uvlocalvores : field notes

How lucky we were to have Jessica Prentice, one of the original San Francisco “Locavores”, present “Deepening Our Sense of Seasonality” in Norwich, at King Arthur Flour on Tuesday night.

Jessica is a knowledgeable and articulate spokesperson for local and seasonal food and her presentation was relaxed, engaging and enjoyable. She uses the structure of 13 full moons throughout the year to talk about seasonal food through history and through different cultures and myths.

There was some interesting Q and A after her talk; I particularly appreciated her response to the question of “elitism” in regard to local and organic foods. Jessica said the issue was a big one, and she didn’t have all the answers but she did have observations and opinions: she observed that people have eaten local food through most of human history and our current dependence on globalized corporate food is just a “blink” in human history.

Many immigrants come to this country with a tradition of growing their own food and continue to do so in spite of low incomes. Many cities have community gardens where low-income people can grow food for themselves and their neighbors. The problem is not low income — it is a matter of culture and values. (If the culture promotes junk food, alcohol, cable tv, video games, and lots of commercial “stuff,” those things are likely to become the major values and where people spend their money — in our culture, farmers are demeaned and local food has not been given much value.)

I personally felt energized by Jessica’s presentation and know that Cindy Heath and Lou Anne McLeod are now percolating on the idea of community feasts a la 13 Moons!

–Pat

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(photo by Sarah Drew Reeves)
… in Norwich to celebrate the August Challenge, the month of eating locally…. and welcome to a conversational blog for Upper Valley localvores!

If this is your first visit, join on in! Here’s a suggestion for how you might get started: create an account and log in (use the links under the “Meta” head in the middle column), and then use the comments area to this post to share a bit about how August went for you, and how you might approach it next year. And if you’re comfortable, go ahead and post something on a new topic! Note: please sign your blog entries, since the template we’re using doesn’t do it for us… comme ca: -Jenna

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Hello to all Upper Valley localvores,

I came upon an excellent article by Wendell Berry in the archives of Orion magazine, “The Idea of a Local Economy”:

[M]ost people in our country… have given proxies to the corporations to produce and provide all of their food, clothing and shelter. Moreover, they are rapidly giving proxies to corporations or governments to provide entertainment, education, child care, care of the sick and the elderly, and many other kinds of “service” that once were carried on informally and inexpensively by individuals or households or communities. Our major economic practice, in short, is to delegate the practice to others. . . The “environmental crisis,” in fact, can be solved only if people individually and in their communities, recover responsibility for their thoughtlessly given proxies. If people begin the effort to take back into their own power a significant portion of their economic responsibility, then their inevitable first discovery is that the “environmental crisis” is no such thing; it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an “environmental crisis” because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, the god-given world.

Our passive consumerism has given power to transnational corporations to run our lives… at great cost to the environment and to society.

A light went on in my head and highlighted for me all the “active” entertainment that is available locally: contra dances, community choruses, church suppers and potlucks, bridge clubs, music-making groups, sports teams, hiking and bird-watching groups, Scrabble games, poker nights, book clubs, play-reading groups… all of which have so much more potential for feeding our hearts and souls than a night of watching commercials and CSI or Law and Order!

For me, this puts a new spin on Valley Food and Farm’s fundraiser “Feast in the Field” which is happening on September 9th. Not only is this a fundraiser for VF&F but it is also an opportunity for Upper Valley folks to come together, enjoy local food, local musicians and local conversation. What would you think of putting together at least one table of Localvores for this event? Cindy Heath, Jenna Dixon and I are already planning to be there. Anyone else want to join us?

-Pat

Feast in the Field
At Cedar Circle Farm in East Thetford, Vermont
Saturday, September 9, 2006 from 6 to 9pm

A LOCALLY GROWN FEAST
AND DANCING UNDER THE STARS
$35 PER PERSON
KID’S DINNER AND ACTIVITIES $10/CHILD
Valley Food & Farm
Local Farms - Healthy Communities

more information:
sharyna@valley.net or call 802-291-9100 x103 www.vitalcommunities.org

Buy tickets at: Norwich Bookstore, Three Tomatoes Trattoria, Vital Communities, Cedar Circle Farm

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