Local Food – the people who produce it, eat it and sell it.
Welcome to Taste of Local, a multimedia blog dedicated to exploring local food.
Not local in the sense of a neighborhood restaurant, but rather a neighborhood restaurant that serves produce from its rooftop garden. We are looking at food sources, the distance food travels and everything that goes with it.
The impetus for this site can be traced back to a conversation that I had in the Fall of 2004. A friend of mine, a St. Olaf graduate, described how the student body at his undergraduate alma mater put pressure on the administration to stop importing apples from Germany when southern Minnesota is home to many apple orchards.
St. Olaf has since made some changes, such as offering local food in their cafetzerias, and even starting a campus farm.
What struck me most about our conversation was the school’s motivation for importing apples in the first place. Cost. It was strictly a financial move. I asked myself, how had it become more financially solvent to import apples from thousands of miles away – burning gallons of fossil fuels in the process – when apples were literally growing down the street?
So began the journey.
What I found along the way are people who love to talk about food, love to grow food and, of course, love to eat it.
As for me, I am Matthew P. Moll, a New Media Journalist studying at Columbia Journalism School.
Throughout the month of September local multimedia stories will be released.
Union Square Greenmarket: This is a man on the street account of consumers and farmers at the original farmers market in New York City. Marketgoers talk about their reasons for buying locally and a farmer explains his motivation for entering this grueling profession.
Tuesday Sept. 9, 2008
Locavore goes on a 250 mile diet: Leda Meredith decided a year ago to limit her diet to food grown with a 250 mile radius of her apartment in Brooklyn (with some exceptions), which included her backyard garden and the entire state of Massachusetts. At the end of the 12-month experiment Meredith took time to reflect.
Wednesday Sept. 10, 2008
Community Supported Agriculture share pickup day: Community Supported Agriculture (or CSA) is an arrangement between farmers and consumers where consumers pay farmers prior to the growing season for a share of the harvest. Shareholders receive weekly allotments of vegetables during the summer months. Benjamin Shute of Hearty Roots Farm explains the arrangement on a pickup day.
Thursday Sept. 11, 2008
East New York Farms: Vacant lots in a once blighted area of New York are now urban farms in a neighborhood where access to fresh produce is limited.
Friday Sept. 12, 2008
United Community Center Youth Farm: A youth program started by East New York Farms hires 25 youth in a low-income community as interns. The teens have the opportunity to earn money, learn how to manage crops and access local food.
Tuesday Sept. 16, 2008
Cooking Class: Sixteen clients of Part of the Solution, (POTS) a community based organization in the Bronx, learn how to prepare food they receive from a CSA share.
Thursday Sept. 18, 2008
Rooftop Beekeeper: David Graves has kept bees on New York City rooftops for over 10 years. Last year he lost all 17 of his beehives to Colony Collapse Disorder. The bees are back now producing local honey.
Tuesday Sept. 23, 2008
Beer Table : Known more for their beer than their food. Beer Table’s small and flexible menu makes serving local food simple.
Thursday Sept. 25 2008
Palo Santo: Owner Jacques Gautier features Latin American food in his Park Slope restaurant, but he also features regional produce. Palo Santo has both international and local flavors, some traveling just a few steps away on from the rooftop garden.
Tuesday Sept 30, 2008
Farm Visit: Eat Records is part record store, part coffee shop, part café. A large portion of the restaurant’s fruits and vegetables are purchased from Garden of Eve, a Long Island Farm. Owner Jordan Colón and friends take a trip to Garden of Eve to see meet the chickens who make his eggs.
What you can expect from this site:
Originally reported news stories
Multimedia presentations
Daily links (a segment we will call Taste of Linkals)
Opinion pieces
Interviews
And most importantly your comments.
Please register to comment on the site as well as for our RSS feed.
We can also be found on twitter at http://twitter.com/tasteoflocal and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=33211672921
PS A site redesign is already in our future.
Feel free to contact us at tasteoflocal@gmail.com.
Happy commenting.
1 response so far ↓
antoniettabertucci // September 17, 2008 at 7:33 pm |
It is nice to know that there are so many opportunities in NYC to buy and even grow local foods. This whole website (theme, fonts, color, videos, logo) is extremely appealing and gets me excited to find more ways to get more involved in my community and learn more about what I can personally do to be a “local consumer.” Your work is inspiring! I love how your video pieces are cut (especially the Meredith video where there is a still picture of Meredith with her dad looking on in the background while he is saying how proud he is of her.) I saw that the creator of this site, Mr. Moll got his idea about the topic of local food from a St. Olaf grad. Matt, are you going to research beyond NYC on this topic or are you strictly the big apple? I don’t know if you ever say this on your site.
Looking forward to the upcoming stories.
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