Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Long story short
by Kirk Woundy
My 2-year-old son ate his first truly fresh egg a couple weeks ago. I did, too.
It's not that I'm an urbanite; I grew up in a city of 30,000, about an hour from the nearest "real" city. But a couple decades ago, few people we knew kept gardens, much less canned their own fruits or raised their own chickens.
My friend here with a hen house isn't your stereotypical urban homesteader, if there is such a thing. He's a no-nonsense businessman, plenty busy with property management and construction. When pressed for time, I've eaten Wendy's with him more than once.
But his modest backyard is teeming right now with tomatoes, peppers, Brussels sprouts and, yes, eight or nine birds.
I thought of him as we assembled a huge calendar of this year's Local Food Week events, then watched it shrink. For the same reason the Peak to Plains Alliance could find so many farming, gardening and cheese-making types to participate in its week-long celebration, it couldn't prevent some offerings from filling up or selling out.
There are still lots of ways to join the movement, as you'll see in this issue — and in our annual Dish supplement, as local chefs share ideas for working this season's harvest into soups and stews.
Give it some thought. I'll spare you the zeal of the converted, but I will say that those eggs tasted really good. My kid liked them, too, though not as much as chasing the chickens around the backyard.
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