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Getting (and using) what we pay for

Posted at 9:19 AM on July 3, 2008 by Cher Stuewe-Portnoff

A couple of weeks ago, I reported that following the total loss of their next generation of layers, the Hilldebrands from Prairie Grass Farms were wondering "how much are people willing to pay for a dozen locally produced eggs?" I had no answer for them then, but apparently, for me, the answer is "at least $4.50." This week, that's what I paid, a new high, but grateful that the Hilldebrands were still driving from Florence, MO, up to the market with fresh eggs (and lamb) to offer.

We'll be eating fewer eggs at 37 1/2 cents each. I'm regarding each one with new respect. In more abundant days, the ubiquitous (cheap) egg was the protein of last resort -- the inexpensive, quick, nutritious meal when we came in late and no one felt like cooking. A casual addition, in whatever number the recipe required, to many baked goods. No more. Each egg is its own small miracle of nutrition and flavor, and we pay for it as such.

Buying local for some of the good reasons that I do has become a little like exercising -- the relationship between my effort and an assumed positive outcome is real enough, but it comes alive mainly in my mind. To experience the difference, I look forward to the farmers' markets where I stand face-to-face with the person who helped to bake, grow, nurture this food. When it's experiential -- more than a discipline that I've adopted -- it changes me.

I recently wrote about becoming hyper-aware of how buying non-locally takes potential income away from my own neighbors, and the internal incentive that provides to alter my spending habits. Such feelings are most powerful when those people have names, faces, voices that are familiar. The other day, I noted how little we waste of what I buy directly from growers. I'm not big on wasting food anyway; still, since we'd stopped growing our own, I'd gotten careless. Now we carry very little out to the curb on trash pick-up days -- less packaging; little for the compost bin, almost no food waste.

To waste what has been wholeheartedly planted, tended and harvested by these people who I recognize and who have told me something about their lives as growers would feel thoughtless or even mean-spirited (not to mention costly). The consideration of the grower who takes pride in her product, the gratitude of the consumer who values the producer and the product, it all brings us closer together. Buying local -- especially from farmers markets -- gives the added gift of experiencing our relatedness, of being a complete community of interdependent people -- a bonus, no extra charge. If I paid an additional 50 cents for eggs this week, I'm sharing the real increase in the cost of producing and marketing those eggs, and as long as I can, that seems fair enough.