, pigs, chickens, grass, grubs, and poop. Plus mushroom hunting now sounds like a most exciting adventure, and I think mushroom taste like moldy dirt!

Anyway, I promise to move on. I hope you read the book. Let's get back to local.

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 4

Chickens.

Yup, I'm going to ruin the chickens for you.

I've done beef and pork. Are you sure you want to hear about this?

Well, if you're that much of a glutton for punishment...

Laying hens (the ones your eggs come from) spend their short little lives piled together 6 or 7 together in a wire condo about 24" x 24". They are packed too tightly to ever fully stretch their wings. All of their natural chickeny instincts are thwarted. There's no ground to scratch or bugs to eat from yummy 4 day old cow poop. The accommodations are so caring and loving, the chickens often resort to acts of cannibalism as well as rubbing their breast against the wire mesh until they are bald and bleeding. Roughly 10% of the hens, ungracious enough to appreciate the care and concern put into their upkeep, respond to the stress of their existence by dying; don't worry, that loss is figured into the cost of production. When the surviving (not to be confused with living) hens output begins to ebb, they are "force-molted" to stimulate a last surge of egg laying before they give out; this is accomplished by the five star treatment of, no not massages and manicures, but by cutting them off from food, water and sunlight for several days. They lay their last few eggs, then they die.





So...now you know what I know. Don't you feel better now? Oh, and just so you don't think that the hen's pitiful existence was all for nothing... When you are looking through the eggs at the grocery store, and you put a package back because one of the dozen is broken, the grocery store does not switch out the broken one with a whole one, it just tosses the perfectly good remaining eleven into the garbage. Go us!

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 3

So let's talk about corn.

How did the US develop into a country with a corn-based food system?

1. In the early 20th century American corn breeders figured out how to make a hybrid corn seed that ensures a large crop of corn per acre. However, the seeds this hybrid corn makes produces crappy corn, so farmers who use it are forced to buy new seeds every year.
2. 1947 marked the end of the war. All that leftover ammonium nitrate, previously used to create explosives, made perfect nitrogen for plants, and especially for the afore-mentioned hybrid corn which consumes more fertilizer then any other crop.
3. In the fall of 1972 Russia purchased 30 million tons of American grain, pushing the sale and price of corn sky high.
4. In 1973 the inflation rate for food was so high that housewives were protesting at the supermarkets.
   
5. In response, the Dept. of Agriculture pushed farmers to grow more and more, and changed the earlier practice of giving loans to farmers during down seasons into a plan of direct payments to farmers.
6. With these new subsidies in place, it didn't matter what price farmers set on their corn, the government guaranteed they would make up the rest. Since the government was subsidizing every bushel of corn, farmers were encouraged to flood the market and grow as much as possible.
   
7. Today, it costs roughly $2.50 to grow a bushel of Iowa corn, and it's being sold for $1.45 a bushel. So, the more the farmer grows, the more money he'll get in subsidies. Thus...lots and lots and lots of corn.

So, now the government had solved the issue of farmers going out of business. Of course, now that everyone was growing corn instead of other produce we had to start shipping the other produce across the country because local selection was now very limited, but that's another day and another problem. Let's talk about what the real problem is...what do you do with all this friggin corn? I mean, it's not the sweet stuff that we butter, salt and pepper and serve with our corn...er, I mean steaks. This is mostly feed quality stuff and we've got more than we know what to do with. What on earth could we possibly make it in to? I'll tell you.

• Corn is fed to steers (steak), chicken, turkey, pig, lamb, catfish, tilapia, and salmon. (Salmon are carnivores but are being genetically modified to eat corn to help us deal with the surplus.)
• Milk, cheese and yogurt come from cows that eat corn, so are essentially of corn.
  
• Eggs, from corn.

Then there's:

• corn flour,
  
• corn oil,
  
• licithin,
  
• mono-, di-, and triglycerides,
  
• citric acid,
• high fructose corn syrup,
  
• beer (alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn),
• modified and unmodified starch,
  
• glucose syrup,
  
• maltodextrin,
  
• crystalline fructose,
• ascorbic acid,
• dextrose,
  
• lactic acid,
• lysine,
• maltose,
• MSG,
  
• polyols,
• caramel color,
  
• xanthan gum,
  
• the shine on the cover of your magazine,
• the vegetable wax on your cucumbers,
• the ethanol in your automobile.

Have you ever seen these ingredients before? Well, I think you should look a little closer at what's in your cupboard. (Actually, that's not true. I don't think you should look. I don't even think you should really be reading this at all. I can't stress this to you enough , but I sense that I am not getting through.)

• Ninety percent of the bread in the bread aisle at your grocery store contain as the second or third ingredient High Fructose Corn Syrup (yes, even your whole wheats).
  
• It's in your Kraft Mac & Cheese as Citric Acid and Lactic Acid.
  
• Coco-Cola? about 50% corn.
  
• Your ketchup has High Fructose Corn Syrup and Corn Syrup.
  
• Ruffles should be all potato, right? Well, it depends on which oil is currently cheepest so it could very well be Corn Oil (that's why it says "Contains One Or More Of The Following").
  
• Hood Ice Cream Sandwiches also have High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Mono and Diglycerides.
  
• Old El Paso "Flour" Tortillas: Mono and Diglycerides, Corn Syrup Solids, Corn Starch.
  
• Cheerios: Modified Corn Starch, Corn Starch.
  
• The first two ingredients of Log Cabin "Maple Syrup" are Corn Syrup and High Fructose Corn Syrup.
  
• Stove Top Stuffing: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Protein, Caramel Color, Citric Acid. Yup, we're stuffing our corn chickens with corn stuffing.
  
• Oreos: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Cornstarch.
  
• Betty Crocker Potatoes Au Gratin: Corn Starch, Maltodextrin, Modified Corn Starch, Mono and Diglycerides, Lactic Acid.
  

In fact, if you look at the ingredients in the snack aisles of your grocery store you'll find that eighty percent of the products contain corn in one form or another. None of our food is actually made of food anymore. It seems like it's just broken down, reformulated, enriched flour, random chemicals, and corn in all of its various forms. And we just keep growing more.


So now you know how we came to the corn thing. If you read the first post that I specifically told you not to read, you'll understand why I personally have come to the conclusion that corn is not so good for cattle. Here is one more reason why our corn-based agriculture system is not such a good idea:

Add together the natural gas in the fertilizer used on the hybrid corn we grow, with the fossil fuels it takes to make the pesticides, drive the tractors, and harvest, dry, and transport the corn, and what you find is that every bushel of industrial corn requires the equivalent of between a quarter and a third of a gallon of oil to grow it; around fifty gallons of oil per acre of corn. Think about that the next time you hear someone touting the wonders of ethanol as an alternative to our oil consumption problems!




*I'm in everything image originated by NatalieDee.

