How to Eat Organic or Better and Local Without Being Exhausted?

While reading Grocery Story, Jon Steinman makes a good point that I think may explain why it's taking longer for local and organic or better food movements to catch on:

Jon Steinman wrote:The picture is painted. What had I become? Exhausted! Absolutely exhausted. Turned out, that as I sought greater self-sufficiency and deeper connections to my food sources, visited weekly farmers’ markets, coordinated underground food-buying groups, became my own processor of raw ingredients, put in my volunteer hours at the vegetable CSA, u-picked my berries, and harvested urban tree fruits — and in turn relied less and less on grocery stores — my life had become ALL about food

What are some ways that people can get good food that's local and organic or better without getting completely exhausted and having to spend all their time on food?

As remarked in this article about 'The Great A&P,' it appears that the appeal of grocery stores and supermarket chains was that they "[freed people] from having to trudge from butcher to baker to farm stand to put a family meal on the table."

I have also been thinking about this. I can remember when I was a 20-something and living alone for the first time, how surprised I was at how long it takes to make a decent meal. If you have to forage or grow that food as well, it *is* a significant commitment. But in those days, smart phones didn't exist, game consoles were just getting started, and I limited myself to 2 hours of TV/week (David Suzuki's The Nature of Things and one junk show). Now I have a computer I check usually 3-4 times/day. I think this has shifted our expectations. If we expect our lifestyles to mimic most North Americans, we don't build in the time it takes for growing and preparing food. If you are part of a two person family with both working outside the home and commuting, the expectations even more are for you to "relax" when you get home, rather than go for a hike to pick blackberries. I see this as another area where we need to reset our brains back to a realistic appreciation of living and cooking as a group so that those sorts of chores are shared over 3-5 people rather than 1 or 2.

Growing your own food is certainly one way to assure that its truly organic, and the cost is always less than buying it in a store.  

What people get hung up on is trying to be self-sufficient.  They think that if they don't grow everything, they've somehow failed.  But even growing one tomato vine is better than nothing.  One plant will give you about dozens (or hundreds) of tomatoes.  One zucchini will feed the neighborhood.  Even a small herb spiral will provide you with enough herbs for anything you'll ever cook.

Once created, how exhausting is an herb spiral?  I water mine twice a week.  

Perennial veggies are almost entirely labor free.  I don't even water the chaya, and moringa is tougher than nails.  Artichokes just keep coming back, year after year.  Even annuals like cherry tomatoes or tomatillos volunteer year after year.  I just mulch around them and at some point tie them up to a tee-pee trellis.  Plant once, and forget about it.

Citrus trees and avocado trees are so bullet proof, you never have to prune, fertilize or spray.  I mulch them twice a year and pull the occasional weed.  Otherwise, there is no exhaustion, but an almost unlimited supply of "free" food.  The thought of buying a lemon or lime is unfathomable to my wife.  The few months a year when there are not limes, we chip a little bit of frozen juice off the block in the freezer and thaw it out.  We calculated that at Costco prices, we pull about $400 to $600 a year of citrus and avocados off our trees.  That's eating better, local, organic and basically free.

If stone fruit or apples seem like too much work, then don't plant them.  

Here's the big point: every year you can add just a little bit to your system.  A raised bed.  A better compost set-up.  Plant another tree.  Just a little bit at a time and it doesn't feel overwhelming.  Build with an eye toward ease of long term care.

One somewhat cynical answer is to be rich.

If you live in one of the very expensive "food oasis" cities (opposite of a food desert) where very high quality food is in heavy demand and lots of rich people make a vibrant market for the stuff, it's not that hard to eat well, although you'll probably have stretch the definition of local a bit.  (Most people do this anyway.)  

Alternatively if you hire a personal assistant, personal shopper, organic chef, personal caterer... you get the idea.  

(The question assumes you are not yet rich like Gert, a permaculture millionaire in your own Geoff Lawton style food forest abundance.)

I make these points not to be an asshole, but because I'm coming from a place where no matter how much I might want to, it doesn't make economic sense for me to pay three or four times as much for "organic" labeled food of dubious quality ("local" is not market-available at any price) rather than the usual supermarket stuff.  I can and do put a lot of effort into raising and foraging some of my own "better than organic" but the opportunity cost of my scarce dollars is too high to use buying much OMRI-organic.  I need those dollars worse for other life-essential things like heating, cooling, transportation, medical, dental, clothing, you get the idea.  Live is a series of tradeoffs.  Good food is vital; but it's not the only thing that's vital.

