I am trying to make a list of things I CAN'T get locally and I buy consistantly... this is it so far:

Sugar
Avacados
Olive Oil
Bananas
Maple Syrup
Oranges
Lemons
Limes
Peanuts

{added}
Chocolate
Rice
Coconut milk
Tea
Pasta
Wheat
herbs that don't grow here

Want to add yours? I am sure others will think of things that I don't have and would work for me.

For your local sweetener, how about just using local honey instead of syrup and sugar. And butter for olive oil.

I looked at the local section at Whole foods the other day. There's honey, BBQ sauce, blueberry salsa, rice, cowpeas, and cornmeal that I remember. I can't live on that! But I can certainly buy those products from that section. And, of course, I can do local produce, eggs, and I'm still waiting for a cowshare. ;)

Here are my biggies: Wheat. Soybeans. Sucanat. Olive oil. Egg replacer. Lemons, limes, avocados (I'm with you there). Peanuts may not be in the local section at Whole Foods, but I'll be darned if I can't find them locally. I'm sure someone still grows peanuts in GA, even with Jimmy Carter retired from the biz. Ummm... and how about tofutti??? :p

Sugar
Avacados
Bananas
Oranges
Lemons
Limes


I can get these in spades (citrus in season)
but I cannot get berries ever :wah:

Sugar (but we try to use local maple syrup or honey as much as we can, I use sugar mostly for baking and to top J's enzyme mixture)
Avocados
Olive Oil
Bananas
Oranges
Lemons
Limes
Peanuts
Chocolate
Coffee (we buy locally roasted, but the beans are obviously not local-grown!)
Peanut butter (for J's enzymes)
Beans (we have local source for black beans if I can store 25 lb bags)
Rice

What about flour? Ours is semi-local (within 100 mi for sure) - King Arthur - but most people can't get locally-grown and -milled flour. I'm not sure where KA grows their wheat, either, and they're not organic. I'm looking for a more local, organic source right now.

Popcorn kernels
Tea
Spices
Rolled oats

I think that is most of what we buy that is not locally grown or raised.

Edited, I just found a source for local cornmeal! Kewl! Here's Vermont's localvore project, or one of them - I think it's pretty cool and it's a big part of why I fell in love with this place.

Resources (http://www.vermontlocalvore.org/foodsources/)

I forgot chocolate and rice... *sigh*

I can grow most kinds of beans in my back yard. ;) Even the ones for drying although for our pintos, black, and garbanzo beans that would be a ton of space each year. We get some local, but some we also get from the fred meyers and goodness knows those were shipped in. I have to think on how to up our local intake of foods like this.

Olive oil. That would be the worst. I don't care about sugar or lemons or oranges or coffee (not allowed to have it anyway) and I could even live w/o chocolate. But olive oil? :help:

Stevia (could replace it w/honey but the calories would be hard to work around)
Apples
Tea
Spices


Everything else I eat grows locally. Wow. If I didn't hate this area so much I would probably look into living here permanently. Somehow I think AK and WA won't be so accomodating. I do eat a lot of salad and that grows everywhere.

For my kids:
rice
bananas
chocolate
peanuts
lemons
and all of the above that I listed.

Stevia grows here... as do apples and most teas (green tea and chai don't grow here, but all sorts of mint, and lemonbalm, oatstraw, nettle, and catnip, etc). So you can cross those off your list if you move here. ;)

I keep trying to find a local dried bean place. I think I may have to just stick with organic. It would take A LOT of space to grow the amt of beans this family uses every year. Perhaps when we have land. But probobly not. lol... There is room in this for sanity right? The idea isn't to go insane trying to save the planet, it is about doing everything you can and NOT go insane. lol... One year though, I want to try to produce enough of one kind of bean that we eat. Perhaps black beans.

There is room for sanity. :D My local bean source is *not* our garden. It is this place:

Butterworks Farm (http://www.butterworksfarm.com/)

Gawd, I love them. :hbeat: Hey, they have flour too. :) They also grow all the food their cows eat - even the winter food. Pretty incredible. (We buy their cream.)

