Eat local - it's good for you!

At our house, the first sign of impending warm weather is when Mike hooks up his basement grow light and places tiny seeds in the grid-shaped seed starter. It's a sign of faith that the cold Kansas winter will eventually come to an end and when it does, our broccoli, chard, spinach and lettuce will have a head start in our small garden space so and that we'll be eating fresh-from-our-garden salads soon. Our backyard doesn't get much sun, so we plant what we can and enjoy the growing process.

Growing food, however much we can, is a way for us to remember where our food comes from. It's a lesson for our children. Our boys know that lettuce starts out as a seed and that someone grows it before it makes its way to the supermarket isle. It's also a way for us to eat frugally and in a way that is beneficial to our environment. Enough lettuce seed to last a season costs only a few dollars. In our climate, rain is usually plentiful enough to water our garden. What sun our backyard gets is free. No fossil fuels are burned on our walk out back.

What we can't grow in our small plot out back, we try to buy from local farmer's markets. Produce at these markets is usually brought in from less than 100 miles away and most of the growers are small family farms. Over the past couple of years, we have developed real relationships with a few of the growers whose stands we frequent. When our youngest was born a few years ago, we even sent one farming family a birth announcement.

But it's not just about the relationships. Local food tastes better, too, and has been shown to have more nutrients. A zucchini picked 2 weeks before purchase and trucked in from 500 miles away pales in flavor to the zucchini picked the night before it was purchased from a farmer's stand.

If the idea of shopping at a farmer's market baffels you, or you don't know where to find one, a favorite website of ours is http://www.localharvest.org/. It will point you to farmer's markets and other sources of good, local food. Here in Kansas City we even know a few local farmers who deliver.

Cheers!