11 extreme ways to eat and drink closer to home
Here come the hyperlocals, a radical few who are reshaping the 'close to home' dining and drinking habits of yesteryear for application in modern life.
Photo: qmnonic/Flickr 
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3. Self-made wine. Love those French Bordeaux and Italian Chiantis, but can’t justify their high-mileage, high-carbon hike to your wine glass? Consider making your own wine at a local vineyard. DIY wineries that let you actually prune vines, crush grapes and bottle your own custom wine batch are cropping up in urban and rural areas alike. Check out Brooklyn Winery, Sannino’s Bella Vita Vineyard on the North Fork of Long Island, and Crushpad in Sonoma, Calif., which allows you to make wine either on-site or online. With the help of an expert vintner, you get carbon-friendly local vino that tastes … well … like it’s straight from the vineyard and not your basement.
5. DIY delicacies. Time was when eating local involved more than hopping down to the nearest Whole Foods for organic blackberry jam or raw goat milk cheese. It meant making these treats at home. Thanks to the recession and a yearning for simpler times, lost “home arts,” like canning, preserving and cheese-making, are on the upswing again. Many farms, organic food businesses, urban homesteaders and county cooperative extension offices are offering classes for DIYers seeking old-school goodies that don’t come from halfway around the world. Haven’t got time for a class? Try tapping into an online community like Canning Across America. Not sure why your jelly won’t gel or which salt yields the tastiest pickles? The National Center for Home Food Preservation’s FAQ page probably has the answer.
7. Nanobreweries. Microbrewers beware. Small just got smaller. Welcome to the nanobrewery — pint-sized, home-based brewers (most of them with regular non-beer-related day jobs) who are beginning to offer their craft pilsners and lagers to local restaurants and stores. Good news for brew enthusiasts and ale aficionados looking to shrink their beverage-related carbon footprints. Hess Brewing, which claims to be San Diego’s first nanobrewery, has compiled the Great Nanobrewery List of tiny artisan breweries around the country. Want to turn your homebrew hobby into a nanobusiness? Check out these pointers on equipment, licensing and other legal issues.
11. Hyperlocavores. You’ve heard of the 100-mile diet, an effort by locavores to feast only on foods produced within a 100-mile radius of their homes. Well, now there’s the 10-mile diet; the 1-mile diet; and, yes, even the zero-mile diet (aka a backyard garden that produces everything — and we mean everything — you eat). Not quite ready for total immersion, but want to eat closer to home? Check out Local Harvest’s lists of nearby farmers markets, CSAs, and food co-ops. Or try the Locavore Network, which lets you specify your preferred distance to local growers and markets.
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Comments
Wine (and beer) that comes from my basement tastes darn good thank you! Homebrewing is the ultimate option in drinking locally when you control everything that goes into it. Brewing beer and wine is extremely easy and doesn't have a high entry cost. Depending on your batch size and what you want to brew between 30 and 90$ in equipment and 30-50$ in ingredients. Hard to find beverages like mead and cider are even easier and cheaper to brew if you have local honey or apples and are a treat.... More
We have a vegetable and herb garden and weed the inedible weeds out of it, but theedible weeds stay until we harvest and eat them along with our cultivated crops. I have also deliberately introduced several edible weeds onto our property (most notably Salsify and Sow Thistle) that weren't getting there on their own and harvest them too.
only buy from licensed and inspected food and beverage makers. we have health departments for a reason - canned goods and anything processed can breed bacteria that cause botulism, listeria and more
I understand your concern but a point of note is that if you can see the kitchen and talk to the people running it I don't really see a problem with eating the food they make. Some health practices are necessary (like proper canning procedures, which is why we do it that way at home), and some are not like pasteurization of milk. Several foods which have been eaten safely around the world are illegal in the U.S. and some small farmers just can't afford USDA or FDA licensing but still follow all.... More
what about everyone else in the rest of the country? can they partake in this extreme movement also? a wee bit elitist.
The rest of the country is crawling with edible invaders. Depending on where you live, I can give you some ideas of what to look out for.
wow, I never thought about what happens to plants when people move! the Wayward Plants organization, and others like it, really have something here!
So I just can't help myself but to comment here. Gardening and making your own food is a lot of things - delicious, enjoyable, nutritious, and rewarding are perhaps a few words that come to mind. But in my view it is not not an extreme sport, nor is a competition, save a biggest tomato or tastiest jam contest. Saying things like "you might enjoy locally-grown foods but you don't have anything over these hyper-locovores..." is ridiculous. I think pointing out the cool initiatives focusing on.... More
Generally, I love this piece and not just because you generously toss around the word "hyperlocavore" which I think I coined! I gotta say framing growing your own food as something "radical" doesn't really sit right with me. It wasn't until the last 50 years or so that we stopped doing it. In most places in the world people never stopped having food in their gardens, some pullets in the yard.... It was just good home economics. I like to say - when a conservative plants a garden it's a sign of.... More
My favorite of course is eating invasive species.
