A big bowl of sweet cherries

It's sweet cherry season in Berrien County, Michigan, and that means a whole lot of people here will be missing out on one of the season's finest fruits. That's a shame because it's been very dry here over the last month, and the cherries are particularly sweet, very firm and crunchy, and intensely flavored (see my post on "dry, dry, dry"). Too bad most of them will be consumed by folks in and around Chicago, and other markets away from where they've been grown.

And too bad most of the money being spent in Berrien County on sweet cherries will not be for locally-grown cherries. Instead, that money will leave the county, and enhance quality of life in California and Washington State, and with it, any chance to multiply through recirculative local spending.

If you want to work at it however, you can find local sweet cherries at fruit stands and at least a few local farmers markets. But don't waste your time looking in the produce section of the major chain store Supercenters; they carry the tasteless varieties from industrialized factory farms 2,000 miles west of here.

I have a vision though, that someday, people here will have an easy opportunity to experience the night-and-day difference between cherries grown on gritty, glaciated soils, and those grown so far away from here that their carbon footprints are deep enough to fall into. Someday, soon I hope, people here will learn about the correlation between place of origin and quality of food.

Because this place, through a fact of geological happenstance, became a place where fruit can be grown with particularly unique, and outstanding qualities. That same fact makes Berrien County, Michigan like no other place in the world, in terms of flavorful fruit production. Here, a cherry tastes like it ought to, sweet, intensely flavored, crunchy like a Michigan apple, juicy like a Michigan melon. No other place is like it.

But the superior quality for eating, and the "greener" distribution method, and the just-picked freshness, are not the only differences. Community, and what local purchasing does for it, also plays a role. For community is a concept that improves the general quality of life when folks make informed choices to support one another. That bowl of cherries might take more effort to procure at a farm stand or farmers market than it does in a Supercenter, but oh what a difference it could make for Berrien County if more of us chose to make that effort.

Why we blog

As a boy, I walked down the streets of my town and saw dozens of people out and about. Though Eau Claire, Michigan has never had a population greater than 550 residents, the village was vibrant, bustling with activities every day.

We had a hardware store, a Ford dealership; clothier; pharmacy; two restaurants; five gas stations; a lumber company; a locally owned bank (when’s the last time you saw one of those?); three grocery stores; a doctor’s office; a small department store; a bait and tackle shop; a weekly newspaper, and even a candy store. These were all locally owned and operated businesses, and they thrived because of one overlying business sector—Agriculture. Agriculture… as in food.

In those days, we truly had a community-based food system, and if the local farmers were picking strawberries, you could buy them at the local grocers. Ditto for peaches and every other produce item that was grown throughout our region. We had access to locally-produced fresh and processed food, and we bought that food, and we ate it.

But like many other Berrien County, Michigan communities, we lost our food system. Big corporations bought out the local processing plants and then shut them down. Oligopolies formed in the drug business, banking; retail grocer sector; hardware; lumber, and home improvement sectors, and before we knew it, life had changed in Eau Claire, Michigan. Today, one may buy a tan on Main Street, but not a local peach….

Moreover, during the past fifteen years, I have not seen a single Michigan strawberry on the shelves of a Walmart Super Center, or Kroger, or Safeway. Not a single one. Little wonder strawberry production in Berrien County has declined over 99% since 1969.

I have no doubt my town is like many towns that lost their local food system, and then lost their local economies. In S.W. Michigan, I know there is an inextricable link between food and farming, and vibrant communities. And I know that if we’re to revitalize my town, and similar towns, we need to get back to the community-based food system that helped make it vibrant and viable in the first place.

Now I’ve got to drive twenty miles or more to buy a pair of trousers, or a washing machine, visit my doctor, or get a prescription filled.

But you know what? If I could buy community-based food, I’d make the effort and pay the extra cost. In fact, as I posted a couple of weeks ago, I proved to myself that I would make the drive and spend the extra cash for better food. But it seems a real shame I can’t get the same food closer to home.

That’s one major reason Rebecca and I are writing this Blog; we want better access to healthier food. And we think we might help make that goal a reality.