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 2

I know that I promised you the answer to "why corn?", but here's the thing. On Saturday, my 8 month old developed a fever of 103. She continued to have a fever until Wednesday morning. On Sunday, my 4YO started the fever, and it's still going strong. On Wednesday, my 2YO developed the fever. Now, I probably could have managed to post a blog entry before now, except that my husband has a "man cold". In fact, he had a man cold three weeks ago, and this past week decided his man cold wasn't enough and he needed to get really sick and be completely out of commission and bed-ridden for 5 days solid. "Wah, I feel woozy. Wah, I'm disoriented. Wah, my head is pounding. Wah, I have no peripheral vision. Wah, I can't stay upright." Wuss. Sorry, I mean, poor little bunny. Needless to say my ability to blog, as well as my ability to go foraging for local dinner meat, has gone right out the window.

However, I did read one quick little tidbit from Omnivore's Dilemma while rocking my daughter to sleep at 2 in the morning after she had vomited on me for the 4th time that day.

Are you ready? You can still turn back.

Trust me, you don't want to think about this. Stay ignorant!

Pigs raised in a CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) are weaned just a few days after they're born, instead of the few weeks they would wean in nature. This causes them to have a life-long need to suckle. Unable to resist this temptation, they bite the tails of the other pigs. Now, usually if a pig's tail is bitten it will get aggressive and confront the offender, but CAFO pigs are so demoralized by their living situation that they just ignore the biting. This leads to infection. So, to stop this from happening, pigs raised in CAFOs have their tails clipped at a young age. Oh, and they don't cut the tails off so the other pigs won't bite them, they cut the tails off to make them more sensitive so that when the other pigs bite them even the demoralized CAFO pigs will turn around and get aggressive.

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 1

Seriously, I'm not kidding.

This is your last chance. Take the blue pill.

All right, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Several friends, on reading my blog, suggested I read a book called The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. (By the way, I'm never speaking to either of you again.) I've just finished the 1st of three parts to this book and I'm going to sum up what I've learned. After all, why should I suffer alone?

I swear I'm going to do it. I am not messing around here people.

Fine, whatever.

When cows eat grass:

1. Sunlight and rain make the grass grow.
2. The cow eats the grass.
3. The cow spreads the grass seed, planting it with his hooves.
4. The cow fertilizes the grass seed with manure.
5. In the cow's rumen (one of its many stomach units) the grass ferments, is broken down by bacteria, and is digested and turned into high quality protein.

So basically, a useless plant to humans, grass is grown and sustained by the cow, and turned into protein, using a sustainable, solar-powered food chain that produces food by transforming sunlight into protein. How cool is that?

When cows eat corn:



Corn fed cows nurse for the first few months of their life and graze on grass until around 8 months of age.

1. The cow is transported from the grass lands to the feedlot.
2. At the feedlot they are given a mixture of corn, alfalfa hay, silage, liquefied fat (beef tallow...yup, we're forcing this herbivore into cannibalism), protein supplements (molasses and urea, a form of synthetic nitrogen made from natural gas), liquid vitamins, synthetic estrogen and antibiotics.
3. The cow's rumen isn't meant to break down corn the way it does grass so... The fermentation of corn in the cows rumen causes tons of extra gas as well as a layer of foamy slime that traps the gas, causing it to inflate like a balloon until the rumen presses against the animal's lungs.
4. When this happens they force a hose down the animal's esophagus to keep it from suffocating.
   
5. The cow develops acidosis. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers, bloat, rumenitis, liver disease, and a general weakening of the immune system leaving the animal vulnerable to pneumonia, as well as a whole host of other nasty feedlot illnesses. They're given tons of antibiotics to deal with these conditions. However...
6. Over time the acids from digesting the corn eat away at the rumen wall, allowing bacteria to enter the cow's bloodstream. The microbes end up in the liver where they form abscesses and impair liver function. In some pens up to 70 percent of cows are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers.
   
7. The good news is, the cows are fattened up in 14 months with corn instead of the 4 years it takes with grass. And the meat they produce are filled with lots more yummy saturated fats and lots less of those troublesomely healthy omega 3 fatty acids, as compared to their grass grown brethren.
   

Oh, and while at the feedlot the animals create a lagoon of manure with nitrogen and phosphorus levels so high that the manure can't be used on crops for fertilizer because they would kill them. It also contains heavy metals and hormone residues, all which end up in waterways downstream from the feedlots. They sleep on large piles of manure which end up on their hides and thus in our hamburgers requiring us to cook them longer so we don't die from the e coli that breeds in said cow shit that, I repeat, ends up in our food.

So, instead of a nice closed loop system of sunlight energy turning into healthy animal protein, at 25 pounds of corn a day a steer will have consumed in his lifetime the equivalent of thirty-five gallons of oil, or nearly a barrel. That's just one. Some plants slaughter 400 animals an hour. Plus there's the antibiotics that have to be produced, the protein supplements, the vitamins, the synthetic estrogen, the maintaining of the feedlots, the shipping of the corn, etc., etc. All these things to make up for feeding them something they are not biologically designed to eat!

So, with all the trouble and oil it requires to feed cows corn instead of grass, why are we doing it? Well, let's talk about that. Next time. In part two. You don't want to read that one either. Trust me. It gets worse then cow poop in your hamburger.

Oh, And About That Ham

If you're reading my posts in order you may or may not have noticed that I picked up a "fresh ham shank" from Balance Rock the other day. Well, tonight I cooked it.

When I was a little girl I remember how much I absolutely loved Thanksgiving dinner. It was probably my most favorite holiday. I loved a whole mouthful of turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, and gravy all at once. It was like heaven. I also remembered my mother making some silly comment about how some day she'd come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner. I distinctly remember my precocious response, "You can come but you're cooking it. There's no way I'm ever sticking my hand up a turkey's butt."

Yup, that's me, the happily unaware meat eater. My meat does not come with a head attached, nor feathers, nor anything else to remind me that it was once a living breathing thing. And in my mind I can easily disassociate my meat products from the animals they used to be. I need to be able to disassociate because as you all now know my becoming a vegetarian would most definitely lead to starvation.

So, I love bacon. It does not look like Wilbur. I love pork chops. Also, no resemblance to Wilbur. And who doesn't love a freshly warmed honey baked ham? No Wilbur! So, when I saw a "fresh ham shank" sitting in the freezer of my ecologically responsible local farm store, I decided I would go for it even though I knew it would not be conveniently spiral sliced for me.

Yeah, want to know what a "fresh ham shank" looks like?

This is my idea of a yummy ham:




See how little this looks like the animal it came from?











This, on the other hand, is a ham shank.




I can picture where it's little leg used to be!




Imagine my surprise when I removed the shank from the opaque butcher paper, which I know they used to hide the contents from unsuspecting souls like myself, only to find an actual honest to goodness pig hind-quarter...blood and all! Eeewww! It still had the skin on it! Why didn't anyone warn me? Yeah, yeah, I've seen chicken skin and turkey skin, but I didn't grow up on a farm so I've never seen pig skin. It still had a few stray hairs! Ach!

Okay, okay, so I guess I'm growing up a little here. I still use a long spoon to get the giblets out of my turkey butt and push the onion and carrots inside. But today I actually did score an honest to goodness ham shank per the instructions in my Joy Of Cooking cookbook and I have to say that for the next 3 hours the house smelled tremendous.

I will admit to feeling a little bit guilty about being a meat eater, though. I mean, I just can't help feeling sad knowing that, because of me, somewhere out there is a very gimpy three-legged pig.