I don't exhaust my limited finances buying organic food.  That's a choice I've made.  It therefore seems to me that another person might use similar logic to decide not to exhaust their limited physical resources chasing organic food either.  (I don't exhaust my physical resources but I do spend a fair chunk of my discretionary time growing and cooking quality food.) If they have enough resources (financial or physical) it's a whole different calculus!  Then it's a question of priorities and values.  But that's not the question posed in this thread.

I cook three meals from scratch for seven people every day. There are lots of ways to reduce personal energy use in the kitchen to make it all flow more smoothly. I also try to find joy in the processes, and make it a part of normal life for myself.

A friend of mine remarked that I go to quite a few different places to get food, but when we're going to the coast every couple of months to get 100kg or so of grain, we're also going to the beach to forage seaweed and relax - it doesn't seem like drudgery, or going out of my way to source organic foods, it's just a part of everyday life. Similar things can be said for getting other foods, often I am buying directly from farmers, and there is some socialising in the process of it, or when my children are helping with food preserving, it's part of their education, good family time together, and they get to play around while washing tomatoes, removing stones from fruit, and so on.

I think in the past for rural people food and life were more connected and it was normal to put more effort into sourcing and cooking foods. This was just the normal way to live.

I wonder if the attitude someone has towards organic foods makes a difference in how it's experienced - we could inspire our actions from negativity, making efforts because the alternatives are toxic, bad for the environment etc, or we could be seeing what we're doing as a positive thing, as a 'new normal' where we put effort into nourishing ourselves with food that's been grown and prepared in a good way. I definitely feel more energised when I am thinking I am doing things for good reasons, I feel drained if the only shop open is a supermarket and I'm trying to pick the least worst option (although I can avoid this by planning ahead and making lots of food the previous day), or trying to choose between organic food packed in plastic and non-organic without packaging (this dilemma can be avoided with some creative thinking and preparation too). I don't watch television either so this probably helps a lot as well.

To me, local better-than-organic food is about community. It's not about growing a garden, canning, keeping animals, butchering, winemaking, cidering, cooking, foraging, baking, etc, etc, etc. Sure I do all of those things, and hundreds more. But it's not something that wears me out, because it's my life, and my community's life. I grow annual vegetables, and apples. Another friend makes cider. Another bakes bread. Someone else raises animals. We all feed each other great food, following our own passion about what to grow, and how to preserve and cook it. Then we share all around, in the labor, in the cooking, in the joy. The chicken guy might work for 4 months alone, but on butchering day, the community gathers at his house to harvest chickens, and help with the work. The apple orchardist might work alone most of the year, but at pruning time, and picking time, the community is there to help. So we all eat chicken, and cider, and apples, and a multitude of other foods, and yet each person is only producing a small amount of the food the community eats.

Last year, like I do every year, I spent a month with my mother. She is getting older and I live very far away, so I spend a month there every year and help her around the house, do what needs to be done, we go on a trip or two, etc. (last year was selling her house, getting rid of all the crapola, and moving her in with her new beau, which was as fun as it sounds and greatly enjoyable. I am so happy to be able to help her.)

When I'm there I cook, since she sees it as drudgery and I enjoy it, plus I can make sure I'm eating the kind of food I like to eat. My sister, who lived with my mother at the time, commented "You spend so much time with food. You're either shopping, cooking, soaking, sprouting, baking or eating. All the time!" (and I wasn't even growing/harvesting/caring for the food, since my farm was back on the south side of the world, far far away!).

I wanted to compare the amount of time I spend making food with the time she spent watching TV, with no positive outcome whatsoever, but conflict gets Mom upset, so I just let it go.
Instead I said that food and exercise are the most important things I can do every day, and I intend to take every opportunity for good. Three times a day we have a chance to make good choices, if we're lucky. Plus I get the community aspect- in a month, i get to know the pick your own kale people, the peach farm lady, the egg neighbor, etc etc. The way I see it, I'm winning here.

Dave Burton wrote:
..... local and organic or better without getting completely exhausted and having to spend all their time on food?