Because within the current globalized, industrialized, oligopolized, and commoditized food industry, providing choices for what we eat depends upon local initiatives. Ones designed to provide access to the best food available. Food that is days, even weeks, fresher. Food that is higher in nutrition because it is fresher and harvested at the proper maturity. Food that tastes better; strawberries with natural sugars and juice; stone fruit that are picked when they’re ripe, not two weeks before they’re ripe; apples that are allowed to develop flavor before they’re picked; and food that is produced and distributed in ways that can be sustained for generations to come.

That’s our ticket to food sovereignty, and that’s why we’re Blogging.

Imagine....

Imagine a Local Foods Market. A big one. One serving hundreds of local farm families and local food vendors. One controlled to the extent only locally produced and/or locally processed food is all that can be offered for sale. A year around market. A market offering beef, pork, lamb, poultry, fish and specialty meats. A market selling fresh and processed fruits and vegetables. A market with local food restaurants. And a market that serves as an anchor to a vibrant, regional agricultural industry.

That’s what I imagine when I think about what’s needed to save The Great Fruit Belt of Southwestern Lower Michigan.

A billion dollar local food economy for Berrien County?

Over the years, I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking at statistics. Early on, those looks required hours in the library. Today, I can view stats from a huge number of credible sources in minutes. The Internet is a new, highly efficient library for research.

Regarding food-related statistics for Berrien County, MI, here’s a few I’ve found that show very clearly our food losses, and our opportunities:

Berrien County residents spend about $377 Million on food annually. Of this amount, about $94 Million is spent on meats, and by far and away, meat spending here is not from locally produced beef, pork, chicken, and fish. Those industries, though once alive and vibrant are gone. Long gone.

That leaves $282 Million for all other food purchases annually in Berrien County. Of that amount, no more than $45 million could possibly have been produced in Berrien County because $45 Million is roughly the total value of all fruits and vegetables produced here. That leaves a $242 Million market potential, annually.

In other words, if Berrien County, Michigan were truly food sovereign, and if we were committed to eating local food instead of the industrialized stuff (I have a hard time calling it food), then our local (County) economy would enjoy a big shot in the arm, in terms of local spending and then keeping that money in local circulation.

If, as many highly regarded economists suggest, that a dollar first spent locally is likely to be circulated four times within the local economy before it finally leaves, then we’re talking about BIG money (as in a Billion), and one can only imagine what impact that kind of cash would have. Positive impact, no doubt.

But this so-called “multiplier effect” is rarely triggered when local dollars are first spent at a national chain store, because unless one lives and shops at a Walmart in Bentonville, AR for example, those dollars are electronically transferred to the chain’s headquarters. The key to the multiplier effect is therefore local spending, not spending at a national chain.

Anyway, it seems to me a fabulous opportunity exists for Berrien County residents to lift themselves up simply by supporting a local food system. Think about it: Fresher food items, food that tastes like it’s supposed to taste (as in good….); food without the deep carbon footprint of the industrialized stuff, and food that helps build strong local economies and vibrant communities.

So what’s stopping us? In future posts, I intend to at least tell you what I think is stopping us, and what we really need to reverse the trend of diminishing local food availability. Stay tuned….

fraud

Bisquick Dilemma

So, yeah, we've been eating strawberries lately. Which means, in addition to stawberries out of hand, and strawberries on our cereal, that there is a big demand for strawberry shortcake.

How do we make it? With, of course, Bisquick. Why? Its the tradition in both of our families, and, frankly even more important, its easy. And quick.

I was in a rush on Fathers Day to make shortcake to take down to my in-laws for our cookout. Ran in the door with the Bisquick box. Luke took it out of my hands and scrutinized the ingredients. He sniffed as he read, "partially hydrogenated soybean (and/or cottonseed) oil." Luke is, quite rightly, on a quest to cut that ingredient out of his diet.

But guess what gets cut out of my schedule (among many other things). Taking the time, effort, and energy to figure out how not to use Bisquick. Probably wouldn't be that hard, or take that long, but what with all the other things I'm not doing....

Anyway, Bisquick shortcakes it was, and has been so far all strawberry season. (Luke eats 'em, too, by the way....) So the only hope for a change to more wholesome ingredient shortcakes is if Luke takes on the task himself. So far? Not yet....

How Sweet it is to be Dry, Dry, Dry.

This is the third year for our little strawberry patch. We started with fifty plants of the variety “Jewel” and today there must be a couple of hundred, at least. I haven’t done much weeding, just enough to keep the berry plants ruling the space. I haven’t fertilized beyond the compost at planting time and the decomposing mulch (straw, mostly). And I haven’t watered. At all.

