With only days to go until Thanksgiving, shoppers will crowd grocery store, supermarket aisles and farmers markets this weekend. As health and farm advocates remind us, it's a good time for grabbing some locally grown food items to put on the holiday table.
This year, there's been a lot of interest in the once-ignored topic. A lot of the credit goes to the Cascade Harvest Coalition , which runs the Eat Local for Thanksgiving campaign. The effort, now in its third year, has begun to attract imitators in other parts of the country.
About the copying, coalition Executive Director Mary Embleton said, "The more people do it, the better."
The Cascade Harvest campaign has attracted more than 3,000 pledges from people promising to serve at least one locally grown, harvested or raised food for the holiday. By local, the campaign means anything from Washington state (no, coffee processed here doesn't count, but, yes, bring on the Yakima Valley wines).
The goal is to reach 5,000 pledges, double last year's 2,498. If that sounds like an overachieving effort, Embleton is optimistic. The pledge number just topped 3,000. "There are a bunch of cooking demonstrations and stuff at farmers markets this weekend," where the pledge will be promoted, she said.
Plus, the campaign has "kind of gone viral," spreading rapidly on the Internet in recent days. More than 200 people signed the pledge on Thursday, she said.
It's all happening at a time when government support for agricultural programs is on the chopping block with almost everything else. King County and Snohomish County will make key budget decisions on their agricultural programs at the start of next week. But, Embleton pledged, Eat Local for Thanksgiving will be back next year. And it will be building on what is already a new record for the number of participants.
The Eat Local for Thanksgiving pledge site is here. The lower part of the site's page has a running count of the pledges.
