Suburban Foraging: Two Families Eat Only Local

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The Chesapeake Bay region is well-known for its seafood, but we didn’t eat much of it during our experiment. Iconic products like blue crab and rockfish were simply too scarce and expensive. Renee had the occasional treat of a fresh croaker or two, a less famous but delicious regional fish, caught by her uncle, an avid sport-fisher. Through her CSA, Kristi received some wild-caught Alaskan salmon, hardly local, but environmentally friendly.

Facing an Involuntary No-Carbs Diet

The major challenges arose when we tried to find sources for pantry staples like flour, rice, corn meal, oats, barley, cereal, lentils, dried beans, nuts and dried fruit, as well as pasta and bread. Kristi did not eat wheat while pregnant, and was hoping to find spelt or rye.

Wheat required a three-hour round trip for a rendezvous with Western Maryland farmer Rick Hood who sold Renee a whole 10 pounds of wheat for just $2.50. We were stunned to find no commercial mills in Maryland grinding the millions of bushels of wheat and corn grown annually in the state. “The milling facilities in Maryland have died,” Hood said.

With the help of a small kitchen grinder, Renee experienced the pleasure of baking with freshly ground wheat, although it required a lot of cleaning before grinding. She was relieved to eventually find Wade’s Mill in Raphine,Virginia via the internet. Millers Jim and Georgie Young stone-grind Virginia hard and soft wheat and happily fill mail orders with their old-fashioned twine-tied bags of flour.  The only way to get local cornmeal was to drive to the tiny town of Westminster near the Pennsylvania border, where volunteers grind local corn at the historic water-powered Union Mills grist mill and sell it for $3 a bag.

Kristi was able to locate certified organic whole spelt, and whole rye flour grown without pesticides, both from Small Valley Milling in Halifax, Pennsylvania. The spelt was also ground and hulled locally. “I probably have the only dehulling facility in Pennsylvania,” said farmer and mill owner Joel Steigman, who knows farmers who send their spelt to Michigan for dehulling.

We were, however, unable to find any bakers using local grains. When Kristi asked one bakery representative where their grains came from, he replied with a baffled, “Is that a trick question?” As a result, Kristi supplemented with breads that were at least locally baked and Renee stuck to her homemade bread.

Maryland’s Eastern Shore yielded pecans from 100-year old trees at the Nuts to You farm, available every week at our local farmers market, as well as hybrid chestnuts from Delmarvelous Chestnuts, available by mail. Ground into flour, chestnuts pack a nutritional wallop and contribute to savory dishes like nutty-tasting crepes. Ordering nine jars of Virginia peanut butter online from The Peanut Shop of Williamsburg was probably the easiest purchase of the whole month.

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