Early in the growing season, we had plenty of rain, and our first pick of berries on June 06 were definitely influenced by the rainfall. The fruit were of good size, about 20-30 grams, and they were of fine appearance; and I have to admit a bit of pride owing to the excitement Rebecca and the kids exhibited upon this first harvest.

But a serious drawback to being experienced and reasonably knowledgeable about fruit, is knowing when the quality is poor, fair, good, really good, and outstanding. When you know what a particular fruit is supposed to taste like, that knowledge can spoil you, make you hard to please, make you a bit on the snooty side….

I rated this first picking of my own strawberries between good and really good, but closer to good. Certainly far better than anything shipped 2,000 miles or more, and arriving here looking pretty but being pretty much without juice and sugar, and possessing only a faint taste of the flavor attributable to strawberries.

Still, I like my strawberries firmly in the “outstanding” category, and it was not until the last picking yesterday that I had my first truly excellent strawberries of 2007. And it’s all about being dry. When it’s dry (as in no rain for 2-3 weeks), fruit becomes more intensely flavored. Its juices are not diluted by too much rain (or irrigation). So the flavor is intense, the natural sugars, high. Vintage fruit years are dry, dry, dry.

To eat world-class fresh strawberries out of hand is an experience impossible to forget. It is a rare experience for most. It is an experience making one think about the days when almost everyone living within the Temperate Zone had access to locally-produced fruit, like fresh strawberries. And if the conditions were dry, dry, dry, then there is no way to forget the experience. What the local foods movement needs more than just about anything else, is more and more people experiencing the intense flavor, texture, juiciness, and freshness of local horticulture and pomology. I can tell you, good fruit is addictive—when you experience some, you want more of it.

Wouldn’t it be great if all we had to do to get it, is visit our local grocer?

The loss of local food sovereignty

For the third time in as many years, the U.S. will be a net importer of food in 2007. According to data from USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS), the U.S. is facing an increasing threat to its food sovereignty. Like our dependence upon foreign oil, we are becoming a society dependant upon other nations for its food supply. Imagine a headline referring to an Organization of Food Exporting Countries (OFEC) cartel:

OFEC announces food cutbacks, prices expected to rise

But don’t be shocked. For more than a decade now, right here in Michigan’s Great Southwest, we have been a net importer of strawberries, peaches, nectarines, tray-packed apples, plums, sweet cherries, Bartlett pears, fresh raspberries, onions, potatoes, and many other fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s the same story for chicken, beef, turkey, pork, and fish. And we shouldn't leave out dairy products because we’re net importers of those too. Of course, these farm products for the most part are being imported from other states. Still, when a region’s access to its own food industry is trumped by food being shipped in from other states and foreign nations, it means we have lost our local food sovereignty.

Now one might easily understand how such a thing could happen if we were discussing North and South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, or many other states lacking the soils and micro-climate we enjoy here in our corner of Michigan’s Water Wonderland. Yet Michigan leads all the other states in the production volume of fifteen agricultural commodities and ranks in the top ten for fifty more. How for example, can the third-leading state in the U.S. for apple production import more bulk fresh apples from Washington State, California, and New Zealand than it sells here in Michigan?

Actually, the answer is simpler than one may think: First, we are losing family farmers at an alarming rate. (As in ½ our apple orchards since 1982.) Second, we are still a much diversified agricultural production region, with only a couple of factory-styled farms producing the individual volume required to satisfy the needs of an increasingly consolidated retail foods industry. The rest do not produce enough of a single farm product to consistently supply the major chain stores. Third, we have experienced a collapse of local food processors, which means for the most part, we have access to locally grown food only on a seasonal basis. (And then only if we seek out farmers, fruit stands, and local farmers’ markets.) Finally, we the people don’t seem to care.

It’s this last aspect of not caring troubling me most, because unlike many other industries, the farming business cannot rebound once the land is developed. When a farm is converted to one acre lots and housing, it’s pretty much gone forever. So not caring has its consequences, and dependence upon others for food is what’s at stake. Not to mention the consequences of having no choice but to eat food harvested days or even weeks earlier, with little flavor, reduced nutritional value, and living in communities where food dollars are sent elsewhere instead of being circulated here.

