When is local really local? My local grocery store advertises that to them “Local Means Local.” Front and center in their store this afternoon, I encounter a contradiction. A large display is built up in conjunction with their latest ad featuring “Bocconcini Salad,” a Caprese by another name, I suppose. There are piles of hothouse, yes, hothouse cluster tomatoes. Why, I ask myself, at the height of Northern California’s tomato season? I am told they hail from California, so I guess, in some obscure fashion; it is more local than say, Mexico. Where are the beautiful heirloom tomatoes produced and delivered by the farmer from across the mountains that drives here twice a week to delivery freshly picked produce? Next to the tomatoes are individual, factory sealed tubs of various sizes and shapes of “fresh” mozzarella cheese in water. In this case, local is a little closer, as the cheese comes to us from the San Francisco Bay area, by way of Sacramento. Also on the same shelf is row upon row of glistening clear glass bottles of obscenely inexpensive organic extra virgin olive oil. Turning the bottle over, I search for a point of origin and find it at the bottom of the label in smallish print. The oil is “Produced in Turkey.” Now in the world of extra virgin olive oil, the words “produced in…” mean nothing more than “bottled and labeled in…” so I have no idea where the olives are grown. This particular store entreats its customer to “…keep your dollars local,” rather than shopping for inexpensive, imported goods at an unnamed national discount chain, known for their low, low prices. They point out that the value of purchasing locally produced, higher priced goods from a local retailer is more than just the price, and I heartily agree. Around the corner, in another aisle, there is a display of large, stainless steel containers that hold bulk artisan Northern California olive oil. You could easily miss this product, on your way to the soup or the mayonnaise. When questioned, the answer is always the same. The store must provide value to the hard working customers that are on a budget. The thinking is such, that as long as the alternative is available, it makes it acceptable to feature and promote inexpensive, anonymous, mass-produced products from nations somewhere around the globe who pay their workers a dollar a day?
Consumers today flock to purchase products labeled “organic,” as if it is some sort of magic safeguard against greedy corporate profit takers and unscrupulous users of chemicals and hormones in food production. What ever happened to knowing where your food comes from? Whole Foods touts the benefits of their organic wines, produced under their private label in Australia. Don’t we have enough good, sustainably produced local wines in California? I saw a cartoon in the paper yesterday, where a child tells the parent that organic produce wrapped in Styrofoam and plastic film is a contradiction, and the parent looks as though he doesn’t understand. Fears of pandemic food-borne illnesses lead the customer to embrace the sterile packaging, yet how much imported oil does it take to process food in this way? Are we looking for the 3” x 5” card on how to shop and eat?
In contrast, I shop for produce each week at our local farmers markets. Even in my small town, where we have markets only from May through October, I can purchase meat, baked goods, produce, cheeses, eggs, honey, fish, olive oil and even seedlings for my garden. I can talk to the producers, handle the product, smell the peaches that are so ripe that they are beginning to burst from their skins. Yes, I pay a bit more than if I were to cruise the aisles of the larger supermarket, but the experience of purchasing food that is produced by a human being that I know by name and converse with regularly causes me to show the product a bit more respect. I am less inclined to let these items lose themselves in the back of a too-large refrigerator until they are mere shadows of their former selves. I am also less inclined to buy more than I need for a given day or week, knowing that this food is at its peak and should be honored and respected for what it is, not to mention the time and effort expended to produce it.
I swap the lore of growing beans with one farmer, and of producing olive oil with another. One of the bakers works for me on occasion, the other bought the business I used to own. I stop to admire both the goat farmer’s cheeses and pictures of his new baby, and we talk about mutual friends both near and far. To me, local means someone you have a connection with. We humans are social animals, and marketing is one of the last vestiges of village society. We lose something when we lose this connection to our foods. When we disconnect our food from the people that produce it, we reduce it to merely the exchange of money for goods. I guess, in that circumstance, the price would become the most important component of the transaction. We forget the hard work that goes into producing our food, the long hours that the farmer spends tending the crops, the early mornings when he rises to load the truck for one more market day, and the late nights when he returns to his home and family. I refuse to let large corporations dictate what I cook and eat, and today, I can still log a small victory by buying from a local farmer. But how long can this continue? Somewhere, somehow, there has to be a shift in values. Will it take a catastrophe, as some predict, or is there some small part of every human’s brain that longs for the connection? As Wendell Berry is quoted by Slow Food, “Eating is an agricultural act.” In an obscure way, this means we are all farmers of sorts, and equally responsible for cultivating our future.