My wife and I just moved to our new little farm. It's not much of a farm, yet, but I've gone into this knowing that it is labor intensive. Right now there's not much going on food related, but my fall cool season annuals will be started soon, we have 32 blueberry plants coming sometime later this year when plants enter dormancy, I'm ordering a few fruit trees this week to plant later this fall. The creation and design of the farmstead is underway, and adding a little bit each year so we don't get overwhelmed and exhausted with too much at once.  But this is what I want, a simple life connected to the earth and nature, growing food and raising animals. My spirit needs this, things to take care of, things that are dependent on me like plants and animals, that is what gives me purpose in life. I am fully aware that the lifestyle I have chosen is a busy one, but one I think is fulfilling and rewarding, and within five or so years every day, seven days a week, will be occupied with care taking, which could be interpreted as spending most of my time on food. Winter time I expect to be slower, and should allow for time to read more and look back, enjoying the rewards of the prior seasons efforts, while planning to meet the challenges of the new season ahead.

In a way, I think it's privileged to NOT be consumed (lol) by our food efforts.

When I think about animals... (who I try to observe often and am amazed at how countless species survive w/o ever driving, using a cell phone, or reading the morning newspaper)
...I see that most of their time revolves around finding good food, good water, sleeping, and mating.

So, feeling "spent" from this is normal - even though it can be costly and/or cut into our time where we feel like we could be more productive elsewhere.

I understand certain people have age and/or disability conditions that can make life difficult, but those who are capable should just accept the fact that good things usually take more time and energy but it's often worthwhile.

Live in a large town.  It's like trying to go plastic free, it only works with huge amounts of resources around you.

We sell vegetables out of our barn, we have people driving 13 miles just to buy our potatoes. On asking we are the closest place to get local ones direct from the producer. Lets take a small ingredients list. say meat, eggs, milk, vegetables, potatoes, honey and bread. To buy those things locally is very challenging, I can buy beef from a farm about 10 miles away, eggs I can get about 15miles in the other direction, I only know one person selling milk and they are 40miles away, vegetables and potatoes we have but only for a few months of the year. honey is available from lots of places but I do not know of one within 15miles. and grain can be had within about 10 miles but only in harvest season. Oh I should point out that of all these things, ONLY the milk is organic. Our crops are not sprayed but we are not certified.

We are surrounded by food, the farm over the road is large commercial pigs, the fields are full of wheat/barley/rye but none of it is sold here, it's all proudly shipped off elsewhere. I'm sure some of it turns up in the local shop with a Danish label on it or even a Thy (local area) label but it's not really local by then is it?

that's a really good point Skandi. just this morning I was looking at a video about production of goat milk nearby, I have some cheese starter and can't get raw milk (cow, goat, rat, whatever). The goat dairy sells 100% of its production to a goat-milk-powder factory. Small bovine dairy, same thing. And here, there is no "fresh milk" in the market, it is all shelf-stable UHT milk-in-a-box. No cheese happening yet, unfortunately.

My husband has become quite surprised at how long it actually takes to make a from scratch dinner. I do buy a ton of food at the grocery store and it still takes absolute ages. Cutting, mixing, etc. It's a lot of work. And sure, I could buy pre sliced canned olives but they cost more and we're on a budget. So I buy whole olives and slice them up myself. Same with all other foods. You can go to the grocery and find tons of pre peeled, cut things but all those things cost more. So I don't buy them. As a result I spend about an hour every day prepping all the foods that I then spend roughly 30 mins to an hour cooking later on.

I spent a few hours out in our garden yesterday. Picked enough various stuff for dinner tonight and weeded. I never counted that stuff in my food prep bustle because I LOVE being out in my garden so much. I like being in the grocery store a whole lot less.

Tereza Okava wrote:
I wanted to compare the amount of time I spend making food with the time she spent watching TV, with no positive outcome whatsoever, but conflict gets Mom upset, so I just let it go.
Instead I said that food and exercise are the most important things I can do every day, and I intend to take every opportunity for good. Three times a day we have a chance to make good choices, if we're lucky. Plus I get the community aspect- in a month, i get to know the pick your own kale people, the peach farm lady, the egg neighbor, etc etc. The way I see it, I'm winning here.

I prep a lot of food in front of the TV. For some odd reason every single time I make Kabobs, which the children LOVE to help skewer, I do it in front of amazing house building shows. My kids now associated Kabobs and mega houses. lol

It's not exhausting for me to eat good healthy food. It's exhilarating.

To me, it is exhausting, to get in a car, endure the traffic, and the jostling, and the mechanical noise. Then at a fast food drive through, it's exhausting to smell the fumes from the vehicles, and to try to communicate through static-ridden electronic gadgets. And it's exhausting to come up with the money to pay the high prices that they demand. And dealing with surly staff in their 20s just wears me out. And it's exhausting to eat bland slop pretending to be food.

It takes much less time, to step out to the kitchen garden located 15 feet from the kitchen, to grab some veggies, toss  them into a well seasoned pot, and make a stir-fry. The food is healthier, contains fewer poisons, and tastes better because I used my favorite spices.  It's not exhausting for me to eat good healthy food. It's exhilarating.

I have not found scratch cooking to be exhausting at all. Simple foods cooked simply. Sounds good to me!

One of the ways to make cooking from scratch easier is to make your own products (preserving the harvest along the way) and simply combine them in different ways. I keep stocks, compound butters, herb salts, caramelized onions and so many other things ready to use so the daily cooking can be easy to throw together but not boring. So like a pot roast is just concentrated beef stock, cream and caramelized onions, slow cooker and done. Veggies and/or potatoes can get thrown together with a rosemary and garlic compound butter and roasted.

It can take a while to figure out how to use all the stuff you grow, or buy, in a way that pleases you and your family, but once you do, meals become less exhausting. Learning how to substitute ingredients is invaluable, part of that is recognizing what is the importance of a particular ingredient. Is it providing sweetness, bitterness, sourness.

Marco Banks - I totally agree with you about citrus. When I lived in the Bay, I was astounded that people would pay the grocery store prices for lemons and limes. The trees are so easy to grow, and the fruit just stays on the trees for most of the year. I think we wouldn't have fresh lemons for about 3 months, that's it. Bizarre.

Stacy Witscher wrote:I totally agree with you about citrus. When I lived in the Bay, I was astounded that people would pay the grocery store prices for lemons and limes. The trees are so easy to grow, and the fruit just stays on the trees for most of the year. I think we wouldn't have fresh lemons for about 3 months, that's it. Bizarre.

My wife has a co-worker who stops by regularly and picks a half-dozen lemons and picks up whatever limes have fallen to the ground.  She's been doing this for close to 10 years.  The time and cost of driving over to our house every two weeks or so . . . how do you even begin to calculate that.

About 6 years ago we were in their neighborhood and stopped by their house.  They have a backyard that really isn't used for anything, but they pay a guy to mow it every week (in Southern California, you have to mow year-round).  I suggested that we run over to Armstrongs and buy a lemon and plant it in her backyard.  She's already got a sprinkler system that comes on automatically.  All she would need to do is be patient, and within 2 years she'd have all the lemons she'd ever need.  

She responded, "I'll think about that."

She's apparently still thinking about it.

I certainly don't mind sharing our lemons, as we end up throwing hundreds in the compost every year.  But for $40, she would have all the lemons she'd ever need right out the back door off her kitchen.  Instead, she drives 4 miles to our place to pick them.  

I agree with you: bizarre.  

I've come to think this way about chickens and bees as well.  They are so easy to care for.  We move the chicken tractor every 2 weeks, check their water and food daily, and most evenings we turn them loose to run through the orchard and stretch their legs.  Bees?  I steal their honey once a year.  I'll try to split the colony if it looks like they are going to swarm, but even that, if I don't and we have half our bees fly away to create a second colony somewhere else, I consider that a gift to the neighborhood.  Exhausting?  Nope.  Buying eggs and honey at the store feels far more exhausting.  I'd rather put that money in my pocket, and the fertility created by the girls into the orchard soil.

Marco Banks wrote:I certainly don't mind sharing our lemons, as we end up throwing hundreds in the compost every year.  But for $40, she would have all the lemons she'd ever need right out the back door off her kitchen.  Instead, she drives 4 miles to our place to pick them.  

Perhaps it's not about the lemons or the gas money. Perhaps it's about community, camaraderie, getting out of the house, nostalgia, etc

Marco Banks wrote:I've come to think this way about chickens and bees as well.  They are so easy to care for.  We move the chicken tractor every 2 weeks, check their water and food daily, and most evenings we turn them loose to run through the orchard and stretch their legs.

Marco, the first time I read your post I thought about how these perspectives are so intensely tied to local conditions.  I don't have chickens because I am not yet fully geared and armored up to protect them from predator pressure, which around here would consist of marching waves and packs of coyotes, wheeling flocks of death from above in at least 16 different species, foxes, racoons, possums, a whole bunch of different snakes, several different kinds of rats, my own dogs, neighbor dogs, feral dogs, and I'll betcha some threats I haven't even thought of yet.  Lots of folks around here have chickens, it's not that chicken care can't be solved, but it's a war, not an easy thing.  Different places, different challenges, different perspective.

