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I'll admit it: Christmas is my least favorite season. Were it not for the shopping, I think I
would like it - family, friends, good food - just like Thanksgiving, but with pretty lights.
But shopping is an integral part of the season, at least in my circle. Worse, with my
tendency toward procrastination and my family's preference for gifts like tools and
sweaters, shopping usually takes place at box stores or a mall. This puts me in a foul
mood every time.
Two years ago some friends of mine committed themselves to excluding all franchise
stores from their gift buying pursuits. Lucky for them, they live in a hip city that prides
itself on its thriving small business community. It still took effort but they did it, and
everyone on their list got great gifts - things they wouldn't probably have picked up for
themselves, but loved because they were beautiful and unique.
It was easy for me to say that I could never make such a pledge because all we have in
my small Midwestern town are box stores and bake sales, but that simply isn't true. Main
Street is lined with small shops whose owners are trying to make a living, and the truth is
that I want them to succeed. They might not carry a great selection of tools or sweaters,
but I would miss them if they left. Why? When I can get almost everything I need at
Target, what's it to me if the little guys go under? Why should I limit my Christmas
shopping to the things that are available from local vendors?
In two words, 'creative autonomy.' No one tells the woman who runs the new and used
bookstore in town what to stock or where to place each item for maximum consumption.
She makes her decisions based on her love for books and customers can smell that when
we walk in door. It is the small things that make each community unique, and one of the
ongoing tragedies of the United States, to my mind, is that our culture is increasingly
becoming designed, homogenized, and imposed from above by the marketers from the
McMultiMegaloMart abomination.
So the reasons for buying holiday gifts from small businesses boil down to the same
reason my husband and I shop at the farmers' market: because buying our food there
means we belong in this community. And for that matter, it is the same reason that we
don't buy strawberries in the winter: because they're not from here. Buying as much of
our food as we can locally and seasonally introduces us to the neighbors who also come
out early on Saturday mornings for fresh greens, connects us to the farmers who
remember that we like sweet potatoes, and binds us to the land outside town where the
food grew. In the years when we have been CSA members it has been a similar
experience. We have felt more human because of our commitment to eat what one
particular piece of land provides. In this age of isolation, anything that makes us
genuinely feel more alive and part of the human circle is worth going for.
So how does all this relate to LocalHarvest? Careful observers will have already noted
that within the great socioeconomic experiment that is LocalHarvest, there exists a
certain tension. While our main mission is to promote connections between community
members and their local farmers and farm-related businesses, we also sponsor a catalog
of mail order farm-made products. Our commission on the sales proceeds provides the
main income stream for the site; without it we couldn't pay the bills. So on one hand, we
stand firmly behind the "buy local" movement: our business is steeped in its values. On
the other hand, we were awfully pleased to facilitate the shipment of a few hundred high
quality turkeys last month.
We have made peace with the seeming contradiction of a business whose very name
advocates "local" and whose income is derived mainly from non-local sales. How? By
focusing on the people whose goods we are selling, and acknowledging the distance by
which they are separated from other mail order vendors. Our "vendors" are family
farmers. They make things like blackberry jam and goat's milk soap. They grow
cranberries and tangerines; they raise lambs. They work hard, in concert with the land
and the seasons, and at the end of the day they too must balance the books and fix their
vehicles and pay the vet bill. To our minds, directly supporting any family farmers,
"local" or not, is a contribution to the creation of a culture whose roots run deep. Truly.
So this year, I'll be doing some of my holiday shopping downtown, and some on
LocalHarvest. I know my friends will love getting dates from the desert of southern
California, and some dark, rich, buckwheat honey from Ohio. And I'm sending my
mother in law a dried flower wreath. She won't have seen it at the Pottery Barn, but I
know she's going to love it.
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Photo by Maple Wind Farm
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