Today’s economic troubles highlight the benefits of eating locally-grown foods. Growing your own fruits and vegetables can cut down on the grocery bill at a time when the cost of food is increasing. Eating local foods is also better for the environment. Food doesn’t travel as far, so less fuel is used to get dinner to your table.
In Harrison County, a young couple is realizing these and many other benefits as they try to build a sustainable homestead. The small cabin of Dan Harrington and Autumn Long sits on a hillside at the edge of the woods above a creek and a garden.
“This is our main garden, the grapes, strawberries, and tons of potatoes. We planted lots of potatoes this year, because it was so hot and dry last year that we had a really poor potato crop," says Autumn Long as she unlocks the cattle gate that leads to their garden.
Long is one of more than a dozen people participating in a project called Locavore Nation. It was created by The Splendid Table public radio show. Eighty percent of the participants’ diets should come from locally grown, organic, and seasonal food. Long’s having better luck now than when the project started in January.
“The winter was kind of ridiculous, and I certainly did not approach the 80 percent local goal at that point, because there was just no way without severely compromising my diet, which you know, I’m not going to do that,” Autumn Long says.
Long blogs on The Splendid Table Web site about her trials, including the lack of local diary products. Long’s husband, Dan Harrington, sticks to the diet - mostly. He works for a landscaping company, so he’ll grab something while he’s working. The couple say they’ll continue to try to eat this way even when the project ends in January.
“A lot of times you talk to people about living this way and they’re like ‘Oh, I could never do that. It’s so much work.’ Well, sure it is, but it’s fun work. It’s not hard. It’s not rocket science. Anyone can figure out how to grow some tomatoes or make a little bit of maple syrup in the winter, and it’s fun to do; it’s a rewarding experience,” Harrington says.
“It is a lot of work, but it’s work that you’re doing for yourself. It feels good, and I’m really glad that I think in the last few years and more and more so, issues of sustainability and especially with gas prices as high as they are, are really coming into people’s consciousness and I’m very glad that’s happening. I’m definitively not advocating that everybody do this, like ‘oh you’ve got to get off the electric grid,’ just that people are starting to think about it,” Long adds.
Long and Harrington’s convictions are also reflected in where they live. The couple’s spent the last few years building a cabin that’s off the electric grid. They have a gravity fed spring, a woodstove, and a few solar-powered gadgets, but they admit, Dan’s parents are just down the hill, in a home with all of the conveniences of electricity.
But sometimes that’s proves to be an inconvenience. A winter storm led to a power outage, and his parent’s well water pump didn’t work.
“We had no idea the power was out. It had been out for six hours maybe. Even then, down there with the same resources we have, but they’re set up on the power grid, so you really see just the funny little things you become reliant on,” Harrington says.
It’s not a far stretch for Harrington and Long to end up here, living off the land. They each describe their parents as part of the back-to-the land movement where people from other parts of the country retreated to the Appalachian Mountains and foothills to homestead in the 1970s and early 80s.
“We really don’t have a social group at this point. There aren’t like young people doing this at this time. We’re kind of thirty years too late, I guess,” Long says.
Or, maybe they’re 30 years too early. Eating locally seems to be a quiet trend. Long and Harrington think it hasn’t yet arrived in West Virginia.
“In a big city, in a major urban environment, they have a lot of farmer’s markets they can go to. They can go to co-ops. Maybe there’s a CSA providing local produce. Whereas here, you better grow it yourself,” Harrington says.
“The infrastructure for locally produced merchandise really hasn’t evolved here so much, so yeah, you really have to do it yourself,” Long adds.
Our last stop on the farm is the pig pen behind the chicken house. Long cuts some grass to feed the pigs. There will be bacon and sausage this fall.
“There’s no love lost between us and the pigs. When we first got them, and they were small and cute, I thought ah, but now they’re big and creepy,” she says.