What a good idea!

For me, the things I can think of are the alternative flours for gluten free baking--
millet flour
sorghum flour
tapioca starch
Oh, and our food for life brown rice bread, and rice milk

I get local brown rice flour, local rice (Lundberg Farms). Local rice pasta most of the time (same place), but I do get pasta from TJ's, because it's cheaper.

Any snack foods I buy mostly aren't local, but I do try to limit those anyway.

Otherwise, I get all local fruits and vegetables. If it's not local, I don't get it. Oh, except bananas. We do buy bananas.

I could get local meat and fish, I suppose, but that's the next step on my list, I don't do that consistently yet. Oh, and dairy. I don't pay attention for cheese and yogurt.

beans? I'm not sure if they are local or not.

I can get local olive oil! I don't always, but I just got a new bottle for my birthday. I can get rice bran oil that's local, too.

Local chocolate--Scharffen Berger is my favorite. Though I'm not sure that their ingredients are all local, it's at least made locally.

Oooh, agave nectar. We buy local honey, but I really like agave nectar in a lot of baking, and that's not local.

There are plenty of things that I still need to work on buying locally, but I don't always do it.

We have been keeping track of what we are using that is not local after dinner each night - kind of a daily recap. Mostly:

-lemons, limes, oranges, bananas, etc.
-avocados
-vanilla (beans, extract)
-sugar (we use honey mostly, but do use turbinado sugar for certain things)
-vinegar
-flour/grains (oat, wheat, flax, rye, semolina)
-chocolate
-tea
-olive oil
-salt
-pepper
-nuts (peanuts, mostly)
-rice
-cinnamon
-some beans
-cereals (although we get local muesli/granola or make our own...but then with non-local oats, nuts, spices, etc)
-baking soda/baking powder
-coffee (we have a great local roaster that uses organic fair trade beans, but they come from elsewhere).

Hmmmmmm. Don't remember the rest right now (besides clothing/cotton/fabric, key cleaning supplies, etc.).

Val, aren't you in Cali? I can't believe citrus and avocados aren't within 100 miles of you :lol

Sugar, olive oil, avocados and bananas are my big ones.

Nope... I am in western Washington. lol... I wish! It is 100 miles from my family. lol... shouldn't that count?

Great list mama's.

We can get rice here in Arkansas as well as soy (I dont really use soy right now)
I dont know about grains tho.

I have seen local apples and berries. We harvest wild berries and grapes here in the Ozarks.
We too harvest wild herbs that are edible or tea. Soon I am after roses. They are blooming I see. want to make rose honey.

I think the olive oil, lemons and other citrus, peanuts, avocado are not local.

But if you live in florida, you can get those things but probably not rice.

Interesting how diverse our country is. (I love our country despite its political problems)

just wanted to say thanks for starting this thread. Glad to say that we finally made it through the csa waiting list and got our first basket burgeoning with local organic produce this week - and thanks to the eatwild.com site posted here I found a local bison rancher and hope to start buying from them next week.

Just wish I could find local lamb. Lamb, bison, eggs, chicken and I'd be so set!

Adding:
Coconut milk

We buy olive oil from this store when we go to Pensacola-- www.shorelinedeli.com Web Page (http://www.shorelinedeli.com/MAIN.htm)
The olive oil isn't local, but the business is. The family that owns the stores owns the olive groves in Crete. You can buy the oil and olive trees there that they import(they also sell it to a few local stores in Pensacola). I understand that is missing half the point, lol, but I feel good supporting a family run business, and it is REALLY great olive oil-- some of the best that I have had.

I am curious what meat prices are like for you guys locally. Boneless skinless chicken breast locally is about 15 dollars a lb. Whole chicken is quite a bit better, but still about 6.00 per lb. This is just free range, not organic. 80/20 ground beef is about 6 per lb. Grassfed, grain finished, no abx or hormone. None of this is extremely local to us either. I am still working on a more local source, and am considering buying in bulk (1/4 or 1/2), but we really don't eat a TON of meat, so I am a bit hesitant.

