As more people are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, they’re finding decreasing food miles can make an immediate impact. There’s a simple way to focus on eating local- cooking up a 100 mile meal!
Whatever lens you look at local food through- food miles, local economy, food waste, ecology, soil health, humane animal care, climate crisis, community building, nutritional content or simply TASTE- local food wins. Hands Down. Hands in the ground.
Let’s savor the ideas of “Growing Your Own + Knowing Your Farmer” as a two tined approach to digging in and eating more local.
Forks in the Dirt
Cows at Miron Dairy in Hugo MN, 13 miles from my home.
By the Numbers
Figuring out food miles can be a little shocking at first. It is estimated the average item you pick up from any grocery store has traveled around 1,500 miles before you find it on a shelf. Think of different common foods you buy if you pick up around the Twin Cities Metro Area:
Raspberries from Mexico- 2,000 miles
Garlic from China- 5,000 miles (90% of garlic comes from China)
The second annual BearPower Harvest Party will feature FREE small bites crafted by local chefs from local food. We’re pairing delicious food with family activities and eco-friendly information.
Our Local Chefs
This is your chance to celebrate community grown food! Join us 12-3pm on Sunday, September 22, 2019. The event will take place at the White Bear Area YMCA Community Gardens, at 2100 Orchard Lane behind the YMCA building. We’ll be serving food until we run out, so join the party early. We’ll be inside the YMCA if the weather is really bad, so this is a rain or shine event!
Follow the Harvest Party Facebook Event for Updates and Fun!
Last year’s event was a blast!
Local Food
Farmer Butch pulls a Rutabaga!
Much of the produce was grown in local community Gardens. Our own WBL School District (Central, Lakeaires, Matoska and Oneka) the WBL Health Partners Clinic Garden, Tamarack Nature Center Garden and the YMCA Community Gardens are all sharing produce for the event. Local organic farm, All Good Organics, will again be donating lots of organic grown goodness to round out our garden harvests.
Local Chefs
Chef Matt Ellison of Bonfire Restaurants + Chef Peggy of Margaux’s Table
Chefs Matt Ellison of Bonfire Restaurants and Peggy Doran of Margaux’s Table are donating their time and talents to turn the food into tasty meals. They’ere even inviting a few lucky kids to help them prep food before the party starts! Contact me directly if you are interested in helping the chefs too. Local fall veggies will delight your taste buds; think Fall soup + rustic salad… but the exact recipes will have to wait as the chefs see what produce rolls in the day before!
In addition to the
veggies, BearPower has brought more community goodness together. Pine
Tree Apple Orchard and the White
Bear Area Emergency Food Shelf are teaming up again to hand out apples and raise awareness of
local hunger issues and how you can help. Farmers Market favorite, Great
Harvest Bread Company, is donating bread to
use in the small bites that will be served. All Good Organics will be on site
to talk about organic farming and will likely have something delicious to give
away!
Activities
WBL Seed Library
The YMCA will be holding a few Kids’ Fitness classes in the garden. The White Bear Lake Seed Library will be giving seed saving demonstrations and information on their organization, housed in our downtown public library. BearPower is bringing family fun with giant yard games and ways to make healthy eating and activities a part of your routine. Everyone’s favorite carrot, Chomp, will be on site to get kids pumped about living healthy.
Kids with Chomp at last year’s Harvest Party
The WBL schools will have a table about their gardens, and teachers on site to talk about schoolyard gardens. Ramsey County Master Gardeners will be available for your gardening Q&A. Forks in the Dirt will have a table about the impact of eating local, getting kids in the garden and gardening tips. Our local WBL PD will be there as well with ideas for staying safe while out and about.
Event Grew from Love
Dr. Keeler at a previous BearPower event
This event grew from long-time Health Partners physician, Dr. Elsa Keeler, and her commitment to growing healthy families. Dr. Keeler is taking a leave of absence while working hard to fight cancer.
Let’s take some time to celebrate all we’ve grown this season! Hope to see you there… you don’t get to vote unless you sample 😉
A new Farm to School Bill has just been introduced and it could mean lots of healthy, local food for school-age kids statewide!
This bill would make grant money available to stakeholders in all stages of the food system. It has the potential to make the local food system flow more naturally from local farmer to local school kids. The $2 million in grant money would be available to different cogs within the local food chain.
