Do you know who grew YOUR food. Farmers Tali, John and Jim grew the food I've eaten today. I know who they are and I live near their farms.

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Do you know who grew YOUR food?

Farmers Tali, John and Jim grew the food I've eaten today. I know who they are and I live near their farms.

Today, I decided to go the the local farmer's market. It's basically a collection of simple booths or tables on a un-used school's lot or at the local grange, where local growers can offer what they've grown direct to the public.

Arriving at shortly before noon, I missed the item I was most looking for, fresh, locally grown strawberries. These are amazing. I know because I get them from the local CSA where I am a member, Anchor Run Farm. Matter of fact, I was out in the field picking strawberries, with my 26 year old daughter last Wednesday. (You might want to consider it my alternate office, since I took a call booking me to be on the Ed Schultz Show the next day, with Tony Trupiano.)

Anyway, I know how sweet and delicious locally grown strawberries taste. There is no comparison between them and the kinds you buy in grocery stores-- the ones that are grown to survive travelling thousands of miles by train. There's no gasoline in them.

That's right. When you buy local, you buy food that does not have a lot of fuel energy invested in transporting it. Every time you buy food that has been transported to your grocery store by train, plane, boat or truck, there's a lot of extra energy that's gone into it. Buying local is a great way to cut down on the use of energy and maybe even on greenhouse gases.

This is my second year as a member of Anchor Run Farm and it has been a pleasant surprise to describe how much more fun and pleasure it's given me, not just because of the healthier organic food at reasonable prices, or the new kinds of food I've never tried before, but also because it's been fun to go out in the fields to pick my own food-- garlic, hot peppers, tomatos, beans, herbs, berries. But don't bother trying to sign up with Anchor Run this year, they sold out their memberships before the season even started.

The farmer's market I visited is not very, nor very busy, but it's only in its second week. That made it easy to park, and the drive to the market was even shorter than the drive to the nearest grocery store.

My first booth was selling home-made whole wheat raisin nut bread made with organic flour. Yum. Got me a loaf.

I walked past a booth selling greens. My weekly pick-up at Anchor Run had filled our fridge with all kinds of lettuce, greens, etc., so I figured we had all we need.

Next, I came to Solebury Orchards. I've bought their apple cider in local stores, but here, they were selling, in addition to the cider, apple butter and pear butter. I'd never tried pear butter, so I bought a jar of it.

Next, I checked out a table selling organic chicken and duck eggs. The duck eggs were a little bit bigger than the chicken eggs. Pricey, at $4.50 a dozen. The signs at the table showed pictures of field where the birds graze, with a caption, stating that it's all about what they graze on.

Next stop, a table selling locally grown and butchered beef and free range chicken. The chicken was all sold out. The beef was a little bit pricey, but not bad-- $4.00 for ground beef, about $9 and up for steak. I didn't buy any.

There was another table without an food on it, with a poster. I asked the woman manning it what it was about. She explained that this was a project of a county-wide organization the Bucks County Foodshed Alliance.

BCFA Mission Statement: To increase markets for and consumption of local, sustainably grown food. We work to develop and support a network of local farmers who grow fresh, nutritious, sustainably grown food for local consumption. We provide public education to increase understanding of the benefits of local, sustainably grown food and to promote public demand for it.

I love this idea. The word relocalization is the term used to describe the idea of getting back to sourcing your needs locally. It makes so much sense and is also a great way to support your neighbors in your community. It used to be that people knew each other who lived nearby. If you lived in a rural area, you'd probably know most of the people within a few miles-- most of them. Now, its not uncommon to not even know your neighbors. It took me a few years to get to know the people who own the property next to ours. Their property is at least 20 acres, and there are a lot of woods between us. Last summer, they invited a bunch of neighbors over who live within half a mile. It was great. We met folks who lived less than a block away who we'd never met.

Finally, still at the farmer's market, I took another glance at the first table, the one selling the greens, and I saw they were Blue Moon Acres, a local farm, specializing in growing salad greens, and microgreens for restaurants. I drive past their farm, and their greenhouses, every time I go to my office, to the train station, to Anchor Run farm... and so, when I realized who they were, I went back to the table. Jim Lyons, the owner, farmer was describing how he did some of the harvesting. Then he started talking about weeding.

I've always wondered how they get rid of the weeds, when they're growing organically. He explained that they flush the weed seeds out-- water them like crazy so they grow, then kill them with something like a propane flamethrower, until there are no more weed seeds left in the top few inches of soil. Nice! No toxic chemicals that way. I wanted to ask him if I could borrow it for the field of thistle growing in the bed where our azaleas grow. I ended up buying a container of mixed baby greens.

Finished at the farm market, I remembered I needed to stop and pick up some mouse traps to greet an uninvited recent tenant of our basement. There a store much closer to my home than thenearest box store,  that's a community treasure-- Buckingham Lumber and Millwork. It's a family owned business that's been in existence through several generations for close to 50 years.

The name is misleading. The store is an incredible collection of all the kinds of hardware, tools, etc. that you'd find in Lowes or Home Depot. And Manager Ray Reeves, IV, is a virtual wizard at finding anyting in the store. Unlike the massive box stores-- Lowes and Home Depot-- Ray's business is very funky. Low ceilings, tight aisles, but loaded with the works.


I usually just walk in, call out "Hello," and tell Ray what I need. He gets it and then tells me the best way to use it. Sound like an old fashioned country store? It has a bit of that kind of feel.

The problem is, I don't always think of Buckingham Lumber. Instead, I, almost reflexively think of the big box stores, which are further away, tend to import more of their products from China, and cost no less. But I"m working on it. Hey, even the mouse traps I bought-- for less than the box store-- were made in the US, even somewhat local, made in Lititz, PA, my state.

I was suprised to learn that Ray does well selling electronic equipment too-- 63 inch plasma screen TVs alongside the screws, mousetraps and hammers. He tells me his prices are competitive with the big box stores and he can offer third party extended service policies that cost a third to a half the price of the big electronics stores. (sorry no website but it's located off route 413, about a mile east of route 202, on 4469 upper Mountain rd. 215 794 5668)

Going local is something YOU can do, not only without sacrifice, which cuts down on energy use, it also offers some great benefits-- getting to know your neighbors, supporting local businesses, healthier, better tasting food. Give it a try. Google CSA for your county. Google relocalization and your county name to find some resources and groups that help you get started. You may also find something at relocalize.net,/a>

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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