Last year when we took our first year students on an all-day retreat, we spent part of the day discussing Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book in which a family tries to live for a whole year eating only food raised within 100 miles of their home. This year’s summer reading, the book Eaarth by Bill McKibben, included a section about eating local foods.
The owner of the retreat center listened carefully to our
discussions about eating locally. Then last March, he bought two piglets. All
spring and summer, the pigs ate the scraps of food leftover from the groups
that come to do a ropes course at the retreat place. The staff posted photos of the pigs on facebook. Then just before our scheduled retreat, the pigs were slaughtered, smoked, and
turned into pulled pork.
The dinner included salad made with homegrown tomatoes and
local lettuce as well as apples and cider from a local farm. We ate salt potatoes,
which is a local delicacy. The potatoes were local, but the salt probably
wasn’t. At one time, our area was famous for producing salt, but I think now we
would need a time machine to get some.
The retreat place fed about 300 students, faculty, and
staff, and they did it mostly from local foods. “That was impressive,” said a
student in class today. “Now we have to figure out how to live like that all
the time.”
6 comments:
I believe they still mine salt under Lake Erie near Cleveland - fairly local.
That's about 350 miles away, but that might be the closest.
What a great thing to be teaching college students. Lays the best foundation. I hope they do figure it out - we'll all be better off.
Local foods TASTE way better.
I spend the time to do the same when I can. Buying apples from the local orachard down the road is fun. It's a Pick your own.
Funny it used to be that way because we could not get fresh veggies or fruit hardly at all during the winter months. I remember my Mom saying oranges where a Christmas treat because they were so expensive and were hard to get.
WE grow a lot of our own veggies in the summer and a pile of potatoes that we store, along with carrots, beets, and onions. SO for most of the winter we eat our own grown foods. We also grow our own beef and chickens but we are not considered farmers because we do not sell any. Interesting...
Nice shot. Having a garden helps with eating like that! :-D
Post a Comment