I was thinking something similar when Stacy's comment about being amazed that anybody living in the Bay Area payed grocery store prices for lemons or limes.  Which you amplified with your story about the friend who drives over to pick your fruit.  My instant reaction to Stacy's comment was to think "not everybody has room or the stability in their life to grow a fruit tree."  I lived in the Bay Area long ago when I was going to school; but I lived on the 14th floor of McAllister Tower in the Tenderloin, overlooking Civic Center plaza.  Farmer's Market twice a week was great, but I didn't have so much as a window box in my studio apartment.

That was my first reaction.  But my second thought was to remember my friend and classmate Victoria, who had a semi-local social life somewhere down in the South Bay on the weekends.  She would drive down there and drive back and along the way, she would stop and raid the decorative plantings in the office parks for unused fruit.  We teased her and called her "Crop Stealer" but her apartment was always jammed full of wonderful things to eat.  She was Italian by heritage and in the appropriate season she picked dozens of pounds of olives and cured them several different ways, so she always had lovely fresh olives to serve for snacks at our drinking parties.  This was the early 90s but I remember the walkable parts of the city (and of Oakland, where I frequently went to visit friends) being full of what I now recognize as unloved and unpicked edibles just flopping through iron fences and falling out into the public streets; I can only imagine how much goes to waste in the locked up private spaces from which the street people have been carefully excluded.  And that's not even considering all the mid-level tech company automobile-only expanses where Victoria did her hunting.  

Yeah, I strongly suspect that if I lived anywhere in that part of the world, I'd never buy another lemon, lime, or olive again, even if I lived in a storage unit.

@ Dan Boone - this is why I'm so supportive of both edible landscaping and  guerrilla gardening. Lots of edible foods are also very pretty if supported with conventional "flowers" - I've used carrots as borders for their pretty leaves, and the shininess of pepper plants is beautiful to my eyes.

I also totally agree with you that we need to work with nature, looking for things that grow easily in one's ecosystem, as our first step. That may mean adjusting what we see as food (I've *never* seen a Kraft Mac and Cheese plant) and give new foods a chance to adjust our flavor palette. Common to our area, easy to grow food may get boring, which is when I've tried to look for new ways to prepare local produce.

Similarly, I love tomatoes and they're easy to use in the kitchen, but they don't grow particularly well here (long season but the days aren't really hot enough). I've learned to grow small ones like Juliette, even if they're not the best for sauce. Every time I try to grow large ones, I end up with green tomato relish and that's about it!

For those living in apartment like setting, I suggest making friends with homeowners on a route you often take, and offer to "help them garden" in exchange for food. My father grew veggies for years in a co-worker's back yard, that he passed going to and from work. The co-worker hated mowing grass, and there wasn't much to mow by the time my dad had turned it into garden. When things got busy, my sisters and I would go and put in a Sat. morning's worth of help. It was fairly traditional, but at least it was local and pesticide free.

Dave Burton wrote:While reading [url=https://permies.com/wiki/118777/Grocery-Story-Jon-Steinman]Grocery Story

What are some ways that people can get good food that's local and organic or better without getting completely exhausted and having to spend all their time on food?

I think we ignore this point to our collective peril. Food is easy and cheap inthis country, and it’s a huge deal to ask people to change all of their life habits around food.

We need to think systemically about this. One model I love is the Farm Stop. This is shaped like a small grocery store, with a good balance of produce, dairy, meat, dry goods, baked goods, and semi-processed goods like tofu, kraut, etc. All sources from local farmers. The difference is, it’s basically selling on consignment, or like a 7 day a week farmers market with one till. Farmers set their own prices and get about 80% of the sales price, and never need to man a stall. See https://www.agricolefarmstop.com for one example. The convenience of a one-stop-shop open from 7-7 every day immediately makes access easier. Caveat: these need a functioning cafe to stay afloat, and a populace who will pay stupid money for coffee and sandwiches. Produce pays the farmers but coffe pays the rent. But that’s ok; now you’ve got an outlet for a local toaster, a baker, and 3-4 restaurants that also use local ingredients.

Bonus points if the place has a kitchen that can be used for community food preservation events. But a “salsa pack” from the farmer, show up one day in August and have store staff guide you and five others through canning an entire years worth of salsa in half a day.

Partial processing also helps. Think chicken cuts vs whole birds, or ready to eat carrots (“baby” size, or washed/sliced “chips.”)

You get the idea. We need a middle step (or three) between Costco and homesteading or it just won’t be attainable.

