The Grove Project

How to be a Cape Fear Locavore

Star News blogger Ryan Tuck’s piece about the word ‘locavore’ has got me thinking about the concept. I was unfamiliar with the ‘locavore’ movement until we moved here to Wilmington. Ironically, without knowing quite what I was up to, I experienced the joy of eating locally grown foods while living in the densely agricultural coastside community of Half Moon Bay, California, where I tended a farmer’s stand in exchange for a steady supply of fresh fruits and vegetables.

First introduced by Jessica Prentice, a professional chef and author from San Francisco, the word ‘locavore’ refers to a person who eats only locally grown foods. Typically, the range of a locavore’s foraging is a hundred miles, though this can vary. Like many people, apparently, I learned about locavores from Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Animal,Vegetable,Miracle, which describes how Kingsolver and her family spent one year eating only food they had grown themselves in their garden or else bought from farmers who had produced their products locally. The thing that stuck most with me after reading the book was the realization that we have all come to depend on (even demand) the availability of food from every corner of the world. We want fresh, ripe tropical-fruit even in the dead of winter. Kingsolver describes the painful experience she once had of having to say ‘no’ to her daughter’s request for fresh fruit. She then goes on to describe her absolute joy at finding ‘big crimson bundles’ of rhubarb to stand in as a fruit during the icy-cold season.

Since reading Kingsolver’s book I’ve been sensitized to some local locavores as well: Check out Trace Ramsey’s web site cricketbread.com, especially the article Starting the 100 Mile Diet. Or read Meat Holiday: A note from the Cricket Bread 100-mile diet project, which can be found in the Oct/Nov issue of the Tidal Creek newsletter. Both articles are written with such care and show a sensitivity toward the reader trying to overcome some of the difficult challenges of the diet. Rather than making it seem like some obscure, unattainable feat, Ramsey breaks the diet down into five simple rules that seem reasonable and relatively easy to adhere to. Rule Number One, for instance, states that anything in the cupboard is fair game, so there’s no need to waste or throw out food just because it didn’t originally come from within 100 miles. The soy sauce is close by on the bottom shelf—It’s locavore!

Another good source of information and camaraderie for Wilmington locavores is the web site wilmingtonlocalliving.com, where blogger Jessica Probst chronicles her experiences as a local eater , also providing readers with news about local farms, garden-affecting weather and even recipes using ingredients found in this area.

Here in the Cape Fear region, it’s easy to contemplate life as a successful locavore given the abundance of farms of all varieties—vegetable, poultry, goat, pig, etc., within the100 mile locavore radius. There is also of course a good variety of seafood to be caught or bought locally. And you don’t have to actually drive a hundred miles to get those foods you need for your movement, because most of what we need is provided by the farmer’s at the Riverfront Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, also at the Poplar Grove Historic Plantation Farmer’s Market on Wednesdays.

I am a faithful customer of the downtown market and have come to rely heavily on the food I buy there on Saturdays. Fruits and vegetables come from the Black River Organic Farm stand, for instance. You can buy wonderful freshly-made cheese and locally caught flounder, crab and shrimp from Nature’s Way Farm & Seafood. Our eggs, chicken, and sausage come from the folks at Grassy Ridge Farm.

There is something deeply satisfying about buying and eating foods from where we live, something that is above all basic. Eating locally makes you think, This is the way things should be; The complete interaction with the community, the sense of more abundant health, and the knowledge that we are taking care of the environment by not spending precious, unnecessary “food miles”. The locavore movement is one that effects so much overall good and can be relatively easy to adhere to especially if you are lucky enough to find yourself living in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina.