I always find it amusing when people ask how I have time to eat local food. “It must be so hard,” they say, or “One day I’ll have the time, and I’ll eat local food too.” Sure, it takes some time to cook. Nothing beats a Big Mac for speed, and if you‘re filling up on those, you might as well cram as much as you can into the short life you’re likely to live. But, generally, local food doesn’t take any longer to cook than non-local food.
In fact, part of what continues to excite me about eating local food is how easy it is. I get most of my food delivered. I never have to think about what’s coming. And I can pull snow pea pods right off the vine in my yard. Here are a few ways you can start eating locally without working too hard.
Grow a garden!
And by grow a garden, I mean hire someone to grow a garden for you. I have become a huge fan of the fine folks at
A Backyard Farm, who not only built my raised-bed garden, planted the veggies, and installed an irrigation system in my yard to ensure that my foods get enough water --they also return each week to check on the plants, pick the ripe veggies, and teach our family how to do it ourselves (as if!) for $35 a week. Here’s what it says on the A Backyard Farm website:
Are you too busy to grow a vegetable garden? Wish you had the experience needed to farm effectively in an urban setting? Do you have a small space that needs a specialized approach? A disability that requires an adaptive raised bed garden design? Or just want consultation as you tend your own vegetable and herb garden? We have the solution for you!
If you answered “yes” to these questions, as I did, you might consider A Backyard Farm. There’s another great, similar service called
Backyard Harvest. I haven’t worked with them, but I’ve heard good things.
Hire a Milkman
I used to schlep my tired self to the local grocery store for milk, and when I started drinking the tastier local stuff, I made my way to the coops. Turns out that buying milk in glass bottles and then returning them after use --while terrific for the environment and the soul—can be sort of a pain. Now I get my milk, butter, meat, ice cream, eggs, and bread delivered right to my house.
Simple Provisions, a company (read: person) located in Stillwater, delivers all of the above and more from local area farms. Sure, I pay a bit more for my food, but I save crazy amounts of time, get delicious stuff, support multiple local producers, and let someone else haul my glass bottles away. It’s a pretty sweet deal.
Join a CSACommunity Supported Agriculture (CSA), also known as a farmshare, is an easy way to skip produce shopping for the entire growing season. When you join a CSA, you agree to pay the producing farm a set amount of money (typically $30
-$40 a week) in exchange for a portion of whatever they’re able to grow. On the downside, you don’t get to choose—a CSA produces what it can, and we consumers make due with what we get. On the upside, my family is enjoying all sorts of amazing foods we wouldn’t normally buy; we never have to think about what we’re going to get; and we pick up the entire haul at a neighbor’s house down the street, in one fell swoop.
The CSA my family joined,
Harmony Valley Farm, also offers fruit shares, cheese shares, coffee shares, and more. We buy the fruit share, so we don’t have to go to the grocery store for that either. Having worked a few days with the crew at Riverbend Farm in Delano, MN, I’d recommend their CSA without reservation, but there are tons of farms to choose from (provided you choose before the season starts). For a more complete listing, you can visit
Simple, Good, and Tasty.