Going Native

There's a strange thing going on in my kitchen. My eggs are from Kookoolan farms. My honey is native fireweed honey. The Deep Roots folks supplied me with black kale last week, collards this week, and then there is the bacon ends, ham hocks and sausage from Sweet Briar farms. I have my turkey on order for thanksgiving and awesome examples of fractals in nature from the cauliflower I picked up yesterday.

I know where all of this stuff came from.

And strangely enough, some of the market vendors are starting to recognize me. I chat about work while I buy coffee. And when I need good local grapes for a galette I end up with stunning interlochen from here. The woman who I buy them from was the same person who trusted me to know what to make with those fabulous fresh italian plums. It's like I'm living in an actual community, or something.

In the past, produce came from giant trucks. Or sometimes smaller vans, but still, the vans were not driven by someone who would say, "Sorry I couldn't get these too you yesterday but we were picking to catch up from the rain earlier this week." Instead they were driven by guys who would ask me if there was a way to tell if a cantelope was ripe from the outside. Or, in the best of times past, the produce would come from a market, yes, but one which brought things in from all over the world, nary a farmer in sight.

Here, it is all so close, so accessible, that it is carrying over to what we eat at home. Now if only I could figure out how to grow a cacao tree indoors.