When I was living up in Portsmouth, NH, Josh and I were addicted to the fabulous Portsmouth Farmers’ Market – though Josh didn’t love the time it started – 8 am. It was a great market – lots of things to choose from and friendly vendors who we got to know. We liked chatting – me more than Josh until he had his cup of coffee – with the vendors about their produce or meat like lamb and chicken.
However, last year we moved to Rhode Island – away from our favorite farmers’ market, away from everyone we loved buying the best peaches, lamb, salad greens from. But we started hitting all the RI markets in the area and have found vendors similar to those in NH. In addition, soon after we moved to RI, Josh and I read the book Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon. We both thought about eating locally…though maybe not for a year, would be a challenge we’d like to tackle. About a year ago, we chose July 2008 as the first month of our experiment and July 1st, 2008 is approximately 28 hours away.
So Josh and I have spent the last year searching out farms, farm stands, and markets that have foods and beverages (thank goodness there are so many RI vineyards). In the last week I have picked over 21 pounds of strawberries (those are the berries I picked), Josh has been experimenting with corn meal (the only “grain” grown within 100 miles that we have found so far), we planted tomatoes, squash, eggplant, leeks (they look like green hairs right now) and multiple other edibles and we think (and hope). We are ready to go!?!…