Burgeoning Locavores

Did you know that the Oxford Word of the Year for 2007 was "locavore"? Here is an excerpt from their website:

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.

"Locavore” was coined two years ago by a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. Other regional movements have emerged since then, though some groups refer to themselves as “localvores” rather than “locavores.” However it’s spelled, it’s a word to watch.

By now, you all should know that I am one fashionable, trendy lady, and so if locavore is the new word, then you shall find it here ad naseum. Plus, as my friend Margie put it, this is Madison South, baby. Just as "locavore" is the word to watch, Irish Grover's are the people to watch. Period.

So, anyways, I've been struck at how when you live and work on a farm, it's pretty easy to be a locavore. Okay, maybe not easy, but definitely easier.

Here's Armando exhibiting our crop of free-range eggs, collected this morning:

I love the way the white and brown eggs mix and match in their cardboard homes.

Locavore breakfast? No problemo.

But what about supper? (And no, it's not dinner, darn it. Dinner happens at 1:00 p.m., when the long morning's work is done.)

We ain't San Francisco, but we got a little somethin' somethin' going on in that department, too. Here's what I'm cooking tonight:

Homegrown butternut squash.

Yum, yum. You can always butter me up with some butternut squash. Just in case you wondered.

And some good old fashioned, home-grown and corn-fattened beef (non-GMO, at least).

In a year or so, we'll have some even better beef to eat (and, yes, sell!). Our very own (non-certified organic) 100% grassfed beef!! Yoohoo!! I highly recommend you check out Jo Robinson's website Eat Wild for some really great information about the health and environmental benefits of grassfed beef. And then I highly recommend you mark your 2009 calendars with capital letters: BUY BEEF FROM JACKIE IN IRISH GROVE.

Okay, I admit. To make the near-authentic Panamanian meal carne asada, which, by the way, is what I'm cooking, I couldn't pull off the whole meal without a few un-local, fossil-fuel-siphoning, carbon foot-printing, world-warming ingredients to round it all off. Especially since it's January, and much of my garden-preserved goodies have long since been eaten.

Here are a few of the guilty parties:


I say if you strive for perfection, you'll only end up a downtrodden, bitter, wrinkly worry-wart. That's what I say, alright. (Why I say that is unbeknownst to us all.)

The moral to the story? When the urge to join the locavore movement becomes too great to resist, give your local farmer/gardener a call. Preferably one that lives in Irish Grove. We'd be more than happy to help you attain your new hipster status.