I heard about Local Harvest on the radio while we were doing our holiday driving. I’ve been very interested in doing more of our eating and cooking from locally grown produce. Considering that driving from here to my father-in-laws house requires driving by at least a dozen roadside stands selling fresh produce grown out back, I have no excuse for doing otherwise. I paid $6 for a paper grocery bag full to brimming over with sweet potatoes, and we are still eating them a month later. We’ve got about 10 person-meals out of that bag, and we still have some left over. Not a bad ROI on my sweet potato dollar.
Oddly enough, even though there are produce stands all over around here, there is nothing listed on that website for our area. I suspect this is a digital divide issue. We don’t lack for local farmers, just local farmers who are also wired up enough to list themselves on the site. I was interested in seeing if they had any of those subscription coop deals listed, but the closest one is 60 miles away. Maybe it will catch on around here and we can do it in a year or two.
Update: Forgot to include this link to a Wired story on “locavores”. That term sounds like something from a Jaime Hernandez comic, but is actually the same thing as above.
Hi Dave, this is Guillermo from LocalHarvest. Yes, our coverage for some parts of the country is not very good. We have about 5,400 member farms, but there are probably up to 50,000 small farms in the US that sell directly to consumers. If you want to help us spread the word, you can print out a few of these flyers and drop them on the roadside stands you pass by: http://www.localharvest.org/localharvest_flyer_join_us.pdf
Thanks
OK, cool. Thanks a lot. I’ll print this out and give it to the ones I go to.
Wow Guillermo, great that you’re showing up and answering. My local farms are certainly wired, but I very much appreciate the acknowledgment of how far there is to go. Much respect.