Day 0

This summer I'm commuting from home, Maple Valley. I drive to the bus stop in the Green River Valley then take to bus to the U District. Today on my way to school I though I would stop and take a picture of one of the largest local and most sustainable growing operations in south King County. The Carpinito Brothers farm owns several acres along West Valley highway where they grow several different vegetables types and markets it as produce in their stand in downtown Kent. They are fairly well known in the Green River Valley, an I’m sure I was make a visit or two there before my eating adventure is over.

So, today is not technically the first day of my Eat Local challenge but I needed to get some planning out of the way. It was ~90 degrees today and I though I would be able to make it to Pike Place Market before class today; but I didn’t make it...Sorry Teresa :) I was at Pike Place to get some shopping done for my "Local Week" and to do part of the research for the farmer's market paper. There were mostly tourists, as expected, but the locals were also there if you looked. Most of the people asking questions or making purchases seemed more like locals, several still being dressed in their business attire from a day of work.

There were several stands in the market, all carrying several types of fruits and vegetables most marketed as “locally grown; “ but upon asking these vendors about where their food came from much of it seemed to be outside of the 150mile zone. How then could this food be marketed as local? When talking with one vendor, and asking him about different local things he had me seemed apologetic that his produce was not local enough. They had just gotten in a new shipment of “local” Chanterelle mushrooms I asked where these mushrooms were from and the vendor replied “well they’re from all over, some of them were found down in south by Vancouver but it really depends on the season. Right now most of the Chanterelle’s are coming out of northern California.” This bothered me; if the uninquisitive buyer wanted local food, then they would be doped by the marketing practices that I found all over.

All in all this was a very good trip to the market, I got some Shelton shallots, and russets, some sweet peas from Tenino and some beef, chicken, and pork sausage that was raised in southern British Columbia and processed in Washington.
We’ll see what this week has in store.