Back to Balance

So I finally made a return to Balance Rock Farm. It was a beautiful Thursday morning. I love Thursdays. It's the one day a week when my in-laws pick up my two wonderful boys around 8:30 in the morning and it's just me and the baby until around 4:00 at night. It's my errand day. One time it was my sit around and do nothing day, but then I really hated the ensuing Friday because of all the pile up my laziness created.

So, with just one child in tow I made my way back to the farm. We went in and actually took some time perusing the small shelves and refrigerators for the various local products available. They had a nice selection of locally made cheeses this time and the freezers were full of a variety of meats. I picked up some more pork chops, a whole chicken, and a fresh ham shank, as well as some cheddar cheese. It was a very relaxing trip. I only had to explain to Allison once that no she could not have any of the various varieties of candy because, thankfully, she has yet to grow any teeth (we're still nursing). It was great.

We proceeded benignly to the register to pay for our goods and I plotted my future Thursdays and my local eating plans around a weekly trip out here. We had a nice long chat with the man who owns the farm (really long, I wasn't sure we were getting out of there). Then, as we made our way to the door he added, "Oh, by the way, I came over here to the shop because I saw you pulling in, but I just wanted to let you know we decided to start closing on Thursdays from now on. Have a nice day!"

What The Heck Do They Grow Here Anyway?

I have a confession to make. I've been getting my groceries from the grocery store. I haven't even been looking at labels. I even bought non-organic chicken because, well, it was on sale for $.79/lb. I feel like I've let you down. This local eating thing is a lot tougher than I expected.

I kind of thought that if I looked around for places that carried local things, found the time to go to them despite my three cute little distractions, forked out the extra money, and made a few minor dietary concessions then I'd be able to buy almost everything we eat locally. Yeah, that was silly. Do you know what they actually grow here in the fine state of Massachusetts? (I'm going to Google it right now, I'll let you know.)

Fish/Shellfish
Pumpkins
Goats
Sheep
Pigs
Cows
Duck
Chicken
Turkey
Grapes/Wine
Blueberries
Strawberries
Potatoes
Cheese (okay, technically they don't grow cheese here)
Honey
Maple Syrup
Cranberries
Apples
Peaches
Plums
Turnips
Tomatoes
Lettuce
Corn
Squash
Cucumbers
Peppers
Mesclun (What the heck is Mesclun? Hold on... Ah, it's a salad mix. Why don't they just say salad mix?)
Eggs
Raspberries
Milk
Quince
Pears
Carrots
Onions
Tomatoes
Cherries
Bison (seriously, I'm not kidding, check it out)
Cucumbers
Eggplant

Okay, I'm sure there's more. All of this food sounds really good but let's narrow the list down a bit more. What is grown in the state of Massachusetts that's available to, say, me and you, in the winter months?

Dairy Products
Squash, Potatoes
Apples
Maple Syrup, Honey
Wine
Turkey, Chicken, Duck, Beef, Pork, Sheep, Bison, Fish/Shellfish

Do I give up now? Nah. At least I can try to buy this stuff all locally.

Tune in next time for more adventures in eating locally when we make our triumphant return to Balance Rock Farm!

7th Generation

I don't get it. I bought some 7th Generation diapers a couple of weeks ago to see if this die-hard three-time Huggies fan could be converted to a more eco-friendly alternative. I have previously attempted GDiapers, and they're fantastic if you have five more minutes and/or two more hands, per diaper change, than I do. Okay, by fantastic I mean a super cute environmentally superior alternative that leaked every time I tried them and required a lot more effort than I was personally willing to expend, but aside from that I HIGHLY recommend trying them. You can have mine. Just shoot me an email.

Anyway, to get back to what I was saying before. I don't get it. I put the 7th Generation diapers on my son. Then, forgetting that I had put them on my son, I left him in the diaper for the same length of time I usually do with the Huggies: about an hour longer than one should let a 2YO walk around in the same diaper thus ensuring the diaper will surpass maximum capacity which you only become aware of because he comes running over complaining that the diaper has given up and is now lodged halfway down one of his pant legs. (Can't imagine why those GDiapers leaked.) Anyway, I managed to change him just moments shy of the tab release time and no leaks!

Testing doesn't get much more sophisticated then this. There's been poop. There's been pee. There's been what comes out after Nanna feeds him dried apricots, figs, raisins and bananas all within a two hour period. Sorry for grossing you out but the point is, these diapers work. They work just as good as Huggies. I don't get it.

I can go on Amazon and buy 4 boxes of size 4 Seventh Generation diapers, that's 136 diapers, for $41.99. That works out to 0.30875 per diaper, so roughly .31 cents. I can buy 4 boxes of size 4 Huggies diapers, that's 100 diapers, for $31.36. That works out to 0.3136 per diaper, so roughly .31 cents. The Huggies diapers are made with whatever ink they use to print character pictures all over the diaper (my 7 month old insists on Pooh, very appropriately) as well as chlorine to bleach the diaper a lovely shade of white. The 7th Generation ones are made chorine-free, latex-free, fragrance-free and TBT-free. I don't get it.

Doesn't it cost more money to make things environmentally safer? Isn't that the whole point of using all these crazy nasty toxins? I just don't get how the 7th Generation people can be selling the same product as the Huggies people for the same price but without all the poisons. I don't get it. But, I do know which ones I plan to buy from now on.

Okay, yeah, so my 7 month old threw a holy fit when she discovered that poo would only appear inside her new diapers and was no longer printed on the outside. Of course she did. Who can blame her? But then I sat down and had a reasonable discussion with her about how the inks and chemicals used on her old diapers, while making them pretty, were completely unnecessary and added harmful toxins to our environment so I needed her to do a little soul-searching and decide if it was more important that her poop and pee be conveyed to the trash by an ecologically responsible diaper or by Pooh. She's still thinking it over, but I think she'll come around.

Bolton Orchards

I apologize to my 21 fans (Google Analytics is so cool) for the delay in posting. Two of my three munchkins have been battling one hell of a cold and the weather has not been cooperating. We had one inch of snow on Friday and school was canceled. Wimps. I'm sure my parents are loving the irony of my new-found hatred for the "snow day". I have managed to find a few brief minutes though, due to the fact that my 7 month old has been awake since 5:30 AM and despite my repeated request that she drift happily off to sleep again, here I sit posting to you. So what's new?

The other night we had a 50% local dinner. We ate the pork chops and local MacIntosh applesauce from Balance Rock Farm, and organic corn as well as peas with pearl onions that were from California, not Belgium! I'll admit this meal is way short of mission, but it is a start. And thanks to the comments posted on this blog I have a whole list of resources to pursue.

One little store I've been meaning to look at, Bolton Orchards, is only 3.3 miles from my house. I've been in there before but never really paid close attention to their products, other than the obvious prevalence of apples. After dinner last night I realized that we were in need of milk and eggs, and at 6:30 PM on the Sunday of a holiday weekend local beggars cannot be choosers. I knew I could get these things from local sources at my large grocery store, but I assume that supporting smaller, locally run stores is really more inline with my mission. Since the baby had been awake for 5 long, sniffling, sneezing hours I figured a trip out would provide her a much-needed car nap. It was a great plan until my 4YO insisted he should come along.

