Urban Farm & The Eat Local Assignment

Trafton B.

April 16, 2011 - 6:21 PM

So far this weekend I've been working on for my Urban Farm course (LA 390) is our "eat local" assignment. Our task is to eat only locally grown foods - produce, meat, dairy, whatever - for two days. Right now I'm finishing up with my first day, and this is already proving to be more difficult than I imagined.

The first part of the assignment was to define what "local" means for you. Are you only going to eat foods from Eugene? Lane County? Oregon? West Coast? United States? Does eating at restaurants that buy their food locally count? If so, then how can you make sure they actually buy local foods? I chose to limit myself to Lane County. I figured that'd give me enough variety in food items so that I'd still make a few nice meals and enjoy my weekend. Plus, I figured I could just buy a bunch of things from the Saturday market. That's really the only way I could be sure about knowing the places where each and every food item came from.

Earlier this morning I rode my bike downtown to the Saturday market, more formally referred to as the Lane County Farmer's Market (pictured above), to find some goodies. The first things I searched for was meat. I knew that if I was going to survive the weekend, I would need some form of protein, and I also knew that there was no possible way I was going without meat for two days.

For meat, I found sausages and bacon from Sweet Briar Farms (Eugene), and I picked up a dozen eggs from the same stand. At that point I thought to myself, breakfast...check. I also picked up a small skirt steak from Deck Family Farm (Junction City). Why not? If I'm eating local I might as well get the good stuff.

I made sure to pick up potatoes and carrots at the Groundwork Organics Farm stand (Junction City), and spinach from Sweet Leaf Farms (Eugene). Those are all pretty versatile foods, so I grabbed a lot. I've come to realize that potatoes are appropriate for just about any meal depending on how you cook them. Roasted. Mashed. Hash browns. Potato gratin. 

Next I checked out my options for bread because I figured that's an essential. Hideaway Baker (Eugene) had a loaf of potato bread that looked awesome, so I snagged one of those. I meant to ask where they got the ingredients, but it slipped my mind. It's very likely that they didn't all come from Lane County, so I probably bent the rules a little bit, but this was a matter of basic sustenance. Although the bag that the bread came in said, "We are committed to using organic and locally grown ingredients whenever possible," so I can at least feel comfortable with that.

My last stop at the Farmer's Market was for some honey from the Covered Bridge Honey stand (Cottage Grove), which I thought was solid purchase for a couple reasons. First, I might as well treat myself to some local sugar. I'll take wild blackberry honey over the store-bought stuff any day.. Second, I've heard that eating local honey helps to alleviate the effects of allergies. Supposedly by eating honey, you're familiarizing your bodily system with local pollen, which helps build immunity to any allergens. Don't know if it's true or not, but I'm willing to try anything to get away from Willamette Valley hay fever. It's pretty bad.

After the market, I headed home to make some breakfast. Two eggs over easy on top of mustard leaf and toast with a side of bacon. The mustard leaf came from the Urban Farm, and it's super tasty with a little spicy, pseudo wasabi-flavored kick at the end. We harvested it last Thursday. I had my first unforeseen obstacle this morning because I usually fry my eggs with butter or olive oil, but that's obviously not local. I found a pretty easy fix though. I just fried two slices of bacon in the skillet first and left some of the bacon grease in the pan. Quite a delicious solution I might add. The only other obstacle I ran into was that I wanted a cup of coffee with my meal, but that's definitely not local either. I got over it, but I guess coffee is just one of those luxuries of globalization. 

After breakfast, I headed over to the Urban Farm for a work session. We're required to go twice during the term to help out with some miscellaneous tasks. I planted a few rows of lettuce and chard, nothing too difficult. Thankfully I was able to work in the greenhouse, too, because it was pouring down rain outside.

The other benefit of working at the farm was that I could harvest some extra produce. I grabbed a head of lettuce, a pair of leaks, some small purple and yellow broccoli heads (sweet colors, right?), and more spinach. I basically grabbed everything I needed to make a huge salad. I figured that I'd just munch on that throughout the weekend.

Right now I'm just finishing up my second meal of the day. Skirt steak with roasted vegetables and salad. The steak, to be honest, was a little disappointing. I grilled it with some salt and pepper, so again I broke the rules for the sake of taste. I think the problem was that it was a pretty cheap cut of meat, very gritty. It could have used a little barbeque sauce and a lot of tenderizing. The vegetables were awesome though. I don't know if I've ever eaten leaks before, but that's definitely going to change in the future. I didn't have any dressing for the salad, either, so that was something I could have tried a little harder to find a local version of. I probably could have made my own, but I don't have the first clue how to do that. Like I said, eating local is hard.

Overall, I've really enjoyed this assignment/experiment so far. It's supposed to raise our awareness of the local food markets available to us in Eugene, and it's certainly made me think more about my food choices. One thing I've realized is that eating meat probably isn't a financially sustainable eating habit for this area. That skirt steak cost $13 (!!), and it wasn't even that good. Even that pack of four sausages was $8, and pork is one of the cheaper meats.

I'm treating this assignment as both a learning experience and as somewhat of challenge. I could have just cheated and used butter to fry my eggs this morning, but I wanted to be creative and find an alternative. When I'm cooking these meals, I cheat here and there with things like salt and pepper, but I still try to imagine what I would do if I didn't have any. What would I eat if I only had access to what is grown or raised within a twenty-mile radius of my town? I mean, hey, that's what our ancestors had to do once upon a time. Believe it or not there used to be world where people couldn't make themselves a cup of coffee every day, or go to any street corner and buy any type of latte they felt like having. Earlier today I felt like a cup of tea, but I couldn't have one because that's not local either.

In that sense, this assignment has not only taught me about what foods are grown in Lane County, but also about what foods aren't grown in Lane County. It's made me aware of some of the luxuries that we often take for granted just because they've always been available to us. Salt. Pepper. Olive oil. Salad dressing. Just the fact that you can find oranges and apples at Safeway yearround has sort of blinded many of us to the concept of growing seasons. Right now at the Farmer's Market I can pick up any types of green leafy vegetables because they're winter and early spring crops, but when I go back in a few months I'll be picking between strawberries and blueberries.

Okay, that's enough rambling for now. Long story short, I've really enjoyed this assignment and I recommend trying it out if you have the impetus. It's difficult, but it's fun. It's rewarding, too. You have to be a little creative with your cooking styles and open-minded about tyring different foods. Give it a shot. Who knows, you might learn something.