Local food

I've just been reading about Joanna's latest local food meal. It does make me think hard about how I could or should define local food for my family. Eating food only grown in the South Island of New Zealand is not difficult. A wide range of vegetables and fruits are grown in the South Island, fishing is common, wine and beer are made as are the grapes and hops grown, sheep, chickens, pigs, dairy and cattle are raised, grains are grown and the only thing I'm not sure about is whether we grow pulses on a commercial scale. I think there are some around Ashburton. Salt is harvested in Marlborough and olives are now as well, although for the premium end of the market rather than the large bottles I use nearly every day. Herbs grow plentifully.



Except, the West Coast of the South Island is quite isolated from everywhere else and snow still stops transport getting through several times every winter. If fuel prices and availability go the way some are predicting, I don't think the South Island will necessarily be local enough. So I've chosen the West Coast only as a possible local challenge. Not impossible but lots harder. I'm assembling an inventory of possibilities now.


As you can see in the map below, the West Coast is a very long and skinny part of New Zealand linked for the most part by only one road. From one end to the other would take 6-7 hours to drive.



Fruit: blueberries are produced commercially. Nothing else, or nothing within coo-ee of our home. I think there are some organic crops near Karamea, maybe feijoas. But it's possible to grow a number of trees for fruit at home, which we are doing.


Vegetables: again, very little grown commercially. There is a commercial tomato producer not far from us and I support them for my sauce making adventures. There is a place near Hokitika which grows mostly things we have at home but also has asparagus which I don't even have in my garden yet. The Hokitika grower is odd and unpredictable and his wife tells me he tells lies, but no one said this locavore thing was going to be sunshine all the way.


Grains: potatoes for carbohydrates. Too wet for grains here really.


Legumes: I'm experimenting and so have others, but no great success yet. No place for locavore vegans I'm afraid.


Meat: I support two excellent local butchers. I understand however that they get their raw unprocessed meat from Canterbury, so local business but not locally grown. There is a place in Karamea which I have spoken to which sometimes has organic lamb, but mostly I need to get in the know with farmers and the home kill butcher if I want local meat. I have a contact south of Ross who sells me organic beef which she has reared herself.


Poultry & eggs: I have the great benefit of being friends with the wonderful Raeleen who passes her unwanted roosters on to us to eat. We occasionally buy eggs from Raeleen and by spring we should have our own chooks.


Fish: Locally caught fish isn't hard to buy here. Our strongest preference is to buy direct from a fishing family who we know from kindy and now school.


Dairy: The coast is teeming with cows, but it isn't possible to buy local milk and cream and cheese. Westland Milk Company specialises in powdered products which go out of the coast on the train. I suspect the market is largely international.