Joe and Debbie Thomas began as a teacher and marketing executive, respectively. But today, they run a ten-acre organic farm in the east hills of Paso Robles, California. With more than 900 fruit and nut trees, a vineyard of Italian varietals, and beds of specialty greens, garlic, tomatoes and herbs, they began a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program, sharing baskets of fresh produce weekly with their neighbors. A few years later, they opened Thomas Hill Organics, a market bistro and wine bar, where they serve seasonal, organic produce from the farm, wines from the Central Coast, and locally-sourced beef, poultry, and fish.

During my senior year in college, I took a Social Philosophy class in which we read Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. In this book, McKibben discusses sustainability at length, and embarks on an experiment in which he eats nothing but locally-grown food for a year.

In the ensuing years, I have learned a lot about sustainable cuisine. Now I am a mother, and I feel it is my duty to teach my son about this, as well. It’s not always easy to engage a three-year-old in adult lifestyle choices, but I am making headway.

Yesterday, I enjoyed a couple of sweet and tangy Lemon Boy tomatoes from my neighbor’s garden. A few days ago, I noticed that they had some large, green Big Boys, which looked perfect for frying, so I picked a few, and in anticipation of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance‘s pie baking contest, I also grabbed several of their ripe peaches. I take food from their backyard often.

Actually, we have created our own little CSA. Initially by default, and now with a more concerted effort, we have been growing various fruits and vegetables and sharing our harvest. We have been neighbors for nearly 10 years and have been steadily increasing the amount of space that we devote to gardening each year.

“What advice do you have for someone who would like to incorporate more local foods into his or her diet but isn’t sure where to begin?”

That’s a question I’ve been asked frequently, and it deserves more attention than I can usually give it in the context of a quick take-away response.

Maybe you found your way to this website because you have the same question. Or maybe you’re already deeply committed to the local/organic/sustainable food movement, and would like to help others just starting out on that path. Let’s take clear look at how to get started.

I’ve always found freshly baked bread is comfort food of the highest order. There is something reassuring about the aroma of baking bread as it fills my kitchen and floats through the rest of my home. If I make a loaf early in the morning, I can almost guarantee that it will be devoured before the end of the day (with a little help from some little mouths in my house). And because I think about these thins, I began to wonder if I could find local flour to for my bread baking. After all I can find vegetables, fruits, eggs, dairy, and honey, could I do the same for flour? As it turns out the answer is, yes.

“What do you eat in winter?” is a question I frequently get asked when people learn that I eat a mostly local foods diet in the Northeastern U.S.

My reply starts with the fact that I eat just as well in winter as I do in summer. That fact really cheers me up right now. We are at the tail end of winter, but it will still be many weeks until the first spring crops are ready. If I only ate the storage and greenhouse crops available year-round here, well, I’d survive but my meals would be really boring.

Here’s how you can make your “off season” meals as interesting and nutritious for you as the ones you eat during the harvest months, all the while keeping a locavore’s lowered carbon footprint:

The seed and plant nurseries have got us gardeners right where they want us at this time of year. We’ve had just enough time to rest from outdoor work; enough time to forget, perhaps, just how devastating last year’s failures were, and more than enough time to regain our optimism that this will be the year we revel in natural splendor and the most abundant harvests ever. We are ready to plan this year’s garden-to-be.

By this time of year, when the harvest season is coming to an end, my shelves are lined with colorful jars of pickles and preserves, and the freezer is stuffed with fruit from the garden and veggies from my CSA share. I’ve got chutneys, jams, dried mushrooms, sauerkraut, dilly beans, marmalades, corn relish, and much more.

At this time of year, my dehydrator is humming almost non-stop, and there are bundles of aromatic herbs drying all along my hallway wall. Although I also can and freeze food for winter (part of how I keep up with my CSA share!), drying food has several advantages:

Excerpted from Cold Cereal & Toast
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There’s something special about food in a Mason jar, though I can’t quite put my finger on it.  Perhaps it’s the persona it exudes: …