Finding Local Produce

It has been a frustrating few weeks. I've been trying to locate a good source of local fruits and vegetables. Grocery stores offer the same fruits and vegetables year round, which is convenient, but I want to start getting into eating more seasonally. There are two reasons for this. One, it fosters a closer bond with your local environment to eat the things which are produced in your area. Because South Florida does have the same seasons as up north, it can start feeling like every day is Groundhog Day. Two, buying things from outside of your local area means that they sat on a truck for days before getting to you, losing nutrients in the process. According to this article, the average apple for sale at Whole Foods and other grocery stores was picked on average 14 months ago!

Unfortunately, the farmers markets down here are a joke. In the whole market there will be one stand maybe thirty feet long actually selling fresh produce. And that produce is rarely from Florida, let alone South Florida. The majority of the farmers market is always little stands of people selling salsa, hummus, dog biscuits, smoked fish, etc. If I want to buy prepared food, I'll go to the grocery store. I go to farmers markets expecting to find fresh and local raw food.

So, plan B is looking into some of the food buying clubs that operate down here. These are those clubs where pallets of produce are delivered to someone's house, and they divide it into bundles of 15-25 pounds of food, to be picked up by subscribers every other week. Unfortunately the emphasis is on organic food, and they don't always specify whether it is local or not. I emailed one buying club asking how much of each bundle is usually locally grown and got a really snooty reply about how buying organic is the important thing, considering the agricultural run-off into the Everglades, blah blah blah. I can go to the grocery store at my convenience and buy organic food from all over the world. Frozen organic food is a lot healthier than the fresh organic produce that is shipped across the country. If I'm going to deal with the inconvenience of a buying club, it had better be providing me with something I can't find at Publix, i.e. fresh local produce. There is another buying club that I might try, which is local AND organic, but it operates out of Miami so I'd have to drive to Aventura to make the pickups.

Until then, I'll get my produce from my usual market, Brothers Farmers Market. It doesn't specify what is from Florida and what isn't, so I won't be eating seasonally, but it at least has convenient hours and good prices.