Those of you with more than 1 child know that any time you get to leave the house with 1 less child then you have produced, it's like a tiny vacation... usually.

"Oohhh, I want some of those small oranges!"

"Those are apricots," I replied. Local? Well, yeah if you live in South America.

"I want some!"

"You don't even know what they are. What if you don't like them? Let's get some apples!"

"I will, I will like them. I promise! Please!"

• 3 Chilean Apricots, check.

"Peaches!"

"Apricots are enough, honey."

"Please! Please! I promise I'll eat them!"

• 3 Chilean Peaches, check

I turned to peruse the vegetables and was fairly disappointed until I came across a bag of locally grown potatoes. I was beginning to wonder if Maine was the closest I'd ever get.

• 5 lb bag of potatoes, local, check

"Ooohh, nuts! Can we get some nuts?"

"We still have nuts leftover from Thanksgiving."

"Not these nuts," he said, excitedly scooping a heap of mixed nuts.

"Yes, those same kind of nuts."

"But not THESE nuts," he emphasized, as if those mixed nuts were so obviously different from our current batch of mixed nuts.

"We don't need any more nuts." I wonder where all these mixed nuts are from, anyway. (Hee hee, I Googled it and someone actually posted this question: "Where do Brazil nuts comes from?") I tried to meander through the store in my search for local goods.

"Mommy, I'm going to look at this candy."

"We're not getting any candy."

"I know! I'm just going to look at it."

"Come on, let's go look at these great apples. Which ones should we get?"

• 1/2 peck of apples, local, check
• 2 dozen eggs, local, check
  
• Cabot Farm butter, VT, check
• Boar's Head bacon, somewhere in the US, check
• Oakhurst milk, somewhere in New England, check

"Mommy! Mommy! Marshmallows! Can we buy marshmallows? I love marshmallows. Marshmallows are so yummy! Can we buy some? Can we bring them home and have them in hot chocolate? I love marshmallows in hot chocolate. Can we get some?"

I can honestly say that I've never bought marshmallows before. How do kids find out about these things? "Sure," I responded distractedly. I was scanning the freezer section hoping to find locally grown frozen produce. Someone had to carry it. There was a buzzing sound in the background as I shopped, it sounded something like this:

"Yay! Thank you mommy. I am so excited. I love hot chocolate with marshmallows. I can't wait. When we get home we'll have hot chocolate and put marshmallows in it. Mommy do you like hot chocolate with marshmallows in it? I do. It's so yummy. I can't wait. Can you?"

I hope you don't mind, I paraphrased.

I looked down at my crazed 4YO. "What happened to you? Did you have like 5 teaspoons of sugar before we left the house?" We rounded the corner. A woman was standing in front of a whole wall of locally jarred jams and jellies. She was close to tears.

"I'm so excited," she said, "I think I'm going to have to go home and have hot chocolate with marshmallows."

• Bag of jet-puffed mini-marshmallows, made in the USA, check

"Can we go home now? I want to have my hot chocolate and marshmallows."

"Let me look at these jellies first." There were a large variety of flavors and they all had the Bolton Orchards label on them. The address on the back was that of the store I was in. How do you determine local-ness on products like this? It's quite possible that the jarring was done here at the orchard, but it's highly unlikely the grapes are local, so does it count as a local product? I mean, it must be more local than the Polaner All Fruit I normally buy, but I suppose if I want to truly be local I need to switch from grapes to something like strawberries that at least has a chance of being picked and processed locally. I think I can make that change. Next time.

• Grape "fruit spread", local?, check

Well, it wasn't my worst outing, I don't think I accidentally picked up anything from the UK this time. Out of my 10 purchases, 6 of them are at least from my tri-state region. Clearly my 4YO is a bad influence on my shopping habits, though. But I do have to admit, as we sat together as a family sipping hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows floating in it, taking turns lobbing them across the table and into each other's open mouths, I am kind of glad I brought him along.

With Apologies To The Bunnies

I'm finding that one of the biggest challenges to eating local is that it seems to also mean eating healthy. I've yet to come across any locally grown foods that come in a box and taste like Cheez-Its. Over the past couple of years I have done my best to reassociate into the unhealthy category foods like Doritos, Ruffles, Heluva Good French Onion Dip, and Easy Cheese. Admittedly I once considered them central to not only my diet but my general happiness in life. This is no longer the case. The downside is, I have been unable to find a suitable replacement. You see, I am picky. And let me explain so I can be perfectly clear what I mean when I say I'm picky:

Vegetables fall into two categories, those I hate and those I tolerate. I will eat raw peppers but not cooked. Any food cooked with green peppers in it tends to taste of green peppers, and I cannot eat that. I like onions if they are breaded, crispy and deep fried. I hate tomatoes but like salsa (I dip, I do not scoop). I hate mushrooms in all of their various incarnations and no matter what they've been marinating in. Squash is right out. Sweet potatoes are fine as long as you don't forget the brown sugar. Raw broccoli, green beans, carrots and cauliflower I can eat but please pass the aforementioned Heluva Good French Onion dip. Do not cook or "wilt" my lettuce, ew. I don't mind peas with pearl onions, but I don't eat the pearl onions and I use a generous amount of butter, salt and pepper. Corn is probably my favorite vegetable followed closely by potatoes, but again a generous portion of butter and salt are required, and I've never had a potato that didn't require two dollops of sour cream. Beets taste like dirt. Pickled beets taste like pickled dirt. My in-laws have lately been on a rutabaga kick...good for them. Celery is of the devil and people keep insisting it has no flavor but if that were the case then why, tell me why, do they insist on putting it in otherwise perfectly yummy things like chicken-salad? I could go on.

The point is, when one has such strict limitations on what one can consume without gagging, how am I supposed to adjust to this whole local thing. I know what you're thinking, it wasn't your idea! It was mine. And it's a good idea. I think I may have mentioned that I have three very small children. I want to bring them up with healthy attitudes about food as well as where that food comes from. And just switching to wheat bread (as I made myself do reluctantly after my first son was born) is not going to get me there.

So here I sit, eating raw broccoli generously dipped in Italian Dressing (hey, it's a start) instead of munching on the two BJs sized bags of Doritos in my cupboard. The broccoli isn't local of course, but when spring rolls around and we do start getting in fresh local produce, my hope is that my palate will be ready. Lookout bunnies.

Balance Rock Farm

So a friend of mine, having heard about my local journey, told me about another local shop called Balance Rock Farm, in Berlin, MA. And, as luck would have it, the very next day my 2YO decided that he would go ahead and forgo his daily 3 hour nap and settle for a half hour nap from which he would awake crying hysterically until I went up to retrieve him. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth; I mean really, what's better than 2 1/2 extra hours with an exhausted, clingy, whiny, tiny 2YO that's coming down with a cold? But, I am on a mission. So despite my dream of sitting at home and entertaining said tiny person, I made the tough decision to belt everyone in the car, put on a video, and head out to the farm.

6.3 miles and 16 minutes later we drove past, did a double-take, turned around, and pulled in to a tiny little building next to an old farm house and across from a large cow barn. This was promising. I retrieved my little crew from the car and brought them inside the little shop (it didn't have an automatic door but thankfully it was open for business).