Farmer Butch of All Good Organics talking pumpkins with a little local.
Farmers would be able to apply for technical assistance to help them cut through some of the red tape in selling to schools (there is a LOT). Schools would be able to apply for reimbursement in working with purchasing from individual farms, transportation and packaging costs. There’s even a portion that would be available for school gardens and agricultural education related to local foods.
From the Ground Up
“This seems like a great opportunity to connect local food supplies with kids in our community. Programs like this do our kids a great service in understanding the food supply chain and how we access those resources,” says principal John Leininger. Leininger is at Matoska International Elementary School in White Bear Lake, which has started a small gardening program on site.
Matoska International Elementary teachers and school garden leaders, Dawn Maple and Angela Bianco
“This bill could be really helpful for schools to implement or increase their farm to school offerings, with school credited recipes and other pre-done marketing templates without having to reinvent the wheel with our already limited resources,” said Bridget Lehn, MBA, RD, Nutrition Services Coordinator for White Bear Lake Area Schools, referring to the state level “Farm to School Coordinator” position that is part of the bill.
Local Food Hub, The Good
Acre, which works directly with local farmers says, “We 100% support it!”
and for good reason. They’ve seen first-hand how farmers working with similar
programs have grown and flourished.
Local Food Impact
School lunches reach more kids than any restaurant or monthly supplemental programs can. There is a social aspect as well; kids that see other kids eating fresh fruits and veggies at the lunch table next to them are more likely to try the same things. It should be noted that the funds they are proposing would be for local produce as well as meat and dairy products.
According to the
National Farm to School Network,
every dollar invested in farm to school programs generates $2.16 to the local
economy. Kids get more nutritious foods, farmers can make ends meet, and a few
more
“This
bill is good for local farmers. It’s good for our children, and it’s good for
local economies too,” said Rep. Todd Lippert, DFL-Northfield, who sponsored
the bill along with Sen. Michael Goggin, R-Red Wing.
Your Voice Matters
A similar bill made it through the house and senate committees in 2017, but ultimately wasn’t included in a final spending bill. So, if you think the health of our kids and our local economy is worthwhile, let your representatives know that you support this bill by calling or emailing them today!
I usually focus on what we can do individually to impact our Food System. But, when we have a chance to do something collectively to help our kids AND local farmers I needed to share it with you all. I’m really curious, what do you think about Farm to School initiatives?
This Harvest Party grew from the BearPower organization. White Bear Lake is lucky to have the efforts and talents of this group of dedicated people. They’re working to bring healthy living to our community in so many different ways.
I’ve been digging into coordinating this BearPower Harvest Party with the BearPower team and loving finding the best of the best to help celebrate community grown food. We’ve brought together the cream of the crop local chefs to prepare all that lovingly grown food. Add to that a great mix of activities to take over our White Bear Area YMCA gardens for the day and you’ve got a can’t miss event! We’ve got FREE food, games, information, samples and activities to get you growing your love of good food! Continue reading
It is that time of year gardeners… Everything is ripening, and FAST in the garden right now. So right now is the time to start looking at your plants’ produce not just as food- but also as seed for next year’s garden crops. Time to start seed saving!
I started saving seeds because I got behind on picking my pole beans. When I found a few (ok, lots) of bean pods that were swollen and starting to yellow and a light bulb turned on. I didn’t have to toss these inedible beans into the compost- I could let these keep growing and save these to plant for more beans next year.
It was a sublimely empowering moment. One I want you to have too!
Beginners Luck
I got lucky starting with one of the easiest seeds to save. For the first few years I saved mostly bean varieties and native flowers. I’m still a novice when it comes to saving seeds. Which is why I’m the perfect person to pass the torch: if I can do it – you can too! I want you to feel that same kind of power that saving your own seeds invites.
The Barn + Diane’s Garden at Heritage Farm, Seed Savers Exchange. Photo Credit: Molly Moe
Seed Savers Exchange
Diane Ott Whealy and I in her magical heirloom garden. Photo credit Molly Moe
First- I want to give a shout out to the Seed Savers Exchange for their recent Summer Conference and Campout on Heritage Farm. I’m still buzzing with all the new information I brought home. I had to share some of what I learned with you all!
