The 100 Mile Diet

Perhaps you have heard about it - The 100 Mile Diet. Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon found themselves stranded in an off-the-grid cabin in the Canadian wilderness. When it was time to eat, they turned to the land around them. Trout from the stream, mushrooms from a meadow, wild apples. It was satisfying, both from a nutritional and a spiritual standpoint. Could they possibly eat this way in their everyday lives?

After researching the origins of the foods they ate everyday, they were shocked to find that the average food item traveled thousands of miles from the farm to the table. Appalled by this, Alisa and J.B. decided to try to eat more locally and set a very ambitious goal, for one year they would eat only food produced within 100 miles of their Vancouver home. I bet they wished they had something like Chenango-Madison Bounty in their area!

Watch for the CNY Bounty Challenge - coming soon.

Thank a Farmer

I watched Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) address the 82nd National FFA Convention last night. We all know what FFA stands for. Mike said that he had a peripety (look that up in your wikipedia) when, after producing a number of environmentally conscious "green" episodes of Dirty Jobs, he realized that if you were going to "get clean with green you had to get down with brown". While this comment originally referred to folks who worked in areas like recycling and renewable resources, Mike soon realized that anything sustainable was stewarded by folks who weren't afraid to get their hands dirty. If we ate today, we must thank the farmers who cultivate the crops and tend the livestock that contribute to the bounty on our tables. So, my hat's off and I lift a glass (a nice hoppy one) to the farmers who produce our food and I offer an extended hand of friendship to those of you who do so in my community. Which brings me to the topic of the Chenango-Madison Bounty. Farmers and producers in our region have established a food distribution system that brings food from our fields to your tables. How green is that? Local food, distributed en-masse to the doorsteps of the residents of Chenango and Madison County. I love it and would do so, even if we weren't producers. Check it out. Order today. Support our local farmers and producers and watch for the CNY Bounty Challenge coming soon!