"Candy me?" asked my 2YO making a beeline for the kid-level bowl of miniature candy canes just inside the entrance.

"No, no, honey" I replied, moving to replace the fistful he had already grabbed up.

The cashier looked over and in an oh so helpful voice said, "It's okay, he can have one. That's what they're there for."

Oh so helpful.

"One," I replied

"Can I have one?" piped up my 4YO.

"No, honey you already had a candy cane from your friend's birthday party at school."

We left the candy canes behind and explored the two small rooms. They had local honey and maple syrup. They had bird seed in large paper sacks (my husband refused to buy the one at Loews in a tightly woven unrecycleable plastic bag). They also had several refrigerators filled with milk, orange juice, butter, eggs, cheese and various meats. Oh, and two large open containers of cookie-looking dog biscuits.

"No, no! Don't eat that. It's not a cookie. It's doggie food. Yucky!" I pulled the soggy biscuit away from my 2YO.

"Mommy, can I have some money?" I look over at my 4YO, standing in front of two coin-op candy machines containing M&Ms and Skittles. The candy canes weren't enough?

"No, you don't need any more candy today." I continue my perusal of the local products. Well, mostly local. The orange juice claims to be local from concentrate but I've lived in New England for quite awhile and never seen the local orange grove so I'm suspicious at best. They have some gouda cheese from a local place, and she explains that this time of year they're short on local products so they get butter and things from Cabot Farm. They're in Vermont so, not neccessarily local but could be worse.

"Mommy, there's money already in here!" my 4YO exclaims excitedly. He reaches up and grabs a little paper cup from on top of the candy machine and twists the nob. A waterfall of M&Ms pours out of the little metal door.

"Me?" calls my 2YO.

I grab another cup and split the M&Ms between them. I gain another 2 minutes to look around.

The freezer and refrigerator have a nice assortment of meats. I pick up a Ziplock bag containing two enormous chicken breasts (4.55 lbs total for $16.49), an indeterminate number of pork chops wrapped in butcher paper (2 lbs 9 oz for $13.16), and 2 lb ham steak (sorry I already cooked that and forgot to keep the wrapper with the price and I was so not going digging through our garbage for it, not even for you my loyal blog readers).

"Mommy, can we get some Twizzlers?" Are you kidding me!? I turn around to find my boys standing at a low shelf full of Twizzlers, Snickers bars, etc; a veritable cornucopia of individually wrapped sugar-highs that would invariably lead to a complete lack of interest in whatever well balanced meal I attempted to put in front of my kids at dinner time. What is it with these people and the candy?

I hustle the gang over to the little cash register and pay for our things. The lady is nice and it turns out that this is a family-run farm and she lives in the farm house next door. They have a barn full of cows across the street and as we're heading out her daughter-in-law offers to take us over to look in the windows so the kids can see the cows.

We each lift up a child to look in through a conveniently broken window, careful not to step on the shards of glass lying below. "Are there any outside?" my 4YO asks her.

"Yeah, they take turns staying in when it's really cold. Their...emissions help to keep the barn warm so the pipes don't freeze," she responded.

You learn something new everyday.

So all in all I think I have a new resource for some local foods, and if I ever run out of candy I know right where to go. I can now make beef, pork and/or chicken maple syrup with honey casseroles. I feel that I'm making progress.

My journey will continue. I am convinced that there must be a way to find local fruits and vegetables even this time of year. I mean, I don't intend to rip up our foundation and dig out a root cellar but surely someone else has one. When I find them, I'll let you know.

Starving For Local

If you've been a fan of my husband's blog then you may have read the amusing story of our friend Libby (he called her Elle...I don't know why, Libby's a perfectly good name), who after reading his Water Bottle post, decided to forgo purchasing bottled water and found herself getting severely dehydrated. A similar event has happened to us.

After focusing my efforts on locating local stores that provide local foods I found myself in the position this morning of being severely undernourished. Ground beef and honey casseroles just can't sustain us! Winter fruits and vegetables, of which there are none, are not providing the vitamins and minerals we require (especially not for a nursing mom). Local Chinese food and pizza take-out ordered to supplement the severe lack of other foods in the house are not well balanced, nutritious, or, technically speaking, truly local.

So, after scouring the refrigerator and finding only leftover take-out chicken fingers to offer my son for breakfast, I determined it was time to refill the coffers.

So now the fridge is full and my local initiative has suffered another major setback. I have, in my possession, Chilean blueberries, strawberries, and grapes. I couldn't help myself! I have a picky 4YO and a 2YO who eats 1 meal every 2 days! With these restrictions can I really afford to be picky about where that food comes from? I have a responsibility to this planet. I have a responsibility to my family. Friends are suggesting that it would be easier to start this initiative in the summer when I can buy fruit and veggies in season, then can them for use over the winter. That's great in theory;the theory being that my 3 loving, wonderful, Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!...sorry, kids, will ever actually leave me the time to can foods. But let's get serious.

I need to meet the nutritional needs of a male adult, a nursing female adult, a 4YO who only eats vegetables if they are raw and only eats fruit if it is firm, and a 2YO who eats no vegetables but loves fruit especially if it comes from Chile and costs $4.99 for 4.4 oz. How am I supposed to accomplish my goal? (Don't worry, I'm not abandoning my quest yet!)

As I've said before, this is about the journey, and this journey will continue tomorrow, when I check out Balance Rock Farm (recommended by a friend) and a couple of other local farms that hopefully will add to my local foods menu and keep us all from starving.

Stillman's

So, today I dropped my 4YO off at school and made my way the 5.4 miles (10 mins) to Oakridge Farm. I got my 2YO out and carried him over the mud piles, then lifted the baby seat out of the car and with the seat hanging from one arm and my toddler on the other hip, I made my way to the door. It had one of those, "Caution, Automatic Door" signs that a mother with no free hands loves to see. I stepped right up to it. Then closer. Then peered in to the darkened room through the firmly shut door.

I've no idea why they were closed. There was no sign to explain. I loaded the kids back in the car, and drove off to Nanna's house. There's construction by Nanna's house and my 2YO loves watching the backhoes. By then it was too late to go to the grocery store to pick up the meat, eggs, and milk that I needed because as soon as I got in there the baby would surely wake up hungry; 2YOs and screaming hungry babies do not a fun shopping trip make.

The day went on and we went back to school for pickup. Luckily, I mentioned the Oakridge closing to a friend. She clued me in to a place not farther up the road called Stillman's that had all local meat, eggs, and milk, and seasonally they have fresh produce and a CSA you can buy into. She was on her way there so I decided to chance it and bring all three kids, awake and at lunch time.



"Can we go, this place is stinky!"

Yup, it was a real dairy farm. The smell was as authentic as they come. The place was tiny and unpolished, and unfortunately the only fresh meat they sold was ground beef. I did grab 2 lbs of meat, eggs, 1/2 a gallon of milk in a glass jug, a small container of local maple syrup and some local honey; costing $25.61. It was one of my biggest achievements yet in attempting to find local foods. I look forward to seeing what they have to offer in the spring. Unfortunately, even though it is only 9.8 miles from my home, it's a 25 minutes drive. A long way to go for groceries. Plus, there's only so many ways I can think to mix together ground beef, eggs, milk, maple syrup and honey to make new and creative dishes. I suppose I could come up with a casserole or two...maybe some honey coated meat loaf? Wait, I still need bread crumbs for that. Well, one way or another, if I'm going to eat local I'll have to find some other ingredients.

