Live Like the Locals

Buy local to eat healthy and save money. 

by Thomas Litchford


With military moves aplenty, we often get the chance to experience different foods and local experiences.  No matter where we live the best way to get a handle on just what it is we are feeding ourselves and our families is the tried and true K.I.S.S. method: Keep It Simple, Stupid. If I can’t make sense of the ingredients list, I’ll look for a competing product I can understand.

Every week, with few exceptions, my family and I drive up to a local farmer’s market in Rhode Island to collect our share of the week’s produce. During the summer we get meat, eggs, and all the vegetables we can eat for around $25 per week: everything from garlic bulbs to free-range chickens. The winter share is most often just meat and eggs, with occasional salad greens and goat cheese. We the cows that provide our ground beef in the field and the goats whose milk makes the cheese and the chickens that lay the big eggs we get. There is nothing mysterious about this food.

As an added bonus, the weekly cost is lower than what it would cost to buy similar items at my commissary. And the products are certified organic, which really makes it a good deal.

There is another farm nearby that specializes in seasonal fruits and vegetables. They sell strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, peaches, nectarines, apples and pumpkins. Last year we learned to make jam out of every berry variety, as well as pear butter and apple butter. We made so much that we haven’t had to buy jam at the store all winter. We even gave some away to friends and family as gifts.

This year, now that we are practiced in the arts of preserving and canning, we hope to put away a much greater variety of fruits and vegetables for the winter. We’ll can tomatoes when the farm sends us home with more than we can eat. We’ll make pickles. Maybe we’ll can peaches for those long winter months when we finally get tired of bananas and oranges. There are a lot of tasty options.

At this point it must seem like all we do all summer is acquire food and eat, but there’s more to it than that. A Saturday visit to the farmers’ market is more than just a trip to buy dinner supplies, it’s an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors and socialize. We’ve become acquainted with several of the vendors, and we make a point of meeting friends there. We can buy a bottle of local wine at the winery, a loaf of sourdough from one of three different bakery stalls, a hunk of cheese from a Providence cheese monger and have a picnic. Or we can grab a pastry and buy coffee from the Boy Scouts. It’s a great way to celebrate everything this community has to offer.  Until we move, that is.