They’ve built a vibrant community of dedicated volunteers and staff, all starting with co-founders Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy in 1975. I was lucky enough to meander through Diane’s gardens with her at the beginning of the weekend. Continue reading
I love that when I took a step back and looked at why I care about local food so much, the answers came full circle! Of course, nature had her answer all wrapped up like that. And just for the record, no one knows exactly what ‘local food’ means… some say it is food grown ‘within 100 miles’ of the purchase, others say ‘in my state’.
Here’s a quick(ish) look into why I believe taking the extra effort to eat local pays off in dividends larger than we can measure.
Nothing beats sun ripened home grown tomatoes!
Local Food Tastes Better
Fresh + local food just tastes better. Exhibit A> The Tomato. Homegrown varieties will leave you smiling as you savor the layers of flavor that drip off the sun warmed juices. The store bought, often packaged version of tomatoes we get up North in winter are pale pink, mealy, styrofoam imposters. Don’t even get me started on eggs 😉
Nutritional Value
Food loses nutrients after it is harvested- up to 30% in three short days! Being able to pick a salad out of my garden or buy from a farmer that harvested earlier that day means more nutritional ‘bang’ for my buck or my work than buying food that was shipped across the country. Not to mention food flown/shipped here from another continent before it was ripe. Continue reading
Looking back over the first year of sharing food stories and info with whoever would listen- I had to stop and say THANK YOU! Thanks for making me so happy I took that leap of faith!!
I’ve learned more than I could have imagined; about growing food, farmers, food systems and building websites- but I also had a chance to distill what is important to me. I got to hang out with dozens of farmers on lovingly cared for land. I got to eat my way through a delicious summer and ate mostly locally grown (home preserved) food all winter.
Karin Costa helping my boys get their weekly sweet corn fix!
Officially, my website had 4,469 reads and lots of engagement over the many different posts on the blog, Facebook and Instagram… again, thanks for showing up!
The Good Acre (TGA) provides Full Circle Local Food System Support. From soil to your table, TGA is there implementing the organization’s mission:
“We connect and strengthen farmers, food makers, and communities through good food.”
This is the place you can learn how to make kimchi, pick up a farm share with locally made add-ons, attend a beginning farmers conference, volunteer in a hoop house or find your child’s school lunch staff kicking up their culinary skills. Full circle!
There is also a contagious positivity running through those artfully slanted walls that makes it all gel.
I stumbled upon this powerhouse operation online while looking up local CSA’s. Turns out Community Supported Agriculture is the perfect term for part of what happens here, but The Good Acre goes way beyond the traditional CSA.
What is a Food Hub Anyway?
Farm Share Packing Day
A food hub, as defined by the USDA, is “a centrally located facility with a business management structure facilitating the aggregation, storage, processing, distribution, and/or marketing of locally/regionally produced food products.”
The thing that the USDA missed in its definition is the community that takes root around an initiative like this. There are farmers who would not be making it if it weren’t for TGA. In 2016 around 65,000 pounds of food moved through the facility. That’s 65,000 pounds of food that traveled significantly less than the average 1,500 miles. Hello lowered carbon footprint.
Food Hubs like TGA aren’t prolific, and that may be in part because for now, they rarely turn a profit. They are often funded in part by donations, grants and in the case of TGA- significant support from the Pohlad Family Foundation. Continue reading
White Bear Lake’s first time Winter Farmers Market has turned into something bigger and better than I could have imagined- all because so many people came together and energized this event. White Bear Lake was ready for this farmers market, and I feel darn lucky I get to help make it happen!
The WBL Winter Farmers Market: December 9
10am – 2pm at Tamarack Nature Center
So many local people and groups have made this event a success even before the first shopper sips hot cider or scores a squash… Continue reading
My front stoop this year- laden with pumpkins and squash
I love pumpkins!
Carving pumpkins.
Eating pumpkin treats.
Slurping pumpkin soup.
Crunching pumpkin seeds.
And I am not alone.
You guys: Americans really love pumpkins.
By best estimates in a finder.com article: 154,000,000 Americans planned on carving pumpkins this year! Whoa, that’s a lot of fruit on our front stoops. (Yes, pumpkin is technically a fruit.) Which equals close to a billion pounds of pumpkin! Continue reading
I’ve been digging into coordinating this BearPower Harvest Party with the 