What Did The Natives Eat In The Winter?

So, having begun my research into this local eating business, and finding little success beyond my local Chinese food and Pizza joint, it really got me wondering what people did before there were grocery stores stocked with out-of-season products from all over the world all year long? So, as always, I turned to my friend, the Google search bar.

"what did the indians eat in the winter?"

(You don't have to be politically correct when searching on the internet. They knew what I was talking about. No articles came up telling me what's on the menu in Mumbai this time of year. Oh, and by the way, did you know they don't call it Bombay anymore? I hate to sound completely ignorant, but if I hadn't Googled Bombay, India just now I never would have known. I've heard the name Mumbai on the news, I just didn't realize it was the same place. They should write a song about it. That's how I learned that Istanbul was Constantinople, now it's Istanbul not Constantinople, but that's nobody's business but the Turks.)

Here is a compilation of what the various native tribes ate through the winter:

• They live by game, which is abundant in this country, and on Indian corn, of which they always gather a good crop, so that they have never suffered from famine.
  
• Their squashes are not of the best; they dry them in the sun, to eat in the winter and spring.
• The most important source of food was fish - eels, suckers, trout, and especially salmon. Some were eaten fresh, but large amounts of fish were dried on elevated wooden racks or kept in storage pits, so they could be saved and eaten in wintertime.
• Another important source of food were roots of certain plants. The main root was the camas bulb, but bitterroot, onions, wild carrots, and parsnips were also gathered. Many roots could also be saved for the winter.
• Hunting for meat occasionally played an important role, even in the winter. The Indian hunted primarily deer but also bear and caribou.
• In the winter he tracked animals on long and narrow snowshoes
• They dried many foods to eat in the winter. And they also drank water from freshwater rivers.

Okay then. So, if my research hasn't failed me, the way to eat local in the wintertime in the Northeast, as we did before refrigerator trucks and Super Walmarts, is to set up snares for the unfortunate woodland creatures who live nearby, track animals in my snowshoes, send my hubby out with a spear to snag me a deer, bear, or caribou, catch a lot of fish in the summer and then salt it, dry it, and store it for the winter, dig up a bunch of root vegetables and save those somewhere dry, grow me some indian corn, and set my squash in the sun so it can be dried out for winter storage. Well...I'm not an Indian and, as I mentioned before, I want my kids to live past 30. So there. Good to know how they did it. Not going to copy it.


P.S. Like the picture? My husband said my blog needs pictures.

Whole Foods

Yesterday I had to go down to the Natick Mall to return a Christmas present. Despite the barrage of Sale and Sale and Sale and SALE and SALE! signs, I escaped having only purchased a spicy Mexican Mocha from the new Chocolatier; so yummy! The mall is so crazy right now that there were police directing traffic out, and no matter how I tried I couldn't hop right on the highway to head home. It was a pain in my behind getting out, but soon I found myself heading up route 9 and stopping at a light beside the Whole Foods Market. I couldn't pass up this opportunity to stop in for some research.

This store is not what I expected at all. Based on what I had heard about it I thought the store would be 80% fresh produce, meats, and breads, with a strong focus on local seasonal goods, but that was not the case. The produce section took up the usual amount of space, and while the majority of what I saw came from inside the US, they did have products from Chile and Costa Rica (though really, where else are you going to get a banana from?). One good thing is that all of the food was boldly labeled with it's state or country of origin so I didn't have to read the fine print or the tiny little sticker on the food itself. I have to say I was really surprised that the closest local produce I saw was from New York. Isn't there anything grown in this area in the winter time? I mean, what did the Native Americans eat all winter?

Anyway, I picked up some New York onions and squash, and some strawberries from Florida. Which got me thinking: how do I keep my kids eating healthy fruits if they're not shipped in? I'm sure that before there were supermarkets kids did without, but I'd like my kids to exceed the pioneer day life expectancy of 30. How else are they going to make me grandkids? It's really all about me.

The bakery had a nice selection of fresh bread, so I had them slice me a loaf. Which got me thinking something else, does bread count as local if I buy it locally made? I mean, they surely didn't grind their own flour from locally grown...well, whatever flour is ground from. (Wikipedia says mostly wheat.) Do I need to find locally made flour if I'm truly going to eat local? And make my own bread? I'm really not interested in turning into a Pilgrim.

After the produce and bakery areas I headed into the aisles. As anyone trying to eat healthy, fresh meals knows, the aisles are the area you normally try to avoid. Filling your cart from the perimeter of the store means less preservatives, chemicals, fats, sugars, etc. However, I was in a Whole Foods market so I dove right in.

The first thing I came across was the baby goods aisle. I was very happy to see a broad assortment of organic baby foods. My Shaws only has a few varieties for each stage. Economically and environmentally speaking I should probably make my own baby food, and I've added it into my goal list for the year, but again, I have a 4 years old and a 2 year old as well as the baby so don't expect miracles. I picked up a package of Seventh Generation diapers to try out on my 2 year old. I'll let you know how that works out.

Beyond the baby goods I found a dizzying array of Organic and Natural foods of every kind. I think it would have taken me hours to make my way through the store if I was really shopping and not just trying the place out. One thing I did not find, however, was anything that looked like it was local. I mean, this place is 22 miles from the fantastic Italian food in the North End of Boston. I know some of those places produce their own sauces, and I read every label in the Pasta Sauce section and didn't find a single one that was closer than New York.

Moving on, the next aisle had some fresh ground peanut butter. I could even grind my own if I wanted. Being a die-hard Skippy fan, I was hesitant, but felt it was only fair to give this fresh stuff a chance. I bought Honey Roasted, figuring the honey might help out my sweet tooth. Like the bread, though, I wondered if this could be considered local. After all, peanuts are most definitely not grown in my area.

By the time I got to the meat area at the end of the store my daughter was starting to lose it. She'd patiently wandered around the mall with me and admired the bags at Coach, the bright colors at Hanna Anderson, and the Jimmy Choos at Neiman Marcus (no, I would never). Her limit had been reached. I picked up some nice looking pork chops from I don't know where, and went to the checkout.

All in all I have to say that Whole Foods is probably a great place if your goal is to eat an organic and healthy diet. It is not however a place for a woman on a mission to find local foods. I certainly didn't examine every item, but of what I did see there was not a single item that came from a local source except their Stonyfield Farm products, and I can find those at my Shaws 4 miles away. My search continues.

Local Dinner

Apparently a 3 1/2 hour nap is not a good idea for my baby. That second nap did not happen yesterday, and neither did my intention to cook dinner. Luckily, my husband picked up Chinese food for us from a place that only added 15.4 miles to his trip home from work. That totally counts as eating local, right? Of course, given my luck at the grocery store yesterday, their food probably originated in China.

