The first thing I noticed about my 100-mile area is that it does not extend to South America. Or even Central America. Or California. Which means, first of all, where will I get my coffee? Oh dear. And also, how will we make breakfast smoothies without bananas? Not to mention: does anyone in Washington State grow wheat? For things like bread, for instance? I'm starting to feel a little panicky here. So I decided to play on the computer some more.
On Google Maps, you can save your circle (or in my case, your prongs) and then search for businesses by category, which is kind of fun. Here are the prongs again, with dairy farms. (Or at least those dairy farms who have somehow listed themselves with Google.) Thank heaven—we can still have yogurt. I think.
By the way, Sustainable Ballard has a much nicer map:
of which I have acquired a screen shot (in fact all the maps in this post are screen shots, which means the links won't work, no matter how hard you click on them. Sorry.So... looking at all these maps. I think we're ok in the cheese, yogurt, veggies, berries, and eggs department. We can probably get chicken. I'm not sure anyone raises beef cattle in Washington... can someone tell me? Maybe it's time to become vegetarians. What about corn, wheat, garbanzo beans, and rice? We live on rice at my house. Tropical fruits are out, obviously (the word "tropical" means they don't grow at this latitude, guys.) Anybody want to talk about the 100-mile Diet? I'm game.
10 comments:
I'm curious to learn more about this. It sounds like a lot of work. I was just thinking about this the other day when I bought strawberries at WalMart. Strawberries do grow very near to us (about 30 miles away they have a big festival), but they certainly don't grow in September. So where did they come from? I don't know.
That's exactly the question we might ask at our favorite grocery stores or fruit stands. "Where did these strawberries come from?" How far did they travel?
Hanging around on the 100-mile Diet web site, or reading the book Plenty, by Alisa Smith & JB MacKinnon, you can find out more about why this whole thing started (do we really want to be eating 3,000-mile salads in winter? what else could we eat, to support our local farmers and put a smaller hole in the ozone?
At first, the choices might seem extremely limiting. And you can make ddifferent rules for yourself, as well. It doesn't have to be painful. One step at a time is my motto.
Thanks for dropping by!
Very interesting, this 100 mile diet. The folks in greenlake are doing it but found they had to exclude salt from the rules because we have no source of salt around here. Surely we must grow wheat somewhere in Washington? There was tons of it where I grew up in Eastern Oregon, but I guess that's over 100 miles away.
For the breakfast smoothies-- I use tofu instead of bananas. But I don't suppose that's any better, since I don't see any soybean fields growing nearby. I'll head over to that website.
PS-- I'm starting Kingsolver's book.
Are there soybean fields in Eastern WA?
Forgot to mention earlier - there are farms within our "circle" that grow really good berries & they flash-freeze them. Biringer Farms berries are really good. We buy 'em in 3 lb bags and keep in the freezer (duh) for those ultra-important breakfast smoothies.
Kathy-- My dad, who hasn't yet figured out how to post comments, but is nonetheless reading this blog daily, says that garbanzo beans and wheat both grow near Walla Walla, WA. That's over 100 miles but a lot closer than the midwest.
Re the berries-- Biringer farms. Where do you get them exactly? From the farm? Grocery store? I've been buying frozen berries but I'm quite sure they aren't local (except for the stockpile in my freezer from the youth group sales).
Biringer Farms check 'em out here individually frozen berries... I picked up a couple of big bags of blueberries recently at the QFC on Roosevelt just north of 65th...
and thanks to your dad for the soybeans. i'm willing to stretch a point. and stretch my map. my car eats soybeans, so why can't i?
More about berries:
I just picked up two big bags of blueberries from REMLINGER Farms, at my local QFC. We used to spend a crazy pumpkin farm day out at Remlinger in late October... back in our pumpkin patch days.
Blue Bird Grain Farms... http://www.bluebirdgrainfarms.com/contact.html
Thundering Hooves for meat... http://www.thunderinghooves.net/index.html
Thanks for the info about local wheat and meat... I'm delighted to know about Blue Bird Grain Farms, especially.
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