So with just a few days to go before the first of August and the Eat Local Challenge, I find myself fretting over how to get more information out so that those of you who plan to participate will be able to identify sources of great food in our area. I'll be back later today to write more about that.
For now, though, I want to share my "makes you think" moment. I'm here in Kentucky with 1,500 youth and adults from across the world. This morning I was sharing my excitement about the Eat Local Challenge with a woman at breakfast when she told me it really isn't easy to do. So I told her of the usual ideas, get to know your farmers, go to the market, try to grow what you can at home, etc., when she revealed to me that she lives in Alaska. She can get fish but getting other kinds of meat is really difficult. If a person farms for subsistence, they are not allowed to sell the food they grow. Nearly everything she eats comes from the Lower 48. The growing season is very short where she is and always cold. It it too hard to keep chickens. And the people are getting sick with diabetes and heart ailments because they are increasingly relying on processed canned food. Hmmm.
But she delights in the fish and eats veggies when she can. And the rest...she is still working on it.
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