History repeats itself...

History and time flow in cycles. Fifty years ago, practically everyone with the space had a backyard garden. Gardening, especially veggie gardening, was an essential aspect of life. Folks knew what real tomatoes tasted like, they knew just how amazing fresh picked sweet corn is, and they understood the seasons and the importance of canning and preserving in order to eat a well-balanced diet year round. Then, with the rise of the shipping industry, our concept of seasonality started to dissapear. We became subject to our desire for instant gratification and started eating fruits and vegetables from all over the world all year long. Factory farming and mass production made everything accessible, but simultaneously stripped the nutrition from our food and made it far too easy to know nothing about producing our own food. We became a society of people who want, need, feel like we deserve to eat tomatoes in winter and who eat out five nights a week.

The past five years (maybe more) have seen a swing back in the other direction. The locavore was born, thank God, and we've begun to realize the cost of industrialized farming, shipping our food from all over the world, and expecting to get what we want when we want it without having to do anything ourselves. Authors like Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan have reaffirmed the merit of eating simply and locally.

Now, with the economy such as it is, eating local is even more important. It's not just good and "green" to shop at the farmer's market or grow your own garden. Before too long, buying local and producing your own food might just be the only way to get food at all. We're so happy to have been practicing our locavore ways over the past however many years because now, when it's really important, we know what to do. It's really not that difficult to be a locavore. The first step is getting used to asking lots of questions because it's not enough to think that something is local...you need to know. The second step is to seek out people who value and subscribe to a locavore philosophy (the farmer's market is a great place to start!). It's much easier to cause real change when it's a movement by thoughtful, motivated people. Next, you use your hard earned dollars to support your local food warriors. The more people believe in us farmers and choose to support us, the more we can produce and the more we can lessen our dependence on non-local sources.