Local foods at your fingertips

If you're looking to find an easier way to buy locally grown foods in Plymouth, try looking on www.localfoodsplymouth.org. The website allows people to browse their catalog and order fresh food from local farms by paying with either a PayPal account or credit card. Students looking for more vegan or vegetarian options might be particularly interested in taking advantage of this.

According to Melissa Greenawalt-Yelle, the coordinator of Local Foods Plymouth, the products made available on the website range from produce, meats, dairy, eggs, baked goods, maple syrup, and more, all of which are grown or made locally. On Mondays and Tuesdays, buyers can visit the website to purchase products which from late October to June will be available for pick up at the UPS store on Main Street. Late June to early October the food is available for pick up at the Plymouth Farmers' Market on Highland Street.

There are many perks to getting your food locally as opposed to going through supermarkets or other means. Greenawalts-Yelle said, "There are so many benefits to eating locally. The food is fresher (sometimes the breads and pies are still warm when they're delivered!) and are therefore tastier. Produce is picked and delivered when it's ripe, so it's more nutritious than produce that's been shipped across the country." Also, there tends to be less pesticides and herbicides used on the food because, "local food travels significantly shorter distances from farm to plate."   

According to Greenawalt-Yelle, eggs are always a big seller, and produce available in the winter is always partially popular. There is also a growing trend of people who are trying to buy locally farmed meats as opposed to factory-farmed meats. The food comes from local farms on in the area and there are currently 25 farmers and bakers participating regularly, although not every farm participates every week. Even so, there are usually at least 15 to 20 farms available a week for browsers to buy from. For a full list of all the participating farms, make sure to check out the website.

Some advice from Greenawalt-Yelle for students who are interested, but might be apprehensive because they're short on cash, is to start small. Find one group of foods you'd like to find locally, and concentrate on that. Whether it's buying local apples and cider from less than 30 miles away, grilling only humanely-raised meats, or finding a local source for eggs or milk, just pick one or two of them and start there. Avoid feeling like you have to tackle everything all at once because every step does help. "Also, get to know local farmers, as some may be willing to offer discounted prices in trade for doing some farm work, and they're a great wealth of knowledge about how to grow food."

If you interested in buying, or just feel like browsing to see what they have, check out the website at www.localfoodsplymouth.org. It features a catalog of the products available as well as a list of the farms and bakeries that provide them. There is also a feature that allows people to sign up to receive a weekly "Buy Local" email to remind people to log on to Local Foods Plymouth. People interested can sign up by emailing localfoodsplymouth@gmail.com and requesting reminder emails. Don't panic, think organic.