Publisher's Note

Anyone who has ever eaten a tomato fresh from the vine, savored a sauce flavored with herbs just picked from a window box or eaten vegetables recently harvested from their own – or somebody else’s – garden, knows the incomparable flavor of fresh produce. There is no contest between the taste and texture of a head of just-picked, island-grown lettuce, still dewy and speckled with dirt, compared to what you get in the grocery store: a plastic package of dehydrated leaves that has spent a week or more in a refrigerator truck on a cross-country journey from California. In the seven-10 days between the time that head of lettuce was picked and served as a salad on the dinner table, most of the nutrients and much of the taste has been lost. No wonder the resurgent trend in eating locally. It even has a new name: locavore.

In this issue of Nantucket Today we profile several people who are doing just that and catering to an ever-increasing flock of locavores. Claudia Butler and Dylan Wallace have been selling their organic produce, herbs and baked goods all summer long at the Farmers and Artisans Market under the Nantucket Native label. Both were raised on the island and come from families where good food was a priority. Dylan’s dad is celebrated chef Peter Wallace, formerly of Topper’s at The Wauwinet and Oran Mor. Patty Myers, who cultivates her Polpis Road acreage using organic farming principles, has been at the market with her farm truck as well this summer. She grows her vegetables for Water Street restaurant as well as nine island families, including her own. Both of these small farms extol the use of natural practices. Gabi Burnham interviewed all three of them for her story, “Eating Local.”

Retired Unitarian minister Ted Anderson has been cultivating his plot of land at Two Sheds Farm on Somerset Road for over 30 years. After ministering to a flock of parishioners for most of that time, these days he tends to the soil and his crops of raspberries, blueberries, squashes, onions and growing “whatever Gretchen (his wife) likes to cook.” In between hoeing and weeding, Reverend Ted ponders the changes on Nantucket and the pressures that the economic boom has brought to people’s lives, decrying the fact that “people are so busy working for a living that they forget to have a life.” Read John Stanton’s interview with Ted Anderson, the Constant Gardener.

Nantucket does not have the best conditions for apple orchards, but regionally New England apples are some of the best in the country. Barbara Kingsolver, in her book on eating locally, “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral,” defines a locavore as someone who eats goods grown within a 100-150 mile radius of where they live. With apple orchards in Massachusetts, we can comfortably say we are eating locally when we buy apples grown in the commonwealth. And come September, it’s time to put away the summer berry recipes and look to baking comfort foods: pies, crumbles, buckles and bettys. The apple is well-suited to this and our “Seasonal Kitchen” column this month is appropriately devoted to cooking with apples.

Kingsolver also said that when she and her family dedicated themselves to a year of eating locally, they allowed themselves three foods that were outside the realm, just to make the experiment pleasurable. One of those foods was coffee, since coffee beans aren’t grown in North America. Nantucket’s Wes Van Cott, however, does roast his Island Coffee beans on island. Aficionados of The Bean on Centre Street will attest to Wes’s skill at roasting and waking up the island each morning with the best cup of coffee on the East Coast. Freelance writer Liz Stanek visited with Wes and tells his story.

Marianne R. Stanton

Editor and Publisher

Click here to subscribe