Great topic.  A few years ago, once we retired, I decided that taking the time to put good food in our mouths was worth the effort.  Very fortunate to have access to organic food at reasonable prices, and enjoy keeping chickens for their eggs and help in the yard/garden/compost bin, and growing some herbs and veggies to round out our diet.  It is such a good feeling for us to spend time working in the yard, getting good air and exercise, and making places that insects and birds enjoy too.  One thing I did do was simplify our meals.  I have a few meals that we eat every week, that are fast to prepare.  I have stopped looking at my recipe books and food programs for the most part, and just stick with this simple rotation.  Maybe a little seasonal rotation with soups in the colder months.  One exception to that this year is that our daughter gave us an Instantpot for Christmas.  I was initially horrified, but have come to rely on it for two things...hard boiling the chickens eggs a couple times a week, and just in the past 6 weeks or so, making yogurt in it.  We have a farmer family who delivers A2 milk to our neighborhood, and I just could not resist.  Have never successfully been able to hold yogurt at a constant temperature, but the Instantpot does a good job.  Took about four weeks to get the particulars down with a Bulgarian culture, but am happy to have branched out and added this to our diet!  My husband turns 93 later this month, and I am in my 70s.  We both are pretty darn healthy and credit a good diet for a lot of it.  

Dan Boone wrote:One somewhat cynical answer is to be rich.

There is more truth in this statement than meets the eye.  Living in a post industrial era, we try to maintain a lifestyle that is of hunter-gatherer and agrarian societies.  No doubt this is exhausting.

This is where so many become discouraged and give up.  How in the hell am I supposed to get up, get the kida to school, get to work on time, come home, make dinner and then go weed the carrots, process chickens,  clean out the stalls, blah, blah, blah...

I left home 34 years ago and I could never really do it, at least what I thought was right.  But I did it, half assed, some might say.

I am fortunate now, in that I haven't had to step up on the hamster wheel and can focus fully on this land, my food,  and most important, my peace of mind.  

I have no secret plan devised to share with you as I have bumbled so far through this life, so it would be confusing and downright fuzzy in some parts.

But I can say don't overwhelm yourself in this age of information.  It tends to cause us to set lofty goals.  We have plenty of failures to come, why set yourself up for more?

Do what you can. A single tomato plant is one of the most rewarding experiences.  I get a kick out of giving these in a bucket as gifts to unsuspecting young adults.

Last, but not least,  don't neglect the garden of your mind.  Make it priority, and watch what happens.

Dan Boone wrote:One somewhat cynical answer is to be rich.

I don't think that's even all that cynical.

The only reason my family can eat as well as we do is that we are rich enough to afford land, rich enough to buy fruit trees to plant, rich enough for one adult to be working in the home (rather than working for pay), growing a garden and cooking from scratch.  Even at that, the only organic stuff we eat is what we grow ourselves.  Sometimes, we can trade for local non-organic (grain, in particular).  We still buy a lot of our food from the store.

In the corner of North America that I live in, it is fairly difficult to even find organic or local food.  What is available is expensive, so you'd still have to be pretty rich to eat that way.  

I have to say, if you live near a Costco, it's a great place to buy bulk organic. I buy, at this point, apples, flour, sugar, just to name a few things, in bulk, organic, at Costco. In my opinion, a permaculturist could do much worse than Costco.

Emily Spring wrote:We need to think systemically about this. One model I love is the Farm Stop. This is shaped like a small grocery store, with a good balance of produce, dairy, meat, dry goods, baked goods, and semi-processed goods like tofu, kraut, etc. All sources from local farmers. The convenience of a one-stop-shop open from 7-7 every day immediately makes access easier. Caveat: these need a functioning cafe to stay afloat, and a populace who will pay stupid money for coffee and sandwiches. Produce pays the farmers but coffee pays the rent. But that’s ok; now you’ve got an outlet for a local toaster, a baker, and 3-4 restaurants that also use local ingredients.

My word, I had no idea these things had a name and a certain business model as such that they follow. I got such a kick out of reading your description of Farm Stops because the one nearby me almost matches it to a T! They even had a guy come and sell some good ol' Texas barbecue on their property, which unfortunately seems to have stopped because of covid.

The mystery of the over priced sandwiches has officially been solved!

There are many things you can do to make this happen. In general, point in that direction and make your life more that way over time each year, so that it becomes easier and easier. It's easier if you don't move every 5 years.

Plant perennial vegetables that come back every year and you don't have to use a lot of energy to harvest. Leeks, asparagus, horseradish, dandelions, salsify, etc. It will be slightly different in each place depending on your soil and climate.  

