Do you like talking to strangers? It may come as a surprise to anyone who knows either myself or Brendan, but we do not like talking to strangers. We even avoid ordering the pizza on the phone. It is a funny dance for us at the door of a restaurant that we haven't been to before - no one wants to go first.

What the heck does this have to do with being a locavore? You have to talk to a lot of people. You have to ask questions at the farmers market. You are the one slowing down the line at the meat counter trying to determine where your food came from. You have to talk with farmers about where to get what animal in what season. You have to blog to get others to keep the local community thriving.

This year has allowed us to get a little bit better at talking with folks. We are delighted when store clerks take that extra moment to acknowledge that we are there, and have been supporting them for a long time. I love the person that makes the first move and introduces themselves. But here are a few very simple questions we have:

1) How do you go about even learning the name of someone that you have been shopping with for a year. It seems a little late for introductions at this point. They know our names because of the credit cards or checks, but we are clueless.

2) When do you introduce yourself to a neighbor? We have our eye on some people in our alley that have a compost pile, a garden that expands every year, they hang their clothes on the line to be dried, they are heating with firewood and use a push mower. They seem just like our kind of people but have been there for at least two years and we haven't made the move to say hello.

3) When you do find out that something doesn't have quite the providence you were looking for, how do you tell someone: "Thanks but no thanks." I feel bad.

Again, this year has helped us to start all of our new relationships on a better foot, but it is hard to go back and get the necessary information on the preexisting people in our lives. I am going to guess the answer is: be honest, apologize and have a laugh over it. But I am hoping there are some savvy communicators out there that have ideas.

Be brave. These people are fun!