100 Mile Challenge

When I hear the stuff that comes out of my mouth these days and I'm confused about who I am. I've never been "earthy crunchy", I think all my friends can contest to that. I guess I shouldn't have called this blog: Cute Fan Girl Goes Green, but rather Cute Fan Girl Goes Local. My reasons for my local selections might have a little bit to do with my carbon footprint, but my carbon footprint is so big with all my driving I don't think these actions will help it.

What brought around or I should say pushed me further down this road started a few months ago. I came across a show on Planet Green called The 100 Mile Challenge. The show follows 6 families in Mission, British Columbia who with the help of the hosts and prominent figures of the "locavore" movement, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon vowed to consume only food and drink within a 100 mile radius for 100 days. The 6 families committed to the challenge a 100 percent, while other members of the town made smaller commitments (a week, a day or even a meal). These were people with jobs, kids, with lives and they managed it. They were successes and there were pitfalls, but they made it to the end of the 100 days.

This got me thinking about where we live and what our options were and how far could we push ourselves. Always being realistic about our schedule and the limitation of it I committed to researching the possibilities. I got a copy of Smith and MacKinnon's book Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet. I've been reading at night, learning about how they decided on an experiment to live 1 year and only eat food produced within a 100 miles of their Vancouver home which would allow them to live more lightly on the planet. Using the 100 Mile Diet website, I was able to find our radius. To the west we fell just outside Albany, NY; to the east encompassed the full Cape; to the south all of RI and just shy of Dansbury and Bridgeport, CT  and to the north Wells, ME, Ashland, NH and Lebanon, VT.

We could do this. Maybe not  a 100 percent, but we could make a serious dent in our eating habits and where we purchase from. We could focus our purchases on local businesses, maybe we can't always find businesses that produce all the raw components that go into the final product but we could make a serious attempt. There are no real rules. We could learn how to make it our own. We could find sources, learn about our area more and find a happy medium between our life and the challenge.

When we started looking at the local sources the options were amazing. What was more amazing was the taste. We started purchasing our meats from Adams Farm in Athol MA. The meat is unbelievable, and well worth the field trip we take to get there. Thought there somethings that will be difficult for us to source, we are slowly making progress. We are looking at our weekly meals, our staples one by one and see if its possible to move to local options. Will we be able to on every item? Maybe not, but we'll take it one at a time and learn something new with each.