Post by Julia Conway on July 22nd, 2008
Posted in Country life, Food politics, Local food, Mendocino, Olive oil, Seasonal food, Slow Food
A week or so ago, I found myself in a room full of people talking about water. It sounds like a simple idea, but the more listened, the more I began to realize that beyond the tired cliché that “our bodies are over 70% water,” water is a subject that, pardon the pun, underlies everything. It is interesting that the deeper you go into discussions about water, the more that water metaphors inhabit the language. This is only the tip of the iceberg (here we go again…) of how much water is a part of our everyday manner of being.
Growing up in northern California, water was always there. In fact, much of the time, there was just too much of it! Remembering the 1964 Humboldt County flood, I can still see the vista of the entire Ferndale valley looking like a lake, with the old stone and concrete bridge sitting out in the middle, apparently unanchored as if it somehow floated down the river with the huge logs that seemed to be everywhere. After that, my parents moved us to dead center in the Sacramento Valley, ostensibly a drier place. Yet, when riding in a schoolmate’s father’s private plane, our little town, surrounded by vast rice fields, was surrounded once again by water. There was even another small nearby town aptly named Grand Island. The land all around was barely above sea level, and the massive river that bisected the valley was cautiously encased in tall, sturdy levees. In many places, the level of the river was higher than the surrounding farmlands, even in midsummer.
After moving to the city, water became something we all took for granted. You turn on the faucet, and out it comes. In this land of plenty, we were not even charged for it. A water bill was something you read about in a novel, and not a part of everyday life. This was California, after all, and swimming pools and lush landscaping were part and parcel with the territory. And who could forget the Pacific Ocean, limitless by anyone’s standards, and just over the mountain.
It was not until I moved back to Mendocino County, ironically, another place where, in the winter months, there was so much water it brought down hillsides and covered roads for weeks at a time, that I began to have an appreciation for how vital and yet how limited this resource is. For the first time in my memory, there was no local salmon in the markets or on the tables. The intricacies of “in-stream flow” and “baseline ambient temperature” and “turbidity” were beyond anything I had encountered, yet I know something had shifted. This spring’s twenty-one days of freezing temperatures had emptied the numerous catch ponds that dotted the vineyards and provided much needed water to the vines through the dry summer season. Though the floods had closed the roads in January, an annual occurrence, rainfall was below normal and some coastal homeowners were already at the bottom of their wells. Everyone was murmuring about where the water went, and who used too much, neighbors grimacing at neighbors, and then the fires came.
On a humid June Friday evening, a freak lightening storm peppered our bone dry hills and forests with over one hundred fires. Smoke choked the canyons and the valleys, and people walked the farmers market with masks covering their nose and mouth. Thousands of fire fighters from all around the world converged on our small towns, and miraculously, began to beat back the flames that had become a part of our everyday lives. The helicopters dipped water from the rivers, from the ponds, from the already shallow reservoirs, and even from the ocean itself. The communities pulled together with the help of the armies of fire fighters, and suddenly, it didn’t matter whose water it was, as long as it went to help quell the fires. Almost a month later, the fires are almost out, but we are left wondering what to do next.
If Mendocino County is to survive, much less thrive, we must answer to this core issue. This is why I again take up the textbook to learn the lexicon, to explore the questions, and most importantly, to reach out across ideological and geographic lines to find solutions to this new dilemma. Farmers, foresters, loggers, environmentalists, politicians, grape growers, ranchers, and all the myriad of people in our towns and cities who depend on the fact that the water will come out of the faucet must set aside their difference and forge alliances. All of our other issues will be moot unless we can address this one. I hold out hope for gatherings such as the conference I attended, sponsored by an organization called, appropriately, MendoFutures. If we can all sit down in a room together, setting aside our differences in support of our common future, then I know that we will succeed. My father always taught me that if I were not part of the solution, it was likely that I could be part of the problem, and it is in that spirit that I dedicate time and energy to sustain this place that I love, not only for myself, but for those that follow.
If you think it is “just water,” try spending a full day with limited or no fresh water. Write down each time you reach for the faucet, the handle on the toilet tank, or the hose. The results may shock you, and again, they may not. At the end of the day, ask yourself what each one of us can do to ensure that water will be there to meet the needs of the communities of the future. It is time to begin to frame our future rather than just reacting to it. For more information on how you can get involved, go to www.mendofutures.org.
Post by Julia Conway on July 21st, 2008
Posted in Country life, Food politics, Mendocino, Slow Food, Sustainability, Wine Country
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