Mussels, new potatoes, green salad and a bowl of blueberries and raspberries – that was the first all Islesboro-grown meal we ate. That happened 14 years ago during the first July we lived here. No one heard much about “locally grown” then, except in special circles like the organic farmers organization or among die-hard back-to-the-landers. Even grocery stores now boast “locally grown” though sometimes they expect us to agree that someplace in Massachusetts is “local” and, I suppose, compared to Chile or New Zealand, it is.
Since those days, I have tried to see how elaborate a meal I can produce from truly locally grown food, preferably all island-grown. It is a bit of a sport, really, and I can raise the stakes as I please. Just how closely to define “island grown” is the trick. Suppose you keep pigs. They root around in island soil, drink its water, but look at all the off-island grub they get: school cafeteria plate scrapings, refuse from a party you work at, hopelessly left-over leftovers from the back of the fridge which before that came from the grocery store. Pigs raised here many years ago had hardly any off-island inputs. Same for chickens, steers, calves, lambs, and older sheep whose flesh became mutton.
But even a hundred or more years ago, islanders here depended on wheat flour, sugar, molasses, perhaps even rye and cornmeal from away or nearby on the mainland. In the last half of the 1800s, Lincolnville grew enough wheat to sell in nearby Belfast and Rockland. Islanders could have grown cornmeal enough for their Indian pudding or brown bread but most of the time, the wheat flour in their pie crusts came from off-island.
In the process of butchering a deer once at our house, I thought about how the animal had grown sustained only on island water, air, and the products of the soil (unless he gnawed on a nursery shrub brought here from the mainland, a fairly likely possibility, come to think of it.). It was truly all-island meat. Neighbors who hunt and eat deer meat have that much closer a connection to this place than people who eat food only from elsewhere.
We made a special meal of that deer, constructing a menu of all-island food: potatoes, turnips, carrots for vegetables, apple and onion chutney, apples from favorite half-wild trees which appeared again in a dessert. Had I planned far enough ahead – like several months – I might have been able to provide something for a grain, but we had no bread. Besides water, for island-origin beverage we drank some of the maple sap we had gathered for maple syrup.
For holiday meals, I try to make sure there is generous island-grown representation, and point this out proudly at table to anyone who will listen and indulge me. Dairy products and grains are still the rub – somebody here needs to get a cow, and we need to plant corn or wheat. It means I have to put together Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter menus sometime in the previous June.
If it is true you are what you eat, then I think I would rather be mostly island than California, South America, or New Jersey. Spices from the tropics, olive oil from Mediterranean lands, and wine squeezed out of grapes full of French rainwater will serve to keep me adequately connected to the rest of the world. The rest of the time, let me dine from here.
– Sandy Oliver
Islesboro