Localvores!

I am on the board of NOFA-VT, and one of our quarterly meetings was yesterday. I always come away from these meetings pretty jazzed up because the NOFA board and staff are an amazing bunch of people doing great work for organic farms.

Part of yesterday's meeting involved a presentation from Barbara Duncan, who is the Executive Director of the Vermont Earth Institute. She explained to the board that there are a series of localvore networks sprouting up in different parts of the state. For example, here is one group in the Champlain Valley area of Vermont, and another one in the Upper Connecticut River Valley.

Localvores are people who try to eat only locally produced products, and typically these groups will have local-only potlucks, or challenge themselves to eat totally locally for a week or month at a time. Then the whole group helps everyone else in the group to reach the goal, by pooling information about farms, recipes, and products. As you can imagine, it is easier to eat all-local up here in August than it is in January, but either way it takes effort and ingenuity. I mean, we don't grow too much coffee, or mine too much salt, up here, even in August. But localvores try to do it all!

Anyway, Barbara wanted to discuss with the board how NOFA might be able to hook localvores up with local farms, or how NOFA could otherwise help support this movement. We had a great brainstorming session. Maybe we will have a little household local only challenge this spring or summer. It looks like it would be fun.