The Importance of Buying Local

I love Farmer’s Markets, local farm stands and community supported agriculture programs. I am passionate about good healthy foods and getting to know the people who produce them.

I grew up in New York State and currently I spend my time divided between Northwestern Connecticut and Western New York State. Both of these geographical areas are incredibly fertile and grow an excellent selection of fruits and vegetables, including succulent cherries, wonderful wine grapes, softball sized peaches, delicious nectarines, melons, greens, garlic, root vegetables and heirloom tomatoes, just to name a few.

The recent E. coli outbreak in spinach across 25 states was an alarming reminder of why it is so important to buy locally grown produce and to get to know where your food is coming from.

In Western New York at the East Aurora Farmer’s Market, Dan Clark, a retired math teacher and a life long farmer happens to grow and sell the most amazing greens I have ever tasted. Dan grows arugula, swiss chard, lettuce mix, mustard greens, romaine, kale and of course, spinach. I know that he isn’t using sewage sludge for fertilizer and he doesn’t have any factory animal farms nearby to contaminate his water supply. If he sprays his products at all, he does so infrequently and with products so mild, the food could be consumed the next day. I was thrilled to see his table piled high with fresh bright green spinach last week. This inspired me to purchase four large bunches and I went home and made spinach pie and a spinach salad.  I knew where the spinach came from and that it was freshly picked and safe to eat. 

Linda Mrowka is a fruit farmer who sets up one table over from Dan. She supplies me and most of my friends with the freshest crisp apples available. I can purchase half a bushel for under $10 and do so on a regular basis. The apples are available in many varieties and with cold storage some types will last up until the next season! These apples aren’t waxed and are grown with very little spraying. On the farm the deer are controlled by using natural methods. Linda has other fruit too, including beautiful peaches, cherries, pears, plums, grapes and berries. She provides great stories and recipes to go along with the delicious farm bounty. 

Then there are the gorgeous yellow, orange and heirloom variety tomatoes.  The growers aren’t certified organic, but they only use organic spays on their tomatoes. The same goes for the blueberry farm that has berries available from early July until mid September. 

I don’t buy any vegetables and very little fruit in the grocery store from June-October. There is no need to. Everything I need is available at the local markets. Even when the season is over I store and freeze as much as I can. I just can’t understand why we would ever need to bring apples into the US or Canada from China or New Zealand? New York State had its second largest apple harvest this year and did I mention the peaches this season?  Unbelievably delicious!

Let us not forget the free-range chickens that inhabit these farms and produce eggs, or the local dairy farmers who pasture feed their cows and don’t use growth hormones. Farms such as these provide the opportunity to purchase raw milk or free range poultry directly from the farm. Pasteurized local milk is available from supermarkets such as Wegmans, and organic cows milk cheese is available at farmers markets and specialty stores, while goat and sheep’s milk, yogurt and cheeses can be purchased from the local farmers market. We sell local goat cheese, organic raw cow's milk, and organic pasteurized cow's milk at the Awakenings Natural Healing Cafe in Simsbury, CT.

The farmers market in Coventry, Connecticut, has excellent varieties of both cows and goats milk cheeses, and for a treat sometimes the baby goats are brought in for a petting festival along with a happy chicken. 

Meat can be purchased directly from farms whose animals have never been injected with growth hormones or penned in cages. As a result the animals on these farms are happier and need less medicine to keep them healthy. It is hard for me to believe that California, a mostly desert state, has the highest milk production in the country when we have an abundance of lush green dairy pastures in Wisconsin, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Vermont!

For information about how California cows are raised and treated check out this link: http://www.unhappycows.com/ .  

Small farmers love what they do, and they live on the farms where they grow their produce. They work hard and are proud of what they produce. By knowing who grows my food, I feel it is safe, fresh, full of nutrients and filled with the love and passion from the people who produce it. And the taste, well, that is the best pleasure of all.