The naps are going a little better today, but it's also the dreaded cleaning day. Yup, I'm that person. I'm the one who complains because she has to clean before the cleaning lady comes. I know, it sounds like I'm just immensely spoiled, but here's the thing: it takes me a minimum of 4 hours to clear the clutter and bare the surfaces enough so that she can get in here and clean. I try and try to keep it clear once it's done, but it always creeps back out, usually within minutes of her departure. I also try to start on Wednesday preparing for the Friday event, but it seems like the space clutters up moments after I clear it. No matter how much I do during the week or how hard I try, it's still a 4 hour Friday morning clear-out. And when I have that moment of guilt that as a stay at home mom I should be able to clean my own home, I just try to clean one room with my three munchkins pulling at me and begging me to play with them, feed them, read to them, etc. Either I'm not organized enough to manage it, or people with three tiny kids and clean homes never sleep. Me, I like sleep. And if it means I don't have to fill up my weekends and evenings with scrubbing toilets, them I'm going to keep having my nice cleaning lady handle it for me; oh, and I'm going to keep complaining about having to clean for her.

Okay, so I completely went off topic for a minute there. My husband thinks I should broaden the scope of this blog to include other environmental topics that I'll end up exploring in my journey. For instance, in researching Stonyfield Farms food I found that their yogurt cups are recycled into toothbrushes and razors. That's pretty cool, since you're supposed to toss your toothbrush every 3 months or so and for us that's 20 toothbrushes a year...okay, I don't really have a toothbrush for my seven month old yet but she's bound to pop a tooth out some day! Anyhow, this blog is really about the journey towards eating local rather than the actual eating/shopping. It's what I'll find along the way and what we can all learn from the attempt and how my kids will unintentionally thwart my efforts with their incessant need to eat and nap. It's about local cereal from the UK and pearl onions from Belgium. It's about recycled toothbrushes and Method cleaning products. While I'm at it I'll give those Seventh Generation diapers a shot. I'm a big Huggies fan, so we'll see how it goes. There's also the mystery of how I'm going to go without some food items that are currently household staples that I don't see how we can purchase locally: soy sauce, flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, pepper, peanut butter (Skippy, not that suger-free organic stuff that I did not grow up on), bread, fruit snacks, you get the idea. Hopefully the journey will be educational. It has a slim chance of being successful. And hey, at the bare minimum, it should prove to be amusing. To me anyway.

The Best Laid Plans

Okay, so the stars aligned for me today and from 8:30 AM until 1:15 PM I was left with only one child, the older two having gone off to spend the morning with Nanna & Pop. This was my chance to head out to Oakridge Farm and give their selection a once over with only one distraction, and she's still in an infant seat so I couldn't have asked for more. Baby had already been awake for 2 hours by the time the boys left, so I put her down for her morning nap as usual and planned to go once she awoke. She takes two naps a day at this point, a one hour & a two hour, but they seem to be interchangeable in her mind despite my need for a more consistent and reliable schedule. No problem though, even if she slept until 10:30 I'd have plenty of time to get there and back before the boys came home. No problem. No problem.

Three loads of laundry later 11:30 rolled around and not a peep from the monitor. I decided it was time to wake her. My fridge is completely void of milk, juice, eggs, and meat so I either make it to the store or eating locally will mean Pizza tonight. I went up and slowly opened the door to her room. Awww, she's actually smiling in her sleep. She's so peaceful and content. She looks so warm and cozy. I have the envy of one who only got six hours of interrupted sleep. I can't do it. Surely she'll wake up before noon and I can still make it out the door. One more of the seven loads of laundry I will finish today, and I finally here a pleasant squeak from the monitor. It's 12:15. I go and retrieve my well-rested smiley cherub. It's 12:40 by the time I finish nursing her (at least one of my children eats local). I can't possibly leave now. Sigh.

Soon after 1:00 Nanna and Pop arrive with the boys. I immediately whisk son number two up for his nap. He'll be down for the next 2 1/2 to 3 hours, so even if I wanted to take all three kids with me to the store it wouldn't be until 4 PM, and every mother of toddlers knows that 4:30 is the start of the witching hour when your normal well-mannered sweet children turn into crazed fussy needy things that drive you crazy while you're desperately trying to cook dinner. Luckily, I won't have to go then. Nanna offers to stay with the baby while my 4 year old and I run out to our local Shaws. I can't ask them to stick around while I run all the way to Oakridge. It's only 6.7 miles but it actually take 15 minutes to get there. My Shaws takes 4 minutes. So off we go to do our best at Shaw.

Other than a few quick label glances, I found it difficult to comparison shop at such a large store, while in a rush, and keeping tabs on my son. I wasn't sure how I'd done, so I'm actually reading the labels as I type this part. Here are the results:

Bananas - The banana are from Costa Rica. It's the only item I knowingly picked up that's not from this continent. And, I didn't buy organic. I usually buy organic when available but I haven't been doing so with bananas because the pesticides don't penetrate the peel and leach into the food that my children will ultimately consume. However, if I'm to truly consider my effect on the earth I guess I should try to avoid any item grown using pesticides that I know are toxic to this planet. Next time... Costa Rica to Clinton, MA? ~2,400 miles

Wild Harvest boneless chicken thighs @ 3.29/lb (.$30 more per pound then the alternative). This is Shaws own brand of organic meat. I can't figure out where it originates but it says on the package that it's distributed out of Boise, Idaho. 2,638 miles

Rold Gold pretzels made in Plano, TX. I don't suppose I'm going to find locally made pretzels in this day and age...I guess unless I live in Texas. 1,749 miles

Pace Pico de Gallo sauce. I did look long and hard for some local salsa; well, as long and hard as my 4 year old would allow anyway. He wasn't in a browsing mood so it was either move along or he was leaving without me. Parix, TX - 1,655 miles (any chance it road in with my pretzels?)

Snyders Multigrain Tortilla Strips, All Natural in Savory Blue, of Hanover, PA. We're getting closer! 403 miles (As an after note, these are yucky. I much prefer Tostitos blue chips but they were out.)

Weetabix cereal. Now we're talking. It doesn't get any closer than this. There's a Weetabix plant right here in my little town. I've never tried it before but it definitely fits in with my new mission. I'm a Cheerios gal but I'm willing to give it a go. Wait a second. I just noticed a funny label stuck on my box of Weetabix. It says "Made by Weetabix ltd Main Rd, UK". What's up with that??? There's a plant in my town and I just bought the stuff from England? Are you serious? Okay, now that I look at their USA site you can't even buy Wheetabix at any grocery store in Clinton. I can't win. ~3,663 miles

Let's move on to vegetables. I know that none of the fresh ones in the produce department are local, which is fine because the green beans and asparagus are really floppy today. Yuck. I opt for frozen Green Giant green beans & almonds, shoepeg white corn, and sweet peas & pearl onions. I'm still trying to stay in the states and these say they're from Minneapolis, MN. Or at least, that's where most of them are from. Turns out, now that I look closely, the pearl onions in my peas come from Belgium. I'm not kidding. It doesn't say, but I bet the water they used in the packaging is from France of something. Anyway, that makes 1,366 miles and 3,854 miles respectively. How depressing.

