Last weekend Wolf and I went out to dinner with a bunch of friends to celebrate our birthdays.* I was pretty picky about which restaurant I wanted us to indulge at since I was asking friends to drive up from the Boston to Manchester to dine with us. I chose REBULIC Cafe for a couple reasons. First, we hadn’t been there before** and second, the owners use locally produced foods like Kelly Corner lamb, grass fed beef from Miles Smith Farm and lots of vegetarian choices for my non meat eating friends.
As we were eating Lisa said to me “so what’s the reason you chose Republic? I know there’s a reason. You don’t make choices without trying to teach us something.” I told her about the locally sourced food and that it’s not a chain.
Restaurants using locally sourced food has become apart of the go local mantra which has become so important to me of late. Supporting local*** farms and farmers is a way to care for Mother Earth and your neighbors. Doing so cuts down on the carbon emissions created by trucking food across the nation or the world, and shows food corporations the devastation of large tracks of land in other parts of the world are not acceptable. There are cautions though. When promoting localism please make sure the area farms use seeds that aren’t contaminated with GMOs, and meats not contaminated with antibiotics and other chemicals (I’ll be posting about those at a later date).
One national organization dedicated to changing the lack of sustainability on our restaurant tables include American Farm to Table Restaurant Guide. For New Hampshire there is the NH Farm to Restaurant Connection. Please google around to see what’s in your area.
By seeking out places where serving local foods is the norm we can make positive changes to our local economies and the farm community in general. So the next time you go out to dinner or plan a BBQ use locally sourced foods. The taste is so much better amongst the positive environmental aspects.
*Wolf’s is in December, mine in January. The original party we planned was canceled due to snow so we decided to reschedule for April when there was no snow. Of course, it rained. A lot.
**We always have our party in Manchester because it’s in the middle of Boston and our home. It has great restaurants, most of which we’ve been to numerous times, so check out Downtown Manchester the next time you’re in New Hampshire.
***My definition of local is 100 mile radius from my home.
I think an important part of eating locally is that it gives you the option to truly find out if the farmer’s practices are acceptable to you. Local trumps certified Organic, if and only if the local farmer is using organic, sustainable, free range, pastured, chemical & hormone free practices. But local gives you the option to ask questions to the *actual person* behind the products, which is so valuable! (And take it from a farmer, if they won’t answer your questions, then they are hiding something.)
I’ve heard good things about RC, but can’t justify the gas to go there when there are so many closer restaurants that serve great local foods. I prefer to significantly shrink that 100 miles whenever I can. Perhaps we’ll give it s try if we’re in the area sometime though.
Last year Wolf and I went to the farmers market in the city his mom lives in. There was only one farmer there. I asked him what kinds of seed were used and what the growing practices were. He couldn’t answer either question. I realized he was a farm hand and not the actual farmer. We didn’t buy anything because the farm hand couldn’t answer the simple questions we asked.
You’re right that dialogue with the farmer is important. Making sure your farm hand can answer questions is also very important.
It’s also important not to start avoiding all social events because of location. If Wolf and refused to all to all events that were far away we’d never leave the house. It’s a great segway to a conversation about better public transportation options. I posted about that on The Greenists earlier this month. You can see the post here.