It’s the new buzzword in the green foods revolution: local – an all-absorbing term that insinuates “sustainable”, “seasonal”, and “organic” in one breath. We recently paid a visit to Keller’s locavore mecca, Homestead Farms. Their signage on Keller Hicks Road is easily missed. If you drove down its newly asphalted driveway you might think you’ve accidently turned into someone’s home. But that’s all part of the appeal, isn’t it? Microsourcing your food from (literally) a neighbor’s backyard instead of having it flown in from faceless megafarms in California or Uruguay feels like the height of eco-virtue.Homestead’s retail edifice is more roadside shack than mini-Whole Foods, but it still offers a humble bounty: raw goat’s milk, raw goat cheese, fresh herbs, pesticide-free cucumbers, summer tomatoes, grassfed beef, organic banana chips, fresh eggs. We even spotted a small carton of locally raised turkey eggs on our visit. So maybe our haul added to more than what we would have paid at Walmart, but an unburdened conscience was our discount, and knowing exactly where our food came from was a reward couldn’t be claimed from a frequent shopper’s card.Given our modern proclivities, it’s hard to imagine a world where everything we ate was homegrown. P.E.I mussels and prosciutto di Parma don’t exactly grow wild in Keller. But I guess we can all do better. Even “farmgirl” (Homestead’s blogger) wouldn’t mind a little friendly competition. A recent blog post challenged even diehard Homestead fans to start their own gardens. It’s a romantic notion: shaking the morning dew off your red leaf lettuce for a salad sourced in your own back yard, plucking ripe peaches for a tree-to-table après-dinner treat, harvesting and roasting your own coffee beans for the freshest café mocha ever (okay, I’m just playing now but you get the point). I’m issuing my own challenge and urging everyone to grow something this summer, then share it. Google ‘container gardening’ or go analog and check out a gardening book from the library. Watch your friends’ expressions when you tell them that the tomato and basil salad they just wolfed down came from your own garden. Then prepare to be anointed King/Queen Locavore with a capital “L”.Here’s a bit of fun and inspiration, even if it’s not exactly local (hey, I’ve already covered New York and Seattle in the last month, so why stop there?). I found a story in the Atlantic magazine about a growing food movement that was spurred on by Forage, a hip restaurant in the equally hip Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake. Imagine eating our own locally grown produce as a gourmet masterpiece prepared by a hot shot chef. It’s a tantalizing possibility, and not as unattainable as we may think. Let’s not let L.A. have all the fun.