WA grown chickens are $3.49 lb... not free range or organic, but local. Which is what we are buying now.

Beef here (the local one who sends to Utah to package which is SO odd to me) is $4.29 lb.

My pork is a local source, he is a friend and a local farmer. I get pork from him before packaging for $1.79 lb. which, after packaging adds up to about $2.50 lb but sometimes less.

I am in IL and free range, organic whole chickens run $4/lb or so and chicken breasts run about $10/lb. Organic grassfed ground beef is about $3.75/lb. I have not priced pork lately.

Here's Vermont's localvore project, or one of them - I think it's pretty cool and it's a big part of why I fell in love with this place.

Resources (http://www.vermontlocalvore.org/foodsources/)

thanks for this link...great! :)

Whole local organic chicken is 3.50/lb here. I think boneless skinless chx breast runs around $7/lb.

Ok, so revamping this with a thought. I am fully in this at the moment. Having commited to never buying factory farm pork ever again, and only buying local beef... which is sorta local, but the slaughter laws in WA require the animals to be shipped to one of the three processing plants in Eastern WA or Idaho before we get it back, a TOTAL waste of fossil fuel in my honest opinion, but we can't get it any other way. Even stuff that is grown here locally (like from the farmer down the street type of place) has to be shipped there. Sad, but true, and aside from eating deer (which there are plenty of this time of year...) we will be supporting that terrible industry standard.

I have been adding things with the idea that people have always traded for what they can't grow locally. The issue isn't the trading... the issue is the fact that people don't buy the things locally that they CAN grow there. Like eggs... there is no reason whatsoever that I should ever have to buy eggs again. I don't even have to grown my own chickens... I just have to buy eggs from someone who does. Yes, it may be a bit lean when we are in the dead of winter (only sometimes too) but we should never have to buy eggs again from any one more than 40 miles away. But Chocolate? We can't grow it here... never have been able to, and the fact that if I lived 100% local, I would never have chocolate is unacceptable. :p So I am back to thinking about the things I am acceptably buying from somewhere else.

Hense me, bumping this thread with new thoughts.

Yet another one. We have plenty of water here. I am constantly reading about the water shortage everywhere else. Currently it is "Living the Good Life" about a 6 month period people in Austrilia lived with nothing bought, at all. She is constantly talking about water useage. Virtual, or real, or gardening, etc... every chapter has had some referance to water useage. For the first couple chapters I was thinking "well, I live in western wa... I don't have a water problem." But quite honestly, if I buy food from anywhere BESIDES western WA the water useage must be counted. Because it seems that pretty much every where else DOES have a water shortage... and we are selling our water to the people in CA that are growing my organic salad greens that I can't grow yet this season right now. Wasting even more fossil fuel because we are SHIPPING water to other states to grow our food becuase we have decided that cold frame spinich and kale are not enough for us up here while the growing is off.

Strange thoughts... but diserving of a bump.

Val

Yeah, we are constantly evaluating too.

Some things (cod liver oil, coconut, cooking oil, coffee, cocoa) we have to get at the store, so we buy fair trade/organic then, for many reasons. What we can get local sometimes has to run the ringer of red tape here too. Or, just inefficiency. If I can get milk is it actually better if I have to drive over 100 miles a month for 4 gallons of milk/month from the farm. My gas usage for that doesn't mesh well with me. At that point is it better to buy local organic milk in a carton from the store, where only 1 truck hauled thousands of gallons 85 miles...and I bring it home with all of our other purchases.

Our eggs we get close--and I pick up dozens for several friends, so it balances. We get local wheat--and we go help the farmer clean it too. We picked up freshly extracted honey yesterday, and not only did we get 1/2 gallon for us, but picked up honey for several other friends too...equalizes the fuel equation and we are still supporting local farmers.

So much to think about. And the water--yeah. We don't have a water shortage in general, but that is an issue in many places.

