Welcome

Hello and welcome to Blue Ridge Bounty - a blog about sustainable local eating in my neck of the woods, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. This blog was born out of the idea of pooling recipes, preserving, gardening tips for the place were I live. I've enjoyed reading sustainable eating and recipe blogs, but they are usually nationally or internationally based. I thought it would be fun and useful (I hope!) to focus on the area where I like, local farmers, local peak harvest times, local eating opportunities (from restaurants to farmers markets to upick farms).

Our family (my husband Jake, my 4 year old daughter Elena, and our new son Egan) moved to Blacksburg about a year ago from the Netherlands (and before that California where we were initiated in the local food movement.) We keep a family blog and that started to be infiltrated with 'localvore' posts and thought it was time to make a separate place to collect our recipes and thoughts. Plus we wanted to reach out to others in the area with similar interests.
Our country is certainly facing it's fair number of challenges, climate change, pollution, poor health and rising obesity. Now we can add to that list rising food costs, failing businesses, and often a poor, local economy. Michal Pollan in his New York Times open letter to the next President (this was before the election) make a compelling argument that changing to our national food policy can make significant progress on many of these issues. As an aside, my personal favorite idea of his is the Presidential organic garden. Maybe the Obama's will be seen weeding and eating their veggies, we can hope so!

This expands on an idea that my husband Jake (since he is the resident global climate change modeler!), that one of the reasons we are struggling as a country and a world is that the 'answer' to our consumption is a local one, rather than a nation. We often talk about this in terms of alternative energy, solar panels in Arizona are wonderful but perhaps not the answer for Seattle. Our country is so vast that it seems to have a hard time approaching the local approach rather than the a national 'answer.' This is true with the way we eat. I grew up in Texas where strawberries and grapefruit are plentiful, but blueberries not so much. Jake grew up in Maine where mango and kiwi are not local, but you can fill your freezer with blueberries each summer. Then we get married and move all over the country and world accumulating ideas, recipes, favorite foods from all over before landing here in Blacksburg. Where again we must recalibrate our idea of 'local.' For some people this might be exhausting or annoying, but we happen to like cooking, gardening, and eating, so for us it is fun!

So what is sustainable agriculture? I like this definition from the Sustainable Table.

Sustainable agriculture is a way of raising food that is healthy for consumers and animals, does not harm the environment, is humane for workers, respects animals, provides a fair wage to the farmer, and supports and enhances rural communities.

Eating local is one big part of eating sustainably because it is simply not sustainable for our country to continue trucking iceberg lettuce from the California desert to Maine all year round. Plus, by eating locally, you not only reduce the 'miles' traveled by your food, you can get to know the farmer who is producing your food, ask questions, learn about new things.

One of the quotes that inspired this blog is by E. B. White and listed at the top of the blog:

"Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day."

Here we will try do both, save and savor the world. What a fabulous idea!

So, what can you expect? Lots of recipes using local ingredients, discussions about how to preserve the 'bounty' of food that is available here in the Blue Ridge, and resources for becoming more sustainable eaters.