Newcomer’s Search for CBA Local Food

One of my main goals in the Chequamegon Bay Area (CBA) is to do better at honoring future generations and honoring the land. Local foods is one part of the path to my future.

[Note: for me personally, and in this article, "local food" refers broadly to a combination of food grown or produced as much as possible in the CBA, with a lesser amount grown or raised in the much larger Western Lake Superior / Anishinaabeg-Gichigami bioregion. Other people and organizations have differing definitions of local. For example, a Chequamegon Co-op employee told me the co-op's definition of local was food grown or raised within 100 miles of Ashland.]

It's pretty challenging to figure out exactly what "honoring future generations" and "honoring the land" mean. But for me, it seems like one way to honor both is to work on making local food a much bigger part of my diet. When I use the word "diet," I just mean the food I eat. I'm not using diet to refer to a special menu or limited types of food that will help me lose weight or achieve some other narrowly-defined goal. 

Right now, as of 19 May 2023, most of my diet isn't grown or raised in the CBA. I decided in April of 2023 to start working on increasing the amount of local food I buy and eat. What I quickly found out was how difficult it is for anyone other than wealthy people to buy primarily local food.

Since I want to buy local food instead of buying food grown in California (fresh fruit and vegetables in the winter), or Costa Rica (pineapples) or Guatemala (bananas), my diet will have much less variety than it currently does. The climate and growing season in the CBA don't allow pineapples or bananas to be locally produced. And the amount of local fresh fruit and vegetables available in winter, spring, and early summer will be only a very small fraction of what a person can buy if they are OK with their food coming from thousands of miles away.

I've only been in the CBA a few months, so my knowledge about CBA local food is close to zero. Here's what I found out when I first tried to buy local food for a large percentage of my diet:

1. Availability
• Limited Variety -- There isn't a wide variety of locally produced food that can be substituted into my diet to replace in-kind the non-local supermarket food that I typically have bought in the past. Shifting to a primarily local food diet means a less varied diet and a transition period which includes continuing to buy supermarket food while I figure out a nutritious diet based heavily on local food.
• Chequamegon Co-op -- The Chequamegon Food Co-op in Ashland appears to be the store with the largest variety of CBA local food that a shopper can walk in and buy. https://www.chequamegonfoodcoop.com/
• Non-seasonal Foods -- Eggs and meat have much better availability in May than fruits and vegetables. But there are still commonly eaten non-seasonal foods, like butter or cheese from cows, which don't have locally produced options, as far as I could figure out.
• Bayfield Co-op -- There are three ways to get a variety of local vegetables and fruits through the Bayfield Foods CSA, https://www.bayfieldfoods.org/
• Bayfield Foods CSA subscription shares -- this is the traditional CSA share model for customers who don't also contribute work hours on a CSA farm. There are a wide variety of share options for different types of food and different times during the year. https://www.bayfieldfoods.org/bayfield-foods-csa.html
• Farm to Doorstep, fresh local foods shipped right to your door https://www.bayfieldfoods.org/store/c1/Featured_Products.html (and near the bottom of the page at https://www.bayfieldfoods.org/)
• Farm Stand: Shop -- a way to place one-time, market-style orders from your farmer if and when they have extra product available. https://www.bayfieldfoods.org/farmstand.html, https://www.harvie.farm/farm-stand/bayfield-foods,  https://harvie.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260803486070-How-Farm-Stand-Shop-Works-for-Members-
• White River Country Market -- Operated by a local Mennonite family, this market has a wide variety of organic and non-organic nutritious food and ingredients for baking and cooking. Much of the food is non-local, but there is quite a bit that's from elsewhere in Wisconsin. This is where I bought my local eggs.
2. Cost
• Expensive -- This won't be a shock to anyone, but local food, especially if it's organically grown, is quite a bit more expensive than buying non-local and non-organic food from Walmart or Super One in Ashland or from Hansen's IGA in Washburn. The mainstream American consumer culture supermarket business model and government supports for agriculture have kept food prices (and nutritional value) artificially low. Healthy local food will always cost more than corporate agriculture products in large supermarkets.
• Possibly Lower Cost Options -- although less convenient than one-stop shopping with the Chequamegon Co-op or Bayfield Co-op, the following may be less expensive options for local food. I haven't bought local food from any of these places yet, so I can't say what the prices or selection are for these local food alternatives, but they're at least worth checking out for yourself. They're also likely to give you food varieties you won't get through the larger businesses mentioned above. The only thing I know about some of these is what I found online, so they may not all still be in business.
• Homestead Gardens (Washburn)
• Bear Trap Creek Farm, Ashland, https://www.localharvest.org/bear-trap-creek-farm-M71912
• Hilltop Eggs, Washburn, https://www.localharvest.org/hilltop-eggs-M16835
• North Wind Organic Farm, Bayfield, https://www.localharvest.org/north-wind-organic-farm-csa-M73675
• Ashland Farmers Market, 
• Washburn Farmers Market, https://washburnfarmers.wixsite.com/washburnfarmmarket
• Bayfield Farmers Market, https://www.bayfield.org/listing/bayfield-area-farmers-market/702/
• Cornucopia Farmers Market, https://bestfarmersmarkets.org/place/cornucopia-farmers-market-cornucopia-wi.html
• Port Wing Saturday Market, https://www.localharvest.org/port-wing-saturday-market-M65514
• Hermit Creek Farm, Highbridge, https://www.hermitcreekfarm.com/
• Happy Hollow Farm, Bayfield, https://www.localharvest.org/happy-hollow-farm-creamery-and-sassy-nanny-farmstead-cheeses-M46651
• Elsewhere Farm, Herbster, http://www.elsewherefarm.com/
• River Road Farm, Marengo, https://www.localharvest.org/river-road-farm-M52077
• Two Creeks Farm, Marengo, https://www.localharvest.org/two-creeks-farm-M58396
• I'll update this list in a week or two with the orchards and farms on the Bayfield Fruit Loop, https://www.bayfieldapple.com/bayfield-fruit-loop.html
• I'm sure this isn't a complete list for 2023 local food purchasing locations in the CBA, so please let me know in person what changes are needed for this list or send updates to me at bwaldron att gmail dott com.

