Defining "local"

This dairy farm is around 80 miles from our house. We stopped there two "Cowtobers" ago on a trip back from Chicago. Bill has decided they aren't "local" for us though - his definition of local is "it came out of the ground within 50 miles of our house."


The Fair Oaks cheese we bought at a supermarket last week was not counted as local and has been included in our grocery tally.

This pie was purchased from a small pie bakery within Bill's 50 mile limit. While the pie was made from scratch in the shop, we don't know where the ingredients came out of the ground (we'll ask next time we visit). We have not added this to the tally based on the technicality that it is not from a grocery store (also, we like pie and are looking for excuses to not limit our pie consumption).


These two purchases bring up the issue of source. What is our goal in eating local? Is it environmental (reducing energy used in transportation - as in yesterday's post) or is it economical - to support local small business? If we bought Fair Oaks' cheese directly from them, would that be better? It seems less efficient for us to drive 80 miles to buy 13 pounds of cheese (we like cheese as much as pie) than for a giant truck to bring gobs of cheese to our local supermarket.

We have no idea, but our quest has already gotten us thinking and talking about these things, which is a good start.

And that is a cheesy ending for this post!