Sustainable Eats

This blog represents my journey as an urban mom with two small kids going from supermarket to farmer-fresh food one step at a time.

In 2009 I vowed to re-channel my grocery money away from mono-crop farmers, processed food companies and animal feed lots. I did not buy foods from outside Washington state until I had exhausted all local options and I gave up out of season foods.

When it was all said and done the garden met all our veggie needs from May (when it was planted) until mid December and then started producing for us again by February. The orchard will require several more years before we are able to eat exclusively from it.

In 2010 I've resolved to growing even more of our fruits and veggies in the front and side sections of our in-city 1/5 acre lot. I took out the parking strip and some backyard space to increase growing space so that I no longer need to buy any veggies any time of year.

We now have 22 fruits or berries, 2 nut varieties, roots and tubers, vegetables, black pepper, tea, medicinals and countless herbs in addition to our backyard chickens, mason bees and composting worms.

My future food goals include adding honey bees, mushrooms, meat rabbits, dairy goats and perhaps garage tilapia. Rather than canning, freezing and drying so much food in 2010 I intend to lacto-ferment more and simply eat seasonally in order to maximize our nutritional intake and reduce our carbon footprint.

Keeping this blog is my way of chronicling my successess, failures and struggles and giving other local families ideas, encouragement and resources to make this same journey.

The rules of my experiment are:

Finish eating what we have in the cupboards.

New purchases must meet the local, seasonal, organic, sustainably farmed criteria.

Meat must be pastured, grass fed, humanely treated while living and processing or hunted and local.

Fish must be wild and caught in a sustainable manner and as local as possible.

Eggs must be cage free, with an organic diet. Update - they now come from our backyard chickens!

Poultry must be pastured, fed an organic diet and local.

Milk and cream must come from local dairies (not dairy pools).

Honey must be organic or close as possible and local.

Fruits, vegetables, legumes and grains must be local and organic from sustainable farms.

Cheese must be local and from organic milk.

Anything not on this list must be made by me from the above ingredients or by local farmers or food artisans.

Coffee, chocolate, coconut oil and sugar are exempt but must be fair trade and shade grown (except sugar which must still be organic and fair trade.)

Any other purchases must be from US sources (i.e. olive oil from Napa, popcorn from Oregon) only once local sources have been exhausted.