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Soren

Course Requirements:

• Readings / homework. Articles that interest me: Samso, Denmark, excerpt from the light green society, A Taste of Place, and others

• Radio Interview: Lonnie Gamble (Completed - 1/28/08)

Lonnie Gamble Interview | Show Notes

• Writing Assignment: Web Review

• Group project: Street lighting (light pollution)

• Individual Project: Radiance Dairy - Glass milk bottles (On going project)

• Microlab Certification: Completed

I’m reviewing a website called LocalHarvest, which is a website about local organic food. The website allows you to find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area.

I typed in my zip code, 52556 and I found this list:

Surya Nagar Farm (Fairfield, IA)

Fairfield Farmers' Market (Fairfield, IA)

Abundance CSA (Fairfield, IA)

Overland Ranch (Fairfield, IA)

Choice Earth CSA (Brighton, IA)

I noticed that they have Lonnie Gamble’s Farm, Surya Nagar Farm which includes a picture of Valerie, his wife.

They omitted our local whole foods store, Everybody’s Whole Foods. I plan on writing to them and ask them to add it to the list of results.

There are 36 listings, 6 pages of results for our zipcode, which really include a much broader area. For example, Muscatine, Pella, etc.

The following map shows farms, farmers markets, restaurants, grocery stores and other sources of food across the country.

Here is how the website describes the organization:

“LocalHarvest was founded in 1988 and they say they are America’s #1 organic and local food website. By maintaining a definitive and reliable “living” public nationwide directory of small farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources they have become the main informational resource for the buy local movement and the top place on the internet where people find information on direct marketing family farms.”

They have a store called The LocalHarvest Store, where they offer 5,423 products. As the website says, “it brings the products of family farmers home to you.” It allows you to shop for things that you can’t get locally.

The store offers a whole variety of products that you can order such as CSA subscriptions, fruits, garden, seeds, herbs and health, herbal tinctures, gift baskets, chocolate & desserts, wool & fibers, pet needs, etc.

An interesting feature of the main page is a section called Featured Product. As I write this, the featured product is Heirloom Seeds.

They have a tab called Photos, where they have a photo album, of farms, farmers markets and other images that their members have uploaded to their listings.

This site serves as a useful tool for finding local food sources if you are traveling or relocating somewhere. One improvement that could make is to expand to a global level for local food sources. For example, if I'm in Canada or in France, I could look at a map of that region and find local food sources.