Learn about which weeds either already are on your land or will survive on your land that you can eat. They are generally healthier than the other vegetables you grow or buy and they grow like weeds!  I probably eat 20-50 species.  Take out the weeds so that these are your only weeds.  Now you are harvesting instead of weeding.  

Plant fruit trees.  In a while, you'll just be harvesting every year, and your soil quality will improve over time.

John S
PDX OR

Our garden is designed with entertaining space in the middle of it.  It is a mix of annual beds, a small natural swimming pond, and  perennial food producing plants for landscaping.  We are working on adding more seating areas all over the 1/4 acre garden to make it even more enjoyable to be out there. With all the social distancing in 2020 and 2021 our city dwelling friends spent many relaxing afternoon in our beautiful calming garden full of food, flowers, sunshine,  and pond life.    The more enjoyable the space the happier I am to spend time in it,
In the summer and fall I do have to allocate extra time to harvest what we need for the meal but it is worth it.  

Shelf stable items pantry items that I can't make or get from a local producer are shipped to the house.

Most of our meat comes from local farmers and is bought buy the whole or half animal at a time.  While we do have to keep a freezer chest running it allows me support 3 local farms that use regenerative farming practices.  I only have to go to their farms once or twice a year.  One the farms is down the street from me so he delivers my order on the way home from the butcher.  

We try  to schedule appointments and errands on the day we pick up our dairy CSA.  It is easy to get it on the way back home from running other errands. We go to a local chain of supermarkets twice a month or so to pick up stuff I don't get from the above sources.

Chickens.
We have a fixed location chicken coop and run. The coop is managed with a deep litter method and we have a thick layer of woodchips in the high traffic areas in the run.  We add extra wood chips to the run in the higher elevation parts and that is where we feed them kitchen scraps and garden waste.  This is our composting system and remove the compost and add more wood chips.  The birds are quite happy with it and is easy for us to manage.

The coop has an automatic coop door to let them out in the morning and close them up at night.  We have a multi day feeder that they have to step on to open and eat out of.  This allows us to only need to take care of the chickens once a day.   The path to the chicken run also has everything we need to access during the winter except for the greenhouse.  This means less shoveling of snow and bunch of small chores can be done to while you are out taking care of the chickens.   ​

My husband takes care of the honey bees and I only help with the harvesting.  We always do the harvesting together.

The Garden.  The advantage of being in a cold wet climate is we have the winters off from gardening.  The downside is  everything is ripens at the same time and needs to be preserved if you want to eat it over the winter.

We  set up a network of hoses across the garden so I never have to drag a hose more than 25 feet or so to water.

Pathways mulched with cardboard under wood chips.  They are inculcated with wine cap mushroom spores.  Perennials are mulched with wood chips to reduce watering and weeds. We need to reapply wood chips every year but it is worth it for the reduced work load over the growing season.  
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Raised beds are tall enough for me to sit on a small folding stool and work.  This is a huge energy saver!

I have short and long handles garden tools so I can work standing or sitting depending on energy levels.  

Greens, herbs, and everbearing strawberries are all close to the house for easy daily harvesting.  

Swales and a natural  pond are used to catch and sink rainfall and snow melt.  They also set up to move water away from the house to reduce water around the foundation of the house.  

Out door washing  station makes harvesting so much easier.  We have it set up in one of the woodchip filled swales so all the water and soil stay in the garden. It is also not to far from the chicken coop to toss them the stuff I don't want.  

Food Preservation.  
This is a huge time sink but worth it.  I try to preserve the food in a way that it is becomes a homemade convenience food to use in multiple recipes.    I also shifted my cooking style to methods that don't need huge amount of hands on preparation.

​I am all for buying the tool or gadget that makes the job easier and faster.  While I love the simplicity of minimalist kitchen the concept clashes hard with my damaged joints and bad eyesight.
Food processors, dehydrators, emersion blenders, mushroom slicers, cherry pitters, apple peelers, spiralizers,  pressure canners,  electric food mills, giant stock pots, giant colanders, crock pots, fermenting lids and weights for canning jars, coffee grinders, salad spinners and stack of half sheet pans are all necessities for me to deal with all that our garden produces.  

Tomatoes get canned mostly in a purred form.  I grow a variety soft skinned paste tomato with very few seeds called UpState Oxheart. I wash and chunk the tomatoes.  Then I toss them into a giant stock pot to cook them. I use an emersion blender to puree them.   It is far easier than dealing with removing skins and using a food mill.  

