Who says you can’t eat the scenery? Thousands of people do just that in the Crown of the Continent, where there’s a growing bias in favor of local produce, fruit, meats, and canned goods. There’s an equally intense taste for wild elk and venison, mountain huckleberries, saskatoons, and mushrooms.
Local food, by definition, is unique to a place. And it seems that both residents and visitors can’t get enough. By choosing to eat local, locovores and geotravelers support open spaces, working lands, and community businesses.
Witness: The number of nearby towns with farmers markets has doubled to roughly 20 in the past few years. This tally includes towns within a within a few hours of Whitefish, ranging from Fernie, British Columbia and Fort Macleod, Alberta to Choteau and Missoula, Montana.
My wife is the farmer, canner, and drier. I’m the orchardist, elk hunter, mushroom gatherer, and huckleberry picker. We put up a lot of food and sometimes barter or sell the surplus. It’s a toss-up whether we spend or sell more each year at the Whitefish Farmers Market. It’s fun to be on the other side of the table once in a while, but it makes you appreciate how hard farmers work for scant profit.
Of course, eating local is not strictly about economics, unless you get radical and go back to Aristotle’s definition of economy. Aristotle taught that economics is concerned with both the household and the community, and that economics deals with the use of things required for the good life. What’s the good life today, and what’s smart economics? The cheap fruit-nut bar from China at Costco or the home-canned plums, pears and venison in the pantry, purchased with hard work and few coins.
Our team at www.crownofthecontinent.net inventoried all the regional farmers markets recently, which also can be found on page 32 of the June 3 Flathead Beacon.