Becoming a locavore

While eating 100% local foods and becoming a pure locavore in Michigan may be near impossible, it is quite easy to make some small changes in you life in order to start incorporating local foods into your diet. I myself set a goal of trying to include at least one ingredient of each meal from a local source. This is of course fairly easier in the summer/fall and much more difficult in the winter and early spring. I have the luxury of having family that raise our own beef, chicken, and turkey so getting free range organic meat is very simple year around. So I will focus more on what the average college age person can do without owning a farm.

The easiest and in the long term cheapest way to start is simply growing your own food. I myself live in a apartment as do many college students students my age, but that shouldn't stop you from growing a few vegetables that you can include in your diet. If you have a South or West facing balcony or porch it is easy to grow almost anything (an east facing balcony could allow you to grow some plants, but the plants are likely to be less productive.). I myself started with growing tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, beans, and herbs with a south facing balcony with great success. I went to the local Hardings store and received around 10 five-gallon buckets from them for free, they even had them all washed out and ready to go. I'm assuming this is quite common and probably even saves them space in their dumpsters so they were more than happy to get rid of them. These were great for the tomatoes and peppers that require relatively large amounts of soil to grow in.  I also had a few smaller containers that I grew the  lettuce, beans, and herbs in. (the herbs are wonderful as they can be grown inside year around)

I created a double bucket system that I read about, which allowed for better more thorough watering and a stronger root structure. If your interested in growing tomatoes, which go through a ton of water in the summer heat, I recommend checking into it out you don't have to water them multiple times a day or worry about over-watering them. Here's a link with a brief overview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7nbzk74ARE

The only major expense I had was the soil. I opted to purchase some organic potting soil which wouldn't require any additional fertilizers throughout the season.  I could have went and got some soil for free somewhere, but by this point I just wanted to get started and didn't feel like transporting a large amount soil in my car and this way I avoided any pests that could have tagged along.

The harvest of these vegetables lasted from around the beginning of July to the end of August. At times it got to be a bit of a hassle and the tomatoes completely covered the balcony toward the end of summer, but it was well worth it. I experimented with canning, although I have not bought a pressure cooker yet. I am under the impression that any highly acidic vegetables are safe to can without the pressure cooker, so I just canned the tomatoes which I literally had a hundred or more of. I just started using some of these recently and they have turned out great. Canning is very simple and I plan on doing many more items next fall.

You can also access many locally grown foods at your local farmers market. There are even farmers markets that only allow locally grown foods (some of the larger markets may contain foods from hundreds of miles away or more. There are usually signs posted at each vendor that says where they are from). The People's food co-op of Kalamazoo hosts a 100-mile market each wednesday from spring through fall where you can find an assortment of local foods. Here is a link with more on the 100-mile market http://swmichigan.secondwavemedia.com/devnews/100milemarket0510.aspx

The co-op itself also carries a large variety of local foods inside the store. I won't go into details now as I will be making a visit shortly and going into depth on the store in a future post.

So to sum it up. You can grow it yourself and can things to make the foods last though the winter months. You can visit farmers markets to find a larger variety of food that maybe you can't grow yourself. Lastly, You can visit stores such as co-ops that carry many local foods that larger stores wouldn't carry. My experience so far is a good one. I find it rather easy to and enjoyable growing my own foods, and they are usually better tasting than store bought vegetables.