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Moving Next Door to Sareen or Donna (I Wish)

Posted at 7:37 AM on October 30, 2008 by Cher Stuewe-Portnoff (3 Comments)

If I were to move again, I would aim to live next door to Donna or Sareen. What they are doing with local foods is enough to break your heart (in a good way). Here, I'm nervous about eating locally through the winter. I just took stock -- we have local apples, squash, sweet potatoes (from Whole Foods). Half a grocery bag of green tomatoes, picked way after dark in my long flannel nightgown, flashlight in hand, upon remembering that our first hard freeze was at hand. The food budget has imploded and must be reduced by 50% right now, if we are to pay the property tax bill (way up, go figure) and medical insurance premiums (up) with our conservatively invested teacher's retirement income (down, our "fixed income" having come unfixed).

Looking back at an out-of-control summer, I'm a little dazed by the first-ever crash-and-burn of our putting-by efforts. The heart of our plan, the garden, collapsed when we learned that the sunny back third of our yard was likely a former heating-coal-ash dump in the early 1900s. We'd put in tomato plants, with difficulty, then started tracking down the reasons why the ground was so impenetrable... and then we had to pull those up and discard them. Coal ash is filled with heavy metals, not a medium for edible plants. We still had a few plants in pots, and moved those around the front yard through the summer, trying to capture the best sun. This winter, we'll look at whether raised beds and potted varieties might be a partial solution for next year.

Meanwhile, we sucked up the high price of market produce and, with some misgivings, decided to buy a freezer. Want ads work when you have lots of time to shop, but we needed an energy-efficient model right away to take advantage of the short growing season. After some research, we landed in a national retail store (email me for details). From a locavore perspective, we lost 6-plus weeks (a) waiting for delivery, (b) discovering the freezer to be defective, (c) connecting with a live person at the retail store - nearly 2 weeks of daily attempts, (d) following the mandatory process to confirm the defect - 2 more weeks, and (e) waiting for the freezer to be picked up and a credit to be issued. We did finally find a reputable local dealer, who had a freezer in our house 3 days after we called. (The first few local dealers recommended to us all had gone out of business, hence the national chain.) That freezer is filled with what was left from local growers -- beef, chickens, pork, apples, squash. The remainder of my Oklahoma whole wheat flour, from last spring when we were there. Looks like another meat-centered winter.

Reflecting, I'm impressed how hard it can be to afford to eat locally, without growing your own - and how hard it is for my younger neighbors to grow their own, both parents working and raising kids. I'm concerned with the price and quality, for preserving, of urban market produce (more about that later), wonderful as it is. We want to look more closely at those issues in the next few weeks, putting some numbers and some conclusions together.

Meanwhile, I feel like the court jester of central region locavores. We're in it for the long haul, not just this year, so this is just an inconveniently public bump in our road. We've lived by the adage "eat locally - think globally" in the past, and we will again. Not discouraged, just tired and short on grocery money. We'll figure it out.

But not this week. We're volunteering in the presidential campaign, and through the 4th, we're knocking on doors and helping keep voters (of any stripe) in place in the long lines expected at our St. Louis County polling place, doing what we can to make them comfortable and appraised of their voting rights, if needed. We think the outcome will have a lot to do with the issues that also make us locavores. On the 5th, we rest and, we hope, celebrate. Then, like everyone else, we'll get back to work on the problems that face us, especially those having to do with what we and our neighbors can eat through the winter.

Comments (3)

Sorry to hear about your problems obtaining a freezer. I want to share how we got ours, just to give others looking a suggestion.
Last spring we started pricing small chect freezers in stores. Then my husband got the idea to look on Craig's List. Lo & behold we found a very large one listed about 10 miles away at a reasonable price. When we went to look at it the man said he was so anxious to get it out of his garage that we could have it for free! I did have to do some major scrubbing with bleach water, but it all came clean.

Posted by Julie | October 30, 2008 8:20 PM

Come on now Scott - we aren't really up to much at all over here. I am paranoid about winter and my freezers are all full! I need to find a new solution to get our food put away in the next few weeks. Anyway, welcome to MN and let me know if/how I can help. I usually default to hoarding, so if there is local food around, I will let you know so you can join in the food storange. Who knew I had so much in common with a squirrel?

Posted by Sareen | November 5, 2008 11:23 AM

Cher - you've had more than your fair share of locavore bumps in the road. Yikes. Hopefully next season will go more smoothly. In the meantime, if you're ever near Kalamazoo, I'll gladly share MI bounty ... Donna

Posted by Donna McClurkan | November 6, 2008 7:25 AM