Eat Local - a challenge

[godfreyrob]

We have set ourselves a challenge to eat only the veg we can grow ourselves or source from growers within 10 miles of our house. We are going to do this for 1 year starting from August 1st.

Its part of our local campaign to encourage more people to grow their own food and make more use of local food producers. We can't afford solar panels, a wind turbine, a bio-diesel plant to fuel our cars or a new central heating boiler, but this is something we can afford to do and make a dent in our carbon footprint.

We are also going to try and source as much of the rest of our food as possible within the 10-mile limit.

As we did not want to be eating cabbage soup for 6 months in the winter/spring this has really motivated us to search for local food producers and we have already 'discovered' some really great sources for pork, lamb and beef (not to mention local breweries) that we had never taken the time to find before.

There's more about the challenge and our local group here: http://www.vegplantsonline.com/home_grown/challenge.cgi

Anyone else like to have a go too?

[Fizzy Izzy]

Good luck! Keep us updated on how you get on...

[RobHed]

Wow - that sounds a real challenge but one I fully support ! I am very interested in knowing how you get on and look forward to the next news....best of luck !

Rob from Bristol

[Jandra]

That's a good challenge. Do you have a "cheat-list"? I wouldn't want to do such a challenge if I'd had to eliminate spices, black tea and vegetable oil from my diet.

Good luck, Jandra

[godfreyrob]

That's a good challenge. Do you have a "cheat-list"? I wouldn't want to do such a challenge if I'd had to eliminate spices, black tea and vegetable oil from my diet.

Good luck, Jandra

We are aiming to eat 100% local vegetables and as it says:
"We are also going to try and source as much of the rest of our food as possible within the 10-mile limit."
The key word here is try.
The more we look, the more we find, but there are things that would struggle to grow here. One of the gardening group does have a tea bush in their garden (and Taylors of Harrogate have their own tea bushes nearby too). A lot of veg oils (but not olive) are produced from crops grown in the UK but yes, most spices are going to be imported (although I bet most are grown somewhere in the UK).

If we got an overall 80% of our food locally, that must be making a significant dent in our 'food miles' - which is our principal aim. So alright, its ok to have pepper in your cabbage soup!

[Jandra]

I see. Was just wondering if you'd have a pre-defined list of items you can't source locally. But I've read your link now and that clarifies it. You've made it challenging, yet 'doable'. A great combination.

Last year I started out trying to grow all my veg and I must say I wasn't disappointed. I found it quite easy to not eat sweet peppers when there weren't any to be had. Tomatoes were canned and lasted quite a while. They ran out in January or February as did the potatoes. Onions I managed not to buy at all, as I've been eating from my harvest planted sets these last few weeks. Also we froze quite a bit and had some salad greens from the poly tunnel in winter. All in all we haven't bought much veg at all, perhaps 5% of our consumption, certainly less than 10%.

Unfortunately we're moving house (and garden) next month, so can't repeat the experience this growing season.

Happy growing, Jandra

[Flo]

Looking back to living on a farm as a child, I'd say that we managed 85% of our food grown within a ten mile radius. It didn't seem hard or abnormal then.

The 15% was stuff for cakes mainly - currants, raisins, glace cherries, chocolate, sugar - that sort of thing. Along with oranges and bananas.