Good Food Ideas

If you would like to help change how we access our local food sys­tem, here are some ideas you can try to make a dif­fer­ence. These sug­ges­tions came from Green Amer­i­can mag­a­zine (June/July 2011) and I thought they were worth sharing.

• Start your own gar­den or even raise your own chick­ens for eggs. Find urban gar­den­ing advice online or check out the plethora of infor­ma­tion on gar­den­ing no mat­ter the size of your plot of land.

• Make your own organic soil. Find out how to compost…it’s pretty sim­ple. Again, a wealth of infor­ma­tion is online or at the library.

• Eat local and organic. It’s too late this year to join a CSA (Com­mu­nity Sup­ported Agri­cul­ture) but check into it for next year. This sum­mer, reg­u­larly visit our excel­lent local farm­ers’ mar­kets or The Delaware County Com­mu­nity Mar­ket or look to your favorite gro­cer to see if they carry local pro­duce. Ask if the grow­ers use organic farm­ing meth­ods because many do, but may not be cer­ti­fied organic.

• Close the loop. If you want to get organic waste for your farm or used veg­etable oil to power your car, con­tact grow­ing­SOUL to see if you can form a rela­tion­ship with a local Chipo­tle Mex­i­can Grill (301–537-7422 or growingsoul.org).

• Join a local food club. Google “organic food deliv­ery” or “local food club” to find a ser­vice near you. I did that and found a few resources in our area. In addi­tion to the Delaware County Com­mu­nity Mar­ket right here in Delaware that offers per­son­al­ized pro­duce boxes, there is Green Bean Deliv­ery (greenbeandelivery.com) and a great resource for find­ing info about local food sources is Local Mat­ters (Local-Matters.org) and their Fresh Con­nect search page.

• Eat less meat, more veg­gies. It’s bet­ter for you and the planet! There is lots of infor­ma­tion on this sub­ject for your con­sid­er­a­tion as well. Do an inter­net search or read up on it — you might be sur­prised at what you learn.

• Involve chil­dren. This is key, isn’t it? A resource men­tioned in the arti­cle is Earth­Works, an urban farm in Detroit, Mich., who has devel­oped a cur­ricu­lum for their Grow­ing Healthy Kids pro­gram. To learn more, con­tact them at earthworks@cksdetroit.org. Don’t for­get about Delaware’s own Strat­ford Eco­log­i­cal Cen­ter — they offer many won­der­ful edu­ca­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren and adults alike. Just won­der­ing the farm on a sunny after­noon and vis­it­ing the ani­mals is an edu­ca­tion in and of itself.

• Vol­un­teer. Find a sus­tain­able farm or food jus­tice orga­ni­za­tion at LocalHarvest.org and put your time where your beliefs lie. Strat­ford and Sim­ply Liv­ing are both great resources (simplyliving.org or 614–447-0296).

• Invest in good food. Com­mu­nity invest­ing orga­ni­za­tions offer vehi­cles that sup­port cre­ation of small, local busi­nesses. Learn more about what’s being done in our area by con­tact­ing Sim­ply Liv­ing (con­tact infor­ma­tion above).

Enjoy the local harvest!

Tues­day Trip­pier lives in Delaware, is a writer and mother of three, soon to be four, with a spe­cial inter­est in green living.

Posted by Tuesday Trippier on Jul 19 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.