Eat Local September kickoff: an invitation to challenge yourself

For five of the past six years, my family has lived nearly exclusively on food grown, raised, caught or foraged within a 250-mile radius of home for the bountiful month of September.

It’s a self-fashioned locavore challenge that came to me as a fully formed mandate six summers ago. I was driving to work, listening to depressing news and wondering what in the world I could do. I was about to hang a right that would take me past a weekly farmer’s market, when a voice in my head answered what I’d assumed was a rhetorical question.

It said, “Eat local in September.” Oddly specific.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. While not instantly world-altering, this was a concrete action that felt like an actual answer to so many problems that otherwise seemed intractable.

Mega corporations taking over our lives? Check – eating local keeps money circulating in the neighborhood.

Farmers not making a living? Check – we hit farmers markets at least twice a week during September, not because we’re virtuous but because we’re hungry.

Plastic waste? Check – when it comes from your garden or a nearby farm, it doesn’t need to be shrink-wrapped.

Global warming? Check – no shipping food thousands of miles from fossil-fuel dependent mega-farms.

Talking to husband Joe, who does most of the cooking and often applies the brakes to my accelerator, he was game. We’re basically already doing it, he said.

The challenge (some version of which I’d read about in a blog before co-opting it) took shape thus: for the month of September, we eat only food grown, raised or caught within 250 miles of home. Spices are “free,” and each person gets to choose five exceptions.

My list of exceptions always begins with coffee and olive oil. The kids’ usually involve ice cream sundaes, chicken nuggets and ketchup.

Though a handful of intrepid souls have joined me in past years, I’ve stopped trying to recruit for Eat Local September. I don’t love feeling like the “local” gestapo, nor do I enjoy heaping extra stress on my already-busy friends who are trying to work and keep their kids fed and maybe kick back and eat out once in a while.

But our family has stuck with the challenge since 2019, with the exception of the year we were newly a family of five. It’s become our thing. But it’s still not a given. Not only have I stopped recruiting, neither do I publicize the challenge in advance. Because this is real life, and we will only do it if we’re in a stable place.

There’s no question that food acquisition and prep take longer when you’re eating local. Cranking out spaghetti by hand on a weeknight last year, only to have the local flour spill all over the kitchen floor, was nearly the straw that broke Joe’s back. I vowed that night that we wouldn’t be doing the challenge again. It was a good run, but now it was time to cry uncle.

Then summer rolled back around, the garden unfolding gift after gift, and I started to feel the momentum build... and build... What, I asked tentatively in mid-July, did Joe think?

We’re basically doing it already, he said without missing a beat. Green light.

In the past few weeks, Joe’s been putting up food whenever he has a spare moment: vacuum-packing chopped squash, blanching string beans, canning peaches and tomato sauce, even cracking and freezing extra eggs from our chickens.

Yes, it all takes longer than a weekly trip to ShopRite, and like the rest of the world these days, we’re not long on time. But prioritizing food, I have come to realize, tends to have a grounding effect that actually makes the clock seem to slow its frenetic somersaulting.

We know we’re going to try to stick close to home this month, and eat together as a family. Restaurants and buttery movie theater popcorn will wait until October. When I spend an hour picking beans or foraging mushrooms, rather than that antsy feeling that I’m shirking my “actual” job, it feels mission critical. When we gather around the table, we will know most of the people who’ve also stuck close to home all spring and summer in order to fill our bellies, and their names will pass our lips along with the fruits of their labors.

I’m still not recruiting; no pressure from yours truly. This has to come from you because it’s hard. On the one hand, this is how everyone used to eat; on the other, changing something as fundamental as what you put in your body for an entire month is no trivial commitment. Six years in though, I can confidently assert that the return on investment – beginning with a readjustment of your taste buds and perhaps the shedding of a few pounds, and culminating in a heightened awareness, appreciation and connection – is unbeatable.

I’m simply inviting you to consider joining my family (and Chad Pilieri, founder of Grow Local Greenwood Lake, who’s giving it a go this year) in eating local for the month, a week or if that’s too much, even a day. You’ll end up sparking a really good conversation with whomever you sit down to a meal.

Make the challenge yours. Tweak it to suit your life. New for us this year, for instance, is the “three strikes” rule: if you’re on the road and it’s too hard to source local, it’s okay, just tack the day onto the end of the challenge so it spills into October (up to the limit of three times).

I hope you’ll join us. If you do, feel free to share recipes, food sources, photos of beautiful meals on the Facebook group Eat Local!, or with me at editor.dirt@strausnews.com.