I lived in Central Colorado for more than half my life, and I loved many things about living there. I hiked the foothills most mornings and looked out on the valley where the massive Sawatch Range meets the Sangre de Cristos. I rode my bike and walked everywhere. I cross-country skied most weekends during the winter. The air was clean. I knew all of my neighbors.
But when I moved to Western Oregon, I was blown away by the food. Almost everyone has a backyard garden. The farmer’s market goes from April to November, overflowing with local, organic produce, wild berries, mushrooms, nuts, honey, meat, and eggs. We can choose from a dozen or more CSA’s. Small health food stores are open from early morning to late night in every neighborhood, stocked with affordable organic food – most of it local. I felt like I’d moved to Eden.
Well, Central Colorado is starting to feel a lot more like Oregon.
We first visited our friends Jon and Shannon and their two kids in Hotchkiss. They’re homesteading about 80 acres of land there. They built a beautiful passive solar house, and they have a sprawling garden, a greenhouse, an outdoor kitchen, and a pond.
But Hotchkiss and Paonia are on the fertile Western Slope of Colorado – an area long known for its plump, juicy peaches. As we meandered through canyons and over mountains toward my hometown, I imagined we’d find it much the way we left it – a veritable food desert.
The mountain towns of Colorado were not true food deserts, a term coined to describe inner cities with no access to foods needed to maintain a healthy diet. When I was growing up there, Salida had three small grocery stores, and they were stocked with produce. But it was all trucked in from unknown locations thousands of miles away, and none of it was organic. When my husband and I moved back to the area for a year in 2001, we could sometimes find a few heads of locally grown, organic lettuce in the refrigerator of a tiny health food store.
But now Salida has a bustling farmer’s market every Saturday, which is teeming with fruits and vegetables, all grown in the area. I ran into a friend picking up his CSA share – a huge box overflowing with lettuce, basil, zucchini, vine-ripened tomatoes, and more.
My friends Dave and Suzanne of the Morgan Center for Earth Literacy invited me to their property, where they’re growing an enormous amount of organic produce in the shadow of Mount Shavano. They’re raising chickens and stocking an old-fashioned root cellar with preserves. They sell produce, flowers, and Dave’s homemade green chili and tortillas at the Saturday Market.
A store opened this year in downtown Salida selling cheeses and meats, fruits and vegetables – all grown and made in the region.
This part of Colorado is at 7,000 feet elevation and gets only about 10 inches of precipitation a year. It’s a climate and terrain that can be challenging for gardening. (Just 60 miles away, Leadville’s average growing season is 25 days.) So if the local, organic movement is revolutionizing this part of the world, I wonder what’s happening elsewhere.
Is a local, organic movement sprouting where you live too?
My wife, Meezie, and I have lived in Montrose, CO for over ten years. The city has always sponsored a farmer’s market, during the summer months, that we have thoroughly enjoyed for all that time. There is no substitute for local produce !
That’s great, Dick. I agree – local produce is the best.
The farmer’s market here in Fairbanks, Alaska is by no means huge, but it has a steady flow of people who like to get locally grown. There are a lot of people from foreign countries who come here in the summer, grow vegetables, then sell them at FM.
The one in downtown Anchorage is gigantic! It has lots of other things there too, but it really seemed limitless.
This is great! Thanks for sharing.
Abby,
Great post and good to see you and the family!
From my perspective I think the ‘local’ label has largely become a bit overused. When I go to Denver, which is 250 miles and two mountain passes away, i see the food that my neighbors grow as being marketed as ‘local’ at the posh restaurants and Whole Foods. One of my favorite Denver restaurants even insists on serving local seafood, which is bass that is grown in the hot springs in the San Luis Valley. I wonder how the carbon footprint of driving a pickup truck 1/2 way across Colorado compares with sticking a couple Salmon in the bottom of a 747 that is flying from Seattle anyways. And who wants to order bass!
To me eating local is eating food that is produced in my community. This just isn’t possible in a urban or suburban environment until Americans turn their trophy lawns and golf courses into farm and pasture. Or until they get the whole Soylent Green thing worked out.