Yet it’s not too late! If we make a choice to seek out local food producers, and make demands of our retailers to offer local farm products, and yes make a protectionist decision to stop buying those tasteless, tart, juice less, hollow, and hard California strawberries, we can regain our local food sovereignty. If we learn to freeze again, and dust off that old canner again, and relearn the experience of eating food that tastes good and is good for us, who knows what might happen.

Maybe someone will decide to open up a local foods store, or maybe someone will see there’s a market for canned Michigan peaches and invest in a commercial kitchen to do the processing. Maybe someone might even start to offer grass fed beef, free range chickens, and locally raised rainbow trout. Here within this unique corner of Michigan, just about anything is possible in agriculture. But only if we agree to a grass roots, bottom-up commitment to local food sovereignty, and then follow through with action....

Local grocers: rare as an underpaid CEO

Along with corporate concentration in retail foods, came the demise of most small town grocery stores. In just a couple of decades, important outlets for locally-produced food vanished. Consumer choices also vanished with local grocers—you can’t buy what is not on the supermarket shelf, and premium-quality fruits and vegetables, locally produced, rarely adorn chain store shelves.

But the loss of most communities’ ma and pop grocers also carries many hidden costs. For example, many consumers must now drive twenty miles or more, one way, to shop for food that was once available right in their home towns and neighborhoods. More fuel usage, more time away from family, wear and tear on vehicles, highways, more pollution...you get the picture.

Consumers’ retail food dollars thus no longer stay in their own communities and circulate by means of the multiplier effect. Instead, the money is sent electronically on a daily basis to distant headquarters of the giant food retailers. Remember that a dollar spent at a chain store supermarket is spent only once locally, while a dollar spent at a local grocer may circulate several more times within the community.

Think about what it is we’ve lost, and then think about joining the movement toward local food sovereignty. Regaining access to better choices for what you eat, and what you feed your families, requires you join the struggle when called. That struggle will start in your own neighborhood, town, village, or county. In other words, at the grass roots where nothing is more powerful than a committed citizenry allied for meaningful change. Lead the struggle if you can, or answer the call to be led. Either way, you will make a difference….

I had forgotten how burgers should taste

As planned, we drove the two hundred mile round trip to Sweetwater Local Foods Market on Saturday. The Market opened at 9:00 AM. We got there at 11:45 AM, and it looked like a storm had just swept through the place. We bought the last chicken; the last of the grass fed ground beef in bulk one-pound packages; the last four packages of beef patties, and the last pack of special snack sticks (a smoked meat product like a slim Jim). We bought organic lettuce, fair trade organic whole bean coffee, and a couple of cheeses made from raw, organic milk.

But our hope of filling our freezer was dashed; the Market has far greater demand than supply. This of course is a good thing, and I for one am happy we made the trip, despite the deep carbon footprint we left from going and coming without a full load.

Still, it was a heck of an experience to see how the Market had grown in just two years.

Yet the real experience was when we grilled the ground beef on Fathers' Day! Now, I've grilled a fair amount of food on the grill--from hot dogs to venison, and about everything in between. Burgers? I've grilled hundreds, maybe even a thousand or more. But I've never grilled one from grass fed beef until yesterday. Man, what an unusual experience.

First off, very little juice came bubbling up from the patty. It kind of just sat there on the grill and cooked without much sizzle. I had a hard time knowing when to turn the patties because they did not cook like an industrialized patty; they stayed plump, and they didn't curl up or shrink. Finally, I flipped them and there they were, beautifully seared and showing crisp, darkened lines from the hot grate.

I called for Rebecca to take a look at what I was doing because it fascinated me to experience such a difference in how they responded to grilling. She suggested I cut one open a bit to see what the inside looked like. I did and am glad I did because the burgers were done! Just the faintest hint of pink in the middle.

At the table, we ate the burgers and made unintelligible noises owing to an outstanding flavor that was but a very dim memory to me, until yesterday that is. "Best burgers we've had in our life," the teens opined. My Dad (79 years) said it took him back in time. My Mom just smiled and kept making noise.....

We'll be placing a large order that will hopefully be waiting for us next Saturday.

The price of safe food is not that much higher than the often-tainted industrialized stuff. We paid a buck apiece for the burger patties. The problem is, what a pain in the neck to access the stuff.

Vote for Me...

I've thrown my hat into the ring. I'm running for Eau Claire Village president on a platform that includes food and water, and because of contaminated industrial sites, even the air we're breathing is an issue.