19 May Summary of Newcomer's Search

• The CBA local foods I've bought so far are whole wheat flour (Washburn, at Maple Hill Farm), eggs (Marengo, at White River Market south of Ashland on Hwy 118), maple syrup (Grand View, at Chequamegon Co-op), apples and pears (Bayfield, at Hauser's Superior View Farm), and Lake Superior whitefish and lake trout (Bayfield, at Hoop's Dockside Fish Market).
• I'm looking forward to finding several good places to buy local fruits and vegetables this summer. My personal schedule this summer is uncertain, so I probably won't get a CSA share in 2023, but that's a definite possibility for the summer of 2024.
• This post doesn't have room for the topic of harvesting non-cultivated food on public lands, sometimes called foraging. Future posts will cover that topic. But I hope to do a fair amount of harvesting food from publicly-accessible land this summer, especially for blueberries and apples. 

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Local and Bioregional Food

 Links Or Info For Local and Bioregional Food

Current or summer / fall sources of local and bioregional food

1. Chequamegon Food Co-op
2. White River Farm Market
1. 60238 State Hwy 118, Ashland, WI, south of Ashland on Sanborn Ave. (Hwy 112) to Hwy 118, 3/4 miles west, 715-223-9625
3. Bear Trap Creek Farms
1. 47923 State Hwy 112, Ashland, WI, 715-209-0930
4. Bob "the Corn Man" 
1. In parking lot during the late summer and fall across Hwy US 2 from the power plant in Ashland
5. 
   

Events related to CBA local and bioregional food

1. 
   

Organizations that might partner with people working to have more CBA local and bioregional food

1. Chequamegon Food Co-op
2. Bayfield Co-op
3. 
   

It seems like local and bioregional food is one of the easiest "carrying capacity overshoot" topics that will get people working together to improve the Chequamegon Bay Area (CBA). Three reasons point to this topic as a good place to put a bunch of energy.

1. High Visibility-- The terms "local food" and "organic food" have a relatively high visibility in both the CBA and in much of the rest of the world.
2. Immediate Impact -- Food is a topic with obvious and immediate impact on every single person. If, or when, there's another huge disruption in our region or the larger region of our state and our country, such as a pandemic, a sudden dramatic vehicle fuel shortage or price increase, or devastating weather, shelves at Walmart and other grocery stores may once again become bare. It appears that historical flooding this year in California will wipe out a large portion of the fresh vegetables and fruit we normally see in the stores this summer and for many months to come.
3. Low Cost -- Taking initial steps to improve the local food supply in the CBA is a relatively low cost opportunity for people who feel it's an important topic. If we organize a series of meetings around the CBA for people interested in local food, we'll probably be able to think of 20 to 50 ways to get more local food grown this summer (2023) and just as many ways to raise the interest of CBA people in having and eating more local food. Along with producing and eating more local food, we can start working on ways to preserve a lot more food from the summer and fall of 2023 so we've got lots of local food to eat this fall and next spring, when we can't be growing much food locally.

Two helpful steps toward having more local and bioregional food produced, eaten, and preserved in the CBA are:

1. Identify sources of local and bioregional food that are available now or likely to be available this summer and fall.
2. Begin a wide-spectrum effort to get the general public in the CBA aware of and interested in local food. And get that general public eating more local food!

Below are three examples of ways I'm definitely going to working on More Local and Bioregional Food in the spring, summer, and fall of 2023. (I've got about 17 other "local and bioregional food" ideas percolating but I don't want to put them into cyberspace until I figure out which ones I have a chance of actually accomplishing...)

1. Continue including more and more local and bioregional food in my diet, which includes finding out more about where I can buy reasonable cost local and bioregional food.
2. Learn more about local and bioregional food from people I currently know and intentionally connect with more people interested in or knowledgeable about local and bioregional food.
3. Grow some edible plants in the limited space where I currently live and talk to people to find a place within 10 or 15 miles of Ashland where I can grow a reasonable amount of food this summer, such as tomatoes, beans, carrots, squash, pumpkins, and other vegetables appropriate for our climate, or at least growable here.

Hope to connect with anyone in the CBA who reads this and is interested in talking about or working on projects to increase the amount of local and bioregional foods available to people in the Chequamegon Bay Area.

Bob Waldron