Every Saturday morning that's not been tampered with by calamity, I trundle off to the farmers market at Jarvis and Front, across from St. Lawrence Market, to get our weekly supply of whatever. I find the environment less sterile and scary (and over all less expensive) than Loblaws, and if I'm inclined toward pasties that week the pies are better. There are musicians in the corners - buoyant 60's covers over here, phenomenally talented 11 yr old there, ancient black jazz guy on sax that I swear is an oracle. The vendors seem to know me on sight after a year and a half and most have a favorite hat. I have been chastised on the one occasion I didn't wear one. Going to market on Saturday mornings is one of those weekly rituals I’ve grown to really love.

Yesterdays trip was a bit different. Although it's called a farmers market there are some grower vendors and some distributors, some mixed. That's okay, it's all good food, I've never felt compelled to ask someone if they personally planted the carrot they're selling. In the interest of lowering my carbon impact though I started asking where stuff was from and ended up running a circuit of the building to find stuff that was from Ontario. Eggs, cheese and chicken turned out to be local but not lettuce, beets and many of the aforementioned carrots. Nearly all of the organic items seemed to be shipped in from the US. Almost left without peppers before finding a couple with a greenhouse. On my journey to find local foods the oracle took reed away from his lips and belted out "A bird, a bird, a golden bird so rare but worth any price" so I interpreted that to mean I was on the right track.

Shopping locally and consciously is a very different way of doing things, much more challenging and possibly labour intensive. It may be worth it though, and it may be doable too. So much that is an effort is dismissed out of hand as "too much work" but the little things often turn out to matter a lot. I have a friend who's a dental hygienist, and she peaks when she hears of people not flossing because she knows full well the impact that one small thing can have on the rest of their overall health and length of life. That knowledge is a part of her everyday existence, so she moves with it. I think I can too, with this. There are some things that I'll always get that will always travel a distance to get here - coffee on a regular basis and the odd pomegranate that I won't give up. But hopefully by at least reducing the amount of travel on my food stuffs it will make a bit of a difference environmentally speaking.