In my neck of the woods there's a quirky family-owned grocery stuck in the 1960s. It's small, three aisles maybe, the kind of place you'd get your food during a camping trip. They carry the essentials and focus on local food in season. They do not have long aisles of chips, canned stuff and processed meals. But they have affordable lobsters, mussels, asparagus and Molson. Today's fresh produce featured strawberries picked this morning after a night of heavy rain. Fragrant and swollen with last night's downpour, these berries will grace tonight's shortcake. Until I saw these berries, strawberry shortcake wasn't on tonight's menu.
And this is really the difference between shopping local and shopping at a huge chain: consumerism. Consumers are not expected to live in harmony with their natural environment. They are expected to shape it to their will and make choices independent of local weather. Their choices are conditioned by market forces or weather across the country last month. The huge chain down the road had California strawberries at a suspiciously low price this morning. But I wouldn't trade the jumbo berries from out of state for the local fruit. The California berries didn't take up the rain that kept me up half the night.
The local strawberries help me make peace with my difficult night's sleep. We both endured the heavy rain. And now I get to eat it.
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