Bone Broth gets pressure canned to save room in the freezer.  It is so easy to cook with when you just need to pop a jar open and go.

Anything that will go in a soup, chili, or other slow cooked type of meal is dehydrated. It is easy and takes up doesn't take up freezer space.   Herbs, mushrooms, and some greens also get dehydrated for winter use.  I also shred and dehydrate summer squash to use instead of lasagna noodles.  It is so easy to throw a soup, stew, chili, or Sheppard's pie together from dehydrated veggies.

The veggies that do get  frozen  are frozen in meal sized packages for ease of use.  Pesto and caramelized onions are frozen in 4 and 8 oz jars.

I can most of our condiments, pie fillings and things like apple butter. I use our honey and whatever produce we had a large harvest of so what I can varies from year to year.   This year we had a super late frost which resulted in an amazing pepper harvest so I canned up large amount of hot sauce.    

I cook everything in large batches and leftovers are frozen in single meal sized portions.  This way we have homemade convenience foods. The containers are labeled with a sharpie.

Paul always insists on organic at Wheaton Labs. In his latest podcast, he chats with the SKIP event cook, Cat, about why and Cat reveals a nice surprise.

https://permies.com/wiki/222732/Podcast-Cat-SKIP-Diet-podlet

I think that one of the best ways you can do this is to set goals and knock them off one by one.  Don't think you have to have everything all at once.  For example, I started planting fruit trees.  I knew I wasn't going to get a lot right away.  Eventually, I got some, then a lot. Then I would see what else I wanted- berries? Green leafies? Starting with edible weeds, because, they grow like weeds! Talk about easy! Then for example, I had a lot of apples, but I wanted storage variety of apples. I wasn't going to eat 500 Mcintosh apples in September, so I grafted other varieties into the tree.  This helps pollination, and makes it so that you can harvest different apples in different months.  The storage apples can last many months. Sometimes a whole year in an unheated shed.  Our storage of apples has gotten worse with the increased heat units.  I don't worry about growing everything. Building the food forest is fun.  It changes every year.  Creating new recipes and ways of storing food are also helpful and interesting.

JOhn S
PDX OR

To all the folks who advocate gardening & farmers' markets, please know they aren't available to everyone.

We used to live near SF. We had a tiny yard that grew loads of food, 4 weekly farmers' markets within  a 20 minute drive, 2 organic restaurants in our town, a locally owned organic grocery store, and both Whole Foods and Trader Joe's nearby.  

Then we moved to rural north Florida.

Our dirt is sand down more than 8 feet. To amend the "soil" takes a ton of compost. Organic compost (OMRI certified) is available through exactly 1 nursery,  about an hour away.  I'm working on homemade compost (requires animal protection and will take forever because we don't have a lot of scraps).  Our neighbor has chickens but had to build a crazy coop to protect them. On top of not being easy farmland, the nearest grocery store with any organic produce is an hour drive. No farmers market within an hour and a half drive at 75 MPH.

Before anyone brings up You-pick farms, they are mainly fruit, far away, and take all day.

So, here's how we make it work:
- grow a few things in pots
- once a week, shop at Publix with a list
- once a month, order from Azure Standard
- supplement with Amazon and other online companies

It's not really local, but it's the best we can do this year.

I am incredibly fortunate to live somewhere that has a rich smaller/medium sized agricultural history and currently has a lot of local availability if you know where to look.

Farms are now just coming into the modern internet advertising age and some do better than others. I have found the best food and the best deals to come from talking with the farmers that produce it. I enjoy as well as laugh a little on how passionate farmers are about what they do when you get them to start talking about it. My "Meat Dealer" raises Blonde d'Aquitaine cattle and is passionate about the breed.  

My best tip for trying to eat better and local is to invest in freezer/canner space. If you can buy in larger volumes be it veggies by the bushel or a half of a cow you ultimately save than buying per piece. Sometimes there is no money exchanged but rather work. Can you process, save, and then consume that quarter hog the local farmer paid you with after you did a quick field weld for him and didn't ask for anything in return?

We have a great local staple farm known for their cantaloupe every year that sells amazing produce by the bushel for good prices at the end of the season. I wasn't ready this year to take advantage of the deal but I plan to next year!

Mustela Nivalis-
Have you looked into getting wood chips delivered to your property? Alternatively, you might have a neighbor (or your property?) That has a sick, dead tree that can be chopped up or used as hugelkulture?

I would think that even a restaurant or grocery store might throw out their produce and you could use it as compost.

John S
PDX OR