Eating locally

I love the idea of eating food that is grown and produced in the local area. Whenever I can I try to buy local produce. When money is prohibitive though it is often cheaper to buy imported food. Although I do understand the economics that causes this there is part of me that doesn't get it.
How can food that's grown organically, just down the road from me, cost more than food that is grown using expensive chemical fertilizers and transported halfway around the world?

I guess the easiest way for me to eat local produce is to grow my own food and make my own products right here. I am working on getting a veggie garden going. The soil here is very rocky and dry. (I am living on top of a ridge) So I am going to try growing in containers. I have an old bath tub that I am filling with compost. When it is almost full I will add some mushroom compost and some manure and start my garden.

 

Wandering around my new garden I have found some edible plants. So I can already begin eating locally! This oregano was hiding under some weeds.

There are a few edible weeds around to provide greens, nasturtium flowers and leaves, dandelion, dock, sorrel and chickweed.

Also a paw paw tree (papaya)

It is a hermaphrodite tree. It has both the male flowers and female. So it is self-fertile and sets fruit.The fruit on hermaphrodite trees is never as sweet as the fruit on female trees but they are great to cook with when they are still green.

With Tui's help I made some green paw paw chutney.

 Mr  loves it and has already eaten half the first jar!

I've also been baking bread. I use a slow rise fermented dough recipe. For this first batch I used 1/3 spelt flour, 1/3 buckwheat flour and 1/3 organic wheat flour.

It has a lot less gluten than just using wheat flour and because the dough is fermented the gluten is partly pre-digested so it is easier for me to digest :-)

It turned out very yummy! And went really well with the chutney.