24 animal, vegetable, miracleshe kept her sled parked on the porch and developed rituals to enhance
the odds.
With our local- food project still ahead of us, we spent time getting to
know our farming neighbors and what they grew, but did our grocery
shopping in fairly standard fashion. We relied as much as possible on the
organic section and skipped the junk, but were getting our food mostly
from elsewhere. At some point we meant to let go of the food pipeline.
Our plan was to spend one whole year in genuine acquaintance with our
food sources. If something in our diets came from outside our county or
state, we’d need an extraordinary reason for buying it. (“I want it” is not
extraordinary.) Others before us have publicized local food experiments: a
Vancouver couple had announced the same intention just ahead of us,
and were now reported to be eating dandelions. Our friend Gary Nabhan,
in Tucson, had written an upbeat book on his local- food adventures, even
after he poisoned himself with moldy mesquite flour and ate some road-
kill. We were thinking of a different scenario. We hoped to establish that
a normal- ish American family could be content on the fruits of our local
foodshed.
It seemed unwise to start on January 1. February, when it came, looked
just as bleak. When March arrived, the question started to nag: What are
we waiting for? We needed an official start date to begin our 365-day ex-
periment. It seemed sensible to start with the growing season, but what
did that mean, exactly? When wild onions and creasy greens started to
pop up along the roadsides? I drew the line at our family gleaning the
ditches in the style of Les Misérables. Our neighborhood already saw us as
objects of charity, I’m pretty sure. The cabin where we lived before mov-
ing into the farmhouse was extremely primitive quarters for a family of
four. One summer when Lily was a toddler I’d gone to the hardware store
to buy a big bucket in which to bathe her outdoors, because we didn’t
have a bathtub or large sink. After the helpful hardware guys offered a few
things that weren’t quite right, I made the mistake of explaining what I
meant to use this bucket for. The store went quiet as all pitying eyes fell
upon me, the Appalachian mother with the poster child on her hip.
So, no public creasy- greens picking. I decided we should defi ne New
Year’s Day of our local- food year with something cultivated and wonder-