Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

But eat local is about more than exact distance. I'm going to nitpick Local
Harvest on this. As they put it, the best organic food is what's grown
closest to you. But there are two considerations about buying local. One is
freshness, the other is fuel cost to transport. It could be grown next door
and be a week old and lose some nutrition. Or it could be an essential
seasoning or other item and not produced within a thousand miles. My coffee
or black pepper is non-negotiable even though it comes a very long way to
get here; however it's a very small quantity, and the energy cost of
shipping the small amount I use may be less than the heater in my own
greenhouse. Just something to consider. 

We try to support our area growers, esp other vendors at the farmers
markets, such as heirloom apples in season from the mountains north of us,
and nobody has apples closer in NM. We got chile in town that's from Hatch,
the chile capital hours to the south, though we could have got the
legendary Chimayo landrace chile if we wanted to drive two hours just north
of Santa Fe. A few families have been growing the same strain there for 400
years. Green chile is a nutritious source of natural vitamin C that we
freeze for winter. 

See http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/landrace.asp

and Project hopes to spur comeback of near-extinct chile strain
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/34097.html

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 11/13/2007 at 1:52 AM activism98201@verizon.net wrote:

>I'm looking to generate a map of farms located within a given radius,
>perhaps showing multiple radii (100 miles, 250 miles etc.).  It's to aid
>in understanding "eat local" distances.
>
>Anyone know of anything (web tool perhaps)?
>
>www.localharvest.org kind of does this, but I'm needing to actually show
>distance lines.
>
>
>Thanks!
>-Mark Nagel
>Everett, WA