My slogan (no kidding), " A free range chicken in every pot."

Close seconds, "Local food on every table," "Clean water at every sink," "I like Lee.""

We have really old water mains needing replacement, but because we're a village of less than 500 people, we struggle financially, and folks think a new water system is beyond our reach. I pledge to work toward a better water system. After all, my family is drinking the water too.

I want to bring food back into the lives of Eau Clairions. We are so lucky to live within this Great Fruit Belt, yet our access to local food for year around consumption is as poor as the next guy's.

So one thing I'm going to push the council for: A change in the ordinance now disallowing animal husbandry. It's simply wrong, very simply and very wrong, that residents of our little village cannot access safe meat. I see nothing wrong with allowing folks to raise a few animals for family consumption within the village limits. It's a heck of a lot better than telling them if they're going to eat store-bought chicken tonight, there's a better than 60% chance it's tainted.

For those who do not have enough space to raise a head of beef or other animal(s), I'm going to be proposing we develop a plan to utilize the village's farm (over 100 acres), for village residents to grow gardens, raise livestock, and to establish a small, licensed kitchen for community residents to process their own food for winter consumption. Just because we can't access locally produced food year around at the chain store supermarkets, doesn't mean we can't be eating local food year around.

Hamburgers and Fries in the Meantime....

A typical late afternoon at our home. 5:00 p.m. yesterday. Lee's tired after work, and has a 7:00 meeting about the upcoming Fiddle Fest in Berrien Springs. I've got a scheduled work phone call that will begin at 6:00. So, for dinner?

We choose one of our two Eau Claire restaurants, and Lee picks up our burgers and fries (and ice cream, of course!) from Main Street Burger. Good things: the food comes in a brown paper bag, tastes good, and the owners and employees are all local. Not so good things: restaurant ingredients come from the industrialized food system. But Main Street has little (almost no) choice about that. There isn't a good, close, reliable supply of local beef and potatoes. Not that our surroundings couldn't support both. But our food distribution system can't.

Our four-year-old Callie was pleased with dinner, since french fries dipped in ketchup are one of her favorites. Oh well, at least its not McDonalds. This time.

The chicken we'll be eating

Those of you trying not to take food for granted these days, might be interested in knowing my home county of Berrien in Michigan, produces enough chicken to feed each county resident one-half of one ounce per person, per year. That's less than a single chicken drummie per year for each of our 162,000 residents.

So I got to thinking what a wonderful opportunity for local farmers: Here in Berrien County, Michigan, a market exists for 2,700,000 chickens per year. That's almost three million chickens, and over $6 million in local economic stimulus, ripe for the multiplier effect. Meat that makes sense, and cash that will re-circulate within our communities.

But sadly, I predict we'll go on shooting craps with the 50 pounds of industrialized chicken we're each eating per year, on average. Actually, the odds at craps are considerably better than the odds with industrialized chicken: According to the Centers for Disease Control, 30% and 62% of all chicken sold at retail in the U.S., are tainted with salmonella and campylobacter, respectively. Time magazine calls chicken one of the most dangerous items in the American home.

Don't ya think we oughta care about the fact 80 million of us are getting sick every year from food borne illnesses? Care enough to do something?

Well, hard as it is to actually do something about it, I'm not going to eat Tyson, Perdue, or Pilgrim's Pride anymore, and we're going to travel almost one hundred miles and buy local chickens, humanely raised, and free ranged by a family who is feeding themselves the same chicken. Our plan is to buy enough to last till fall. So, we'll still be eating chickens, just not the poisoned ones.... (Uh, excuse me Mr. Tyson, but I'll have my chicken without the feces, if you please.)

Time to Get Serious About Local Meat

Here's our dilemma. We say we want to feed ourselves, and our kids, healthy food. Locally-grown. But we keep going to our grocery store to buy ground beef, chicken, milk, etc. and we cringe to think about the provenance of the food we're preparing and eating. So its time to try to put more of our money where our mouths are.

On Saturday we'll journey to the local food farmers market our friends Chris Bedford and Diana Jancik founded two years ago, the Sweetwater Market in Muskegon, Michigan. We've bought the occasional chicken there, but the market is more than sixty miles away, and we don't get there often. This time we're going to get serious and take a big ice chest to start filling our freezer.