On a more positive note- the public schools in Paonia and Hotchkiss Colorado are serving almost exclusively local food this week. http://www.deltacountyindependent.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14727
Wow, that’s really cool about the school lunches. Call me an optimist, but I think we’ll see more and more urban and suburban dwellers turning their trophy lawns into gardens. Maybe that’s because Eugene birthed the Food Not Lawns movement. But seriously, even the Obamas are doing it. It’s just plain hip.
We have several Farmer’s Markets in the south Houston/Clear Lake area where we live. Your comment about moving to Oregon and finding an Eden really makes me miss Monterey, CA, where we lived for two years before moving to the armpit of America 🙂
There, the harvest was plentiful nearly year-round, and a much greater variety of produce was locally grown and harvested.
One thing that has been on my mind, that I may as well mention here, is that in the midst of this tremendous move towards more organic/locally grown foods and homesteading and putting food by and living simple, I have not seen much about living off the land, ie. picking mushrooms and berries, and fishing and hunting.
Recently I wrote a semi-humerous post about Russians and environmental change, and one thing that I haven’t seen environmentally-conscious Americans doing (something Russians have been doing for…ever) is mushroom and berry picking. I wonder why this is? And wouldn’t it be a great pass-time to promote? No carbon footprint, great, outdoorsy, natural family fun, plus natural foods 🙂
Wondering what you think…
Yes, I agree – gathering berries, herbs, mushrooms, etc. is a great idea. I think it’s hard for those of us who grew up getting all of our food in grocery stores to make the move toward eating wild foods. It just seems scary, like we’ll pick hemlock or nightshade by accident. I think gathering one or two common plants, like dandelions, nettles, and blackberries, is a great way to get more comfortable with the idea of eating wild things.
I listen to the Herb Mentor podcasts occasionally, and he often talks to experts on gathering wild foods. : http://herbmentor.podbean.com.
Linda Runyon talked about living entirely off the land for many years. She says the wild plants around us are far more nutritious than the plants we grow, not to mention free.
http://herbmentor.podbean.com/2009/09/10/wild-edible-plants-with-linda-runyon/
I love your post about Russians and environmental change. So interesting.
This is really cool. That would make it an near ideal place to live for our family – close to the mountains AND farms.
Yes, it is pretty idyllic. I think you guys would love the hiking around there.
Hey Abby,
Great to come across your blog! Being from Buena Vista for the last few years, I dare say I’m familiar with your home valley and perhaps another journalist in your immediate family 🙂 It’s been really exciting for me to watch the local food movement taking hold in the Ark valley. In addition to growing our own food ( http://www.southmainco.com/index.php/articles/life-in-bv/66-grateful-harvest )
we shop at the Buena Vista farmer’s market most weekends (going on its 2nd year, I believe), and participate in Weathervane Farm’s CSA- http://www.weathervanefarmbv.com/ . There are certainly lots of great people with great intentions in our beautiful valley, and I think we’re hitting a critical mass on smart growth and smart food. One fascinating lesson has been to follow the process of BV’s Eddyline Restaurant and Brewery going local, and seeing how much of an effect the purchasing power of such an establishment can have. Here’s an article I wrote about Eddyline going local: http://www.southmainco.com/index.php/articles/community/263-eddyline-brewpub-goes-local . Anyhow, thanks for the good reads, and I’ll be following your blog. Cheers!
Hi Dustin. Thanks for commenting! We didn’t get a chance to spend time in Buena Vista on this trip. It’s exciting to hear that the local, organic movement is growing there too. I read about South Main awhile back in GOOD Magazine. (http://www.good.is/post/the-good-100-south-main-colorado/) It sounds like a cool development (although it cracked me up that they used the tagline “Taking the City to the Suburbs”, since I would use neither of those terms to describe Buena Vista.) Thanks for linking to your article. Next time we’re in the area, we’ll definitely stop at Eddyline Restaurant. It sounds amazing.
Hey Abby. I’m totally with you on the city/ suburbs bit 🙂 Come say hi next time you’re in the valley. All the best,
Dustin