After the recent wild infatuation with local foods, the idea of eating locally (and sustainably) is, not surprisingly, now subject to some critical comment. Some people question what is really more environmentally helpful, cost-effective and low on food mileage-food from a radius close to home or from across the continent? This is a good question for people who live on islands where the local food-shed consists largely of salt water. I am not personally fond of plankton, rockweed or many of the other species that proliferate in water. The creatures that feed upon them are at times elusive-an unreliable source of dinner even if very delicious when captured. That’s why there are farms, because people in our culture appreciate a sure thing with their food supply.
The 100-mile diet, adhered to by some and espoused by Barbara Kingsolver who wrote about her family’s experience in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is certainly an inspirational model for making us think about where our food comes from and probably a good thing for everyone to do at least once, “the store” not being the answer. I suspect islanders think about this more often than many mainlanders simply because of the thought and planning it takes to provision an island home.
Islanders, and everyone else, used to be so much better at producing food for themselves, especially vegetables, milk and eggs. Pigs, cows and chickens dotted our landscape, as well as the occasional beef critter. In this, we were hardly different from mainlanders. Some of this urge is creeping back, at least here on Islesboro, and a fine looking steer moored to a spike graces the yard of a neighbor about a mile away. We hear about chicks being hatched and, despite last year’s disastrous gardening seasoning, a few new gardens have been created and fenced in.
Elsewhere, any restaurant with the least pretension to style and flavor makes sure it is backed by a farmer and local sources of ingredients. I recently stopped at a Berkshire lodge with a trendy restaurant where a small field was being harrowed into a garden. I asked the man on the tractor what they were going to plant. He sighed and said, “Whatever the chef wants.”
Well, why not? This all seems good to me. So why am I still going to the store? For the same reason my Victorian predecessor in this island house and her Colonial predecessors did: we want rice, coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar, molasses, almonds, spices, wine, brandy, tapioca, olive oil and grain, preferably wheat, in the form of flour. Then add to that the exotic hankerings of an early twenty-first century American-coconut milk and fish sauce for Thai cookery, pasta for a weekly dish with an Italian slant, filo dough and feta cheese for spanikopita made with our own spinach, and stuff like balsamic vinegar, capers, brie, peanut butter and orange juice. Citrus period.
It is an article of faith among many that if they do not eat fresh fruits like melon, grapes, mangoes, blood oranges and strawberries year round, they will perish. I myself am a little subject to the idea that the sides of my intestines will grow together if I do not shove a green salad through them daily, even though our Constitution was written and adopted by people who did not do that. Neither did they sit in front of a computer screen all day long.
What is goofy about the non-local diet is, for example, apples from China, New Zealand or even the Pacific Northwest. We ate our last island-grown apple at the end of April. To be truthful, I ought to have eaten it a couple weeks sooner than I did because it was, shall we say, sub-prime. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” says the old saw, with no help from mangoes or California strawberries. Apple trees are so generous that if we gathered every apple that grew on our island, Islesboro, would have plenty to eat, and could dry some to squeak through April into May when rhubarb shows up. Not to mention the time-honored brewing of cider. Who needs apples from away?
The answer to the question of what makes sense when eating locally probably lies in the not-too-distant food-history past. John Farrow the author of The History of Islesborough, Maine, reports that about a third of the island historically had soil good enough for agriculture. Barley, corn and rye grew here; barley made good beer, rye made whiskey, and rye and corn made bread. Potatoes thrived and were sold in Boston, further than a hundred miles away, which carried by sail, did not add carbon to the atmosphere to get them there. I expect that the ships returned from Boston with molasses, rum and maybe even lemons or limes (to go with the rum). Wheat probably came from the mainland, perhaps as near as Lincolnville. However, much of New England bought wheat in Colonial times from the Middle Atlantic. In return they sold Pennsylvanians and Baltimoreans cheese produced by Yankee housewives. None of this is what you call a one-hundred mile diet.
Sandy Oliver is a freelance writer who lives on Islesboro.