Green Options

The Tower Grove Farmers’ Market and Bazaar in St. Louis is not only a community center piece, but a regional one. And the group is candidly joining a nation-wide line of community-minded organizations who are in economic straits and need support.

Understanding that there are many worthy groups asking for assistance these days, the one that organizes the Tower Grove market is asking, in particular, for those who already value what it creates in the St. Louis region — shoppers and friends who stop by, even just twice a season — to consider stepping forward. The support can be monetary or otherwise.

My family is coming for Thanksgiving this year and in the spirit of the season, we wanted to try and do something a little different, a 100-mile Thanksgiving.

The 100-mile movement is a local eating experiment whereby you buy food that is locally raised and produced from within a 100-mile radius of where you live.  We have 22 family and friends coming from up and down the East coast from Ithaca, NY to Tampa, and while the family is generally sympathetic to green-living, it required some friendly advice to pull it off. So, I sent an e-mail describing the concept and offering helpful advice, tips, links, etc.

We did our part, ordering a bunch of stuff from our milk man and local farm, Southmountain Creamery. We spent Sunday morning at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market and found all sorts of fabulous greens, yams, “Dr. Seuss” cauliflower, herbs, cheeses and chicken for stock. Once the kids warmed up with hot cocoa and croissants it was a terrific morning all around.

As for the rest of the guests, at first I heard nothing back from my email.

Then a few requests to resend the email.

Finally….

My sister-in-law from Brooklyn jumped in with apple-pear chutney to replace cranberry sauce. She also asked if chocolate from Jacques Torres in Brooklyn qualified. We decided, since one cannot pass up Jacques Torres Chocolate and we’re making a similar exception for coffee, that products with raw materials that cannot be found within a 100 miles (cocoa nibs, coffee beans) can be brought if they are processed locally. So, Jacques Torres is in as is Gimme Coffee! roasted in Ithaca, NY.

My family is coming for Thanksgiving this year and I’m going to try to make it a 100-mile meal.  The 100-mile movement is a local eating “experiment” whereby you buy food that is locally raised and produced from within a 100-mile radius of where you live.

I need all sorts of ingredients to make my meal happen so I went directly to the 100-mile diet resources page to find out if there are any local oil suppliers (there aren’t), honey suppliers (there are) and was happy to stumble upon a local candle maker along the way.

The resources page of this movement’s site, like all good movement sites, lists dozens of other sites on which you as an entrepreneur could promote your products. It occurred to me that if you are in an eco-food or home products entrepreneur, that the 100-mile movement is something you could tap into.

And its not a small movement either. According to Alexa, a Web traffic tracking service, 500 sites link just to the 100-mile diet site. And in fact, its part of a larger movement of locavores. Now were talking about a movement that has hundreds of websites, blogs and articles devoted to it.  So, the question is: is there a movement out there that you can join as a supplier?

Two young girls in California are fighting for their right to operate not a frontyard lemonade stand, but a produce stand selling fruits and vegetables from their family’s garden.

What’s wrong with kids making a few bucks by hawking locally grown tomatoes, melons and zucchini on a Saturday morning? It  — gasp — violates zoning laws and public safety, according to Gregg Manning, mayor of the East Bay area town of Clayton.

Who could possibly find anything bad to say about eating locally? After all, what’s the downside to dining on wild blackberries, dandelion greens, home-grown tomatoes and fresh-caught alligator snapping turtles?

Wait, what was that last one again?

Well, here in this corner of Northwest Florida I call home (and they don’t call it the “Redneck Riviera” for nothing), that’s a discussion that’s been raging this week. Seems a family from Jay, an inland (i.e., far from the touristy beaches) community, recently caught a 100-pound alligator snapping turtle … and decided to eat it.

Wow, that sounds ominous! Rather, in Chicago, and around the Midwest, the local food trend in catching on, just as it has on the coasts. September will see numerous “eat local” challenges being hosted by a variety of organizations around the country, and the Windy City’s Green City Market will join in by sponsoring an eat local week beginning on the tenth.

That’s good news for locavores in the Chicago area, but, as [...]

A lot has been written recently about eating "locally." It’s an interesting concept; eating food that doesn’t have to travel too far, thereby saving energy. But once again, the Man has set himself up to feel good about something that actually harms our fragile globorb. These “locavores” eat foods from within 100 miles of where they live, as if a truck driving 100 miles doesn’t spew tons of carbon into our atmosphere.

I’m [...]