Or here, there was massive flooding that wiped out significant acres of organic farmland in the area -- so we try to support those farms getting back on their feet with fundraisers, paying a little more for their goods now knowing it is to help re-start, etc. Chaotic weather patterns seems like it might be the norm from now on and perhaps growing as much as we can in our own yards IS the best way to balance the big picture.

Rambling, but yes, deserves a bump! :)

Good points, Val.

This is my 2008. Getting local foods into the school cafeteria and making sure things like Splenda-laced Cinnamon Toast Crunch gets OFF the breakfast menu there. (Ugh!) Growing more of our own meat (meat birds, *maybe* sheep or cattle). We can process poultry on-site, as long as you have under 1,000 birds you have minimal regulations. We will slaughter and process ourselves, but there is a traveling guy who will slaughter any animal onsite for you. For chickens it is $2/bird. But for my layers, if we cull some of the unnamed and the poorer layers, I would only be comfortable doing it ourselves, and after we've practiced and gotten it down. We have access to a plucking machine we can borrow (very cool, they cost $1000).

For what we don't grow ourselves we'll again purchase a local CSA share from a farm less than 10 miles away. We have access to dairy, cheese, beef, chicken, pork, beans, flour, vegetables both summer and winter (another local farm stores in their root cellar and does winter CSAs), and maple syrup - all from within a 20-mile radius.

So far I trade eggs for local raw cheese. :) I'd like to trade eggs for more...but basically sell my extras to our town clerk who sells them to folks she knows. It works for everyone involved.

What about for this time of year? Does it make you twitch to purchase salad greens from Trader Joe's and such? That is my main thing right this second. All of our winter greens the chickens ate. lol...

I feel like a kid... I just want it all to have answers right now. I need to realize that the path is what I need to be walking towards, to work towards being part of a solution and not part of the problem.... but it is a fine line. When Pullman talks about 'big organic' and then goes on to talk about Polyface, you can't help but want to be in the "beyond organic" corner... but the truth is, big organic has done some good. Transfering all of that land to using natural/better growing practices... but they still are not sustainable. I want to work towards sustainable... I just have to keep walking in that direction.

Val

Ok, so revamping this with a thought. I am fully in this at the moment. Having commited to never buying factory farm pork ever again, and only buying local beef... which is sorta local, but the slaughter laws in WA require the animals to be shipped to one of the three processing plants in Eastern WA or Idaho before we get it back, a TOTAL waste of fossil fuel in my honest opinion, but we can't get it any other way. Even stuff that is grown here locally (like from the farmer down the street type of place) has to be shipped there. Sad, but true, and aside from eating deer (which there are plenty of this time of year...) we will be supporting that terrible industry standard.


Val

Where did you hear that about meat having to be shipped off for processing? I've never heard of or encountered that.

I asked my local butcher. He said they sent them to Idaho... he didn't really know why, but they always had. So I did a bit of research.

In the Omnivore's Dilemma he says that is awfully common. Sad, but apparently true.

Val

It may just be law that it has to be done in a slaughterhouse and processed in a govt approved plant, and that there are only so many of them. I know here there are a lot of processing laws--- small farms can process chickens but ot cattle-- I think because of contamination risk?

I'm totally committed to this as much as we can be. Though its easier to list what we CAN get locally, right now. And always get it locally when we can. Also weaning off things like bananas and random exports.
I just don't crave raw salads in winter so mixedgreens aren't a problem. I love winter greens, esp kale.

When Pullman talks about 'big organic' and then goes on to talk about Polyface, you can't help but want to be in the "beyond organic" corner... but the truth is, big organic has done some good. Transfering all of that land to using natural/better growing practices... but they still are not sustainable. I want to work towards sustainable... I just have to keep walking in that direction.

Just finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and BK (radical though she is) conceded that Big Organic is a positive thing compared to Big Conventional. At least they are fertilizing huge plots of land which is a start.

that's bizarre about the processing plants, Val.

I've never given it much thought overall, although I buy local when posible, and if not immediately local, within the NW. I'm loving the eggs I got from Sarah :)