Saved By The Dairy:

I happen to be lucky enough to live 58.6 miles from Stonyfield Farms. These people are organic, they recycle, offset emissions, use solar electricity, and donate 10% of their profits to "efforts that help protect and restore the earth". At least with them I can't go wrong. I buy 1/2 gallon of milk for $4.79 ($2.00 more then the non-organic), a 10 oz strawberry organic smoothie for $1.79 ($.79 more), and one maple vanilla yogurt my son picked out for $1.00 (.$20 more). While I'm distracted my son throws in two Yoplait brand yogurts from Minneapolis. Hopefully they travelled with my Green Giant vegetables on the 1,366 mile journey.

I'm almost done! I just need juice and eggs. Stonyfield doesn't make juice, or if they do my Shaws doesn't carry it. I scour the shelf for something other than Tropicana. I find a Garelick Farms brand from Franklin, ME. I could do worse; 288 miles. And even though my son suddenly has to go to the bathroom (yes, I asked before we left the house) I do manage to find a package of Born Free eggs from Watertown, MA. 40 miles

I have to say this was a fairly enlightening trip to the grocery store. And I'd love to talk more about it but honestly, my daughter refuses to go down for her second nap...can't imagine why, and my 2 year old is calling me from his crib. It's also now 4:35 and time for me to try to cook dinner during the aforementioned witching hour. More later.

Make A Plan

I figure there are several steps I'm going to need to take in order to begin buying local foods for my family.

1. Determine which foods we cannot live without: milk, juice, bread, produce, meats, fruit snacks.
2. Educate myself about which produce is in season and grown nearby; I'm fairly certain the blueberries my kids wolfed down for breakfast this morning weren't dug out from under the foot and a half of snow that's currently on the ground outside.
   
3. Find out which store carries the majority of these items, is close by, and offers babysitting while you shop.

I began my search where I begin everything these days, on the internet. First, I went to a site I've referenced for other earth-friendly information, earth911.org, but they only had a search field for finding local recycling centers. Next I decided to broaden my efforts, so I Googled "local foods" and here are the surprising results:

• localharvest.org - This site listed several local farmstands and stores near me, however all of the listings were 7 years out of date.
• http://www.mass.gov/agr/massgrown/ - This site has good information on where you can find local foods in Massachusetts, however if you try to find out what's in season all you get is a graph that shows local foods in season from June to October. It's fuzzy at best and fairly useless considering it's now January.
• www.foodroutes.org - This site, which has information on where your food comes from and challenges you to by locally sounded promising, was easy to navigate, insisted that even living in the Northeast I could find local food in the winter, and had a convenient link that I'm sure would have shown me just where those places were, but... It was broken. Moving on.
  
• www.nrdc.org - On this site I finally found a very clear table showing which foods are in season, but it also said the following concerning finding fresh produce now: "No fresh, local produce available in Massachusetts at this time." It looks like Mass. only has fresh produce from June to October. Apparently my blueberries aren't the only produce that is not dug out from under the foot and a half of snow and delivered to my local grocery store.
  

Now what? Does this mean I switch to frozen? My kids fruit addiction does not extend to canned goods. So, should I try shopping at a Whole Foods Market where I've read they include purchasing from local farms in their mission? It seems like that would be the perfect place to find the locally grown, organic, low impact food I'm looking for. Oh wait, the closest one is 40 minutes away. I'm sure my 4 year old would only say "Are we there yet?" 5 or six times in each direction. And I've no doubt I can make it there and back again with the 2 year old and 7 month old in tow without having to change a single diaper in the store's cramped restroom while whoever's not being changed is quietly sitting and waiting for mommy to finish without running around and touching every surface, flushing every toilet, spinning the top on every trash can. Hmmm...I can't travel 40 minutes, each way, every week for my groceries. How is that low impact? Besides, foodroutes.org insisted I actually could find local foods in the Northeast in the winter, even though they were unable to actually tell me where.


Well, luckily it's early on in my quest to buy local, so I haven't become jaded yet. It's time to go out and actually look at what's in the stores in my vicinity. I am fairly certain I can at least find local meat and dairy products nearby. Tomorrow I am going over to Oak Ridge Farm, 6.7 miles away, where "almost every product at Oak Ridge Farm Stand can be traced back to local merchants."

Think they have blueberries?

Kickoff Day

It's January 1st, 2008. I am a mother of three young kids and for the past few years my husband has been growing progressively more eco-centric (he prefers eco-conscious).

In some of his endeavors:

• changing light bulbs,
  
• installing programmable thermostats,
• recycling,
• using rechargeable batteries,
  

I have been a willing and supportive participant.

In others:

• the often overflowing compost pain, er pail, in my kitchen,
  
• the storing of non-recycleables in hopes that some day our town will start recycling them thus filling up our garage to the point that I can barely get out of my car, (he got rid of those after the town repeatedly ignored his multitude of phone calls on the subject, but he's still working on it)
  
• the restriction on any new item coming into the house that require batteries,
• the desire to return any gift that we don't "need",
  

I have been dragged into kicking and silently screaming. Why? Well, I'll tell you.

I'm a stay-at-home mom. It's the career I always wanted. It turns out it's also the most challenging, crazy, stressful, rewarding job I'll ever know. I have three children, ages 4, 2 and 7 months. Needless to say there is always someone wanting/needing something from me. I am never still. Even when I'm sitting, I'm waiting to hear one of them call me. And sitting is rare, after all there's laundry and dishes and toys everywhere. It makes me a bit crazy but it's life as we know it just now. So while my husband is willing to sacrifice a little order in order to do right by the environment, my need to simplify and manage chaos far outstrips my willingness to go the distance.

However, in the spirit of making low impact changes that do benefit the environment, and consequently my family, I've made some personal changes. I try to use Method products for cleaning when the item being cleaned doesn't involve blood, vomit, or poop. I try to buy organic produce and meats. I turn the lights off. I reuse our plasticware. I save energy by running the vacuum cleaner only once a month. Okay, that's really just laziness but it does save energy! I also am doing more reading on how I can be more personally responsible for my impact. I canceled our subscription to the Sunday newspaper, which I admit I was only getting for the crossword puzzle and never reading. I started subscribing to Kiwi Magazine which offers up many great tips on raising my kids in a low-impact and environmentally healthier manor. And I try to curb my ingrained need to consume simply because I can, instead of because I need.

One thing I've taken away from moving towards an environmentally friendly lifestyle is that it's way easier if you have no kids and if you have a lot of money. It requires time, research, planning, and you must be willing to spend more on things that you could buy cheaper from Chile and China. As I've already established, I don't have a lot of free time to go driving around to smaller grocery stores where the locally grown products are more likely to be (right now I use a grocery store that delivers). Researching these products and prices at different stores to find the best item for my needs while managing my wonderful but frenetic children sounds daunting at best. Planning my trip to keep the gas usage on my mini-van, as well as my trips out with the kids, to a minimum will require more of the time and research that comes in such short supply around here. And while money isn't tight we are going to have to send all three of these tiny people to college one day so I'd like to have something left over at the end of the pay cycle.

So here's my question...

Can a middle-class mother of three young children successfully locate, purchase, and feed her family from locally grown seasonal foods for one whole year? For the sake of my children and this planet, I think we should find out.