There are many rea­sons to buy local, organically-grown pro­duce. One is that the food is fresher and often picked at its proper har­vest time (i.e. ripe instead of being picked weeks early and ripened off the vine or with chem­i­cal means), it’s often cheaper, and it’s always a good idea to sup­port inde­pen­dent farms that are often small or family-run. Another great rea­son is that many farm­ers have switched over to organic meth­ods, and you’ll find farm­ers that have always done things this way. USDA organic reg­u­la­tions still allow for cer­tain chem­i­cal pes­ti­cides and so on, but a farmer who fol­lows a “beyond organic” approach with­out any cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is fan­tas­tic and often cheaper than the health store.

Any­way, this post is a short one because I just want to share with you some good food resources AND an inves­ti­gate news report on Whole Foods being exposed for its sub-par sourc­ing of so-called “organic” food. Check out the news video here. All the more rea­son to buy local.

On a side­note, my grand­par­ents used to enjoy bust­ing my imag­i­nary balls about how they never bought organic and they turned out fine blah blah blah. Sound famil­iar? I told them, quite point­edly, that they grew up with­out the option of organic ver­sus con­ven­tional. All they had was organic! It just wasn’t labelled that way because no one did it any dif­fer­ently. (DDT and other crap pes­ti­cides didn’t get put into use until about 1940.) Besides, there are just too many ben­e­fits to con­sum­ing foods grown with­out pes­ti­cides to even have an argu­ment about it. You can pre­tend all you want that those pes­ti­cides and fungi­cides and her­bi­cides aren’t get­ting into your body and hav­ing an effect, but the fact is, organ­i­cally grown pro­duce allows you to avoid bur­den­ing your body with unnec­es­sary chemicals.

If you just can’t afford organic pro­duce, look closer. Check out local com­mu­nity farms and agri­cul­ture shares (CSAs), farmer’s mar­kets, and health food stores. Organic food is not much more than con­ven­tional. A bunch of organic kale? $2. A bunch of organic spinach? $2. A pound of organic green apples? $1.49. That’s what I bought this past Sat­ur­day, along with a box of micro greens, yams, gar­lic, zuc­chini, and more. All from my local farmer’s mar­ket, where I spent a grand total of $20. I can get a week’s worth of pro­duce from my local CSA for $15. Seri­ously, it’s cheap. Big cities have farmer’s mar­kets. If you live in the boonies, you prob­a­bly have farm­land around you. Seek out the local farm­ers. If you have a big back­yard (or even a small one), grow your own food. It’s fun, it’s easy, and there are a ton of resources to help you out. Even peo­ple who live in the desert (like me), grow food and develop farms and have thriv­ing (albeit small) farmer’s markets.

Qual­ity Food Sources & Locators:

Local Har­vest

Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Agri­cul­ture Database

Eat Wild

Eat Well Guide

Farm Loca­tor

U.S. Well­ness Meats (where I buy my beef and lamb if I can’t get it local)

Vital Choice (where I buy my salmon)

 

Resources to Grow Your Own:

Square Foot Gardening

Rain­tree Nursery

Win­dow Farms (great for indoor gar­den­ing, small con­dos and apartments)

Seeds of Change

Rare Seeds

Nat­ural Gar­den­ing Co.

 

I’m start­ing my own toma­toes and grapes in the tiny back­yard again, and some herbs on the kitchen counter. Grow­ing my own food is so sat­is­fy­ing, and so is buy­ing from farms where I know how the plants are grown and har­vested. What are you going to start grow­ing this year?
~Steph  x

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