Today’s Local Perspective comes from Erin at Blue Yurt Farms! Erin and her husband Mike have become a huge inspiration for me as my Partner and I assess how we want to move forward in our journey towards an even more sustainable lifestyle. I joke often about selling it all, picking up and taking off in search of a nice piece of property and a Yurt to live in for a bit, but Erin and Mike have already done that! Not only have they done it, they’ve brought us all along for the ride, through all of their ups and downs, twists and turns! The fantasy vs. the true reality of homesteading can be a bit daunting, but they seem to take it all in stride and keep after their dreams! *That is why they are so inspiring 🙂
I hope that you will enjoy getting to know Erin a bit through her Local Perspective and find her as inspiring as I do!
xoxo,
M
*****
Eating locally was one of the big drivers for my move to a homesteading lifestyle. My husband and I started paying more attention to what we ate almost a decade ago (yeesh, that makes me sound old!) in urban NJ…and it was like falling down a rabbit hole. As we began buying our meat from local farmers raising their animals using humane and sustainable methods, we started to also look at the milk we bought, the potatoes, the coffee.
For us, our main reason for eating local was to ensure that what we were buying was what we were truly getting. Thanks to my marketing background, I knew that what you see on labels rarely mirrors the reality. Those labels with rolling green hills and a red barn? Not so much in real life. Try mud, muck and cement block holding areas. Yuck.
When we first started eating this way, we were consuming perhaps 30% local foods, with about 50% filled in with organic or family owned products. That last 20%? Who knows.
Now that we’re living in a local friendly community in Southwest Virginia, and raising our own meat animals, our 30% local diet has grown to perhaps 60%. That said, the locally roasted coffee beans that we buy from a friend who strongly believes in quality and sustainable practices? Well…those coffee beans aren’t being GROWN here, I can tell you that.
The pork (sausage, roasts, BACON) in our chest freezer? Well. That came from pigs born in NC, and raised right on our homestead. Their diet came from grains grown in Central Virginia, and milled with a focus on non-GMO, organic standards. They were processed here in as stress free environment as we could. Talk about local pork! (learn more about how we raised our pastured pigs here)
Our eggs also come from chickens on our homestead, fed that same non-GMO, organic diet as the pigs. I’ll say this much, since my husband and I are self employed, having those eggs and that pork has kept us fed during tight times.
The local raw milk share has also kept us going, since it’s a monthly purchase for delicious raw milk every week.
Up to now, we haven’t focused as much on gardening but we’ve supported both our local farmers market, and a local CSA. This year, we’ll be putting the focus on growing green things on our homestead. I can’t wait to add that to our homestead “resume”, as each step forward puts us closer to a self reliant, high quality food pyramid.
We’ll probably never go fully local, as life is too busy for that. This past week, my husband and I both fell sick to a nasty flu bug. I purchased a few ready made freezer meals to keep us alive. They weren’t particularly good, and they certainly weren’t local…but they sustained us when we couldn’t handle making another “from scratch” meal (or doing the resulting dishes!).
My goal is to provide 80-90% of our diet locally sourced from within 200 miles or so, and not sweat the last 20 or 10%. Living this life is a balance, but if we can fill it with as much high quality, delicious, local food as possible…all the better!
You can follow along on our journey via the Blue Yurt Farms blog, Facebook page, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest. And if you’re curious about our yurt, check out the Blue Yurt Farms video yurt tour!
