Local Sustainable As a Way of Life — Beth Collins
Constant Harvest • Volume 4 Number 2 • Autumn 2005 Updated: 04/10/06
When I came to East Hampton five years ago choosing local was one of the reasons I came. As a chef in NYC buying at the greenmarket in Union Square was my priority, nurtured by the interests of my mentor, Lidia Bastianich, who encouraged the foraging I did two to four times a week at Union Square in season. East Hampton became my destination specifically because of the Ross School. Its food service’s buying priorities; regional, organic, seasonal and sustainable and the scale of commitment that the school was able to give to local growers marked it as unique. I was looking for a job and it needed to be a business that wanted to make that leap, so I left my apartment in Brooklyn and settled in Springs.
In the second year I was here EECO Farm was established. Given its location, it was the closest sustainable grower to me and I welcomed their efforts, both as a purchaser and a participant. I’ve maintained plots at EECO farm since its first season and the added experience of growing, harvesting and being part of the community project pairs nicely with my work as a chef, educator and advocate of sustainable practice.
The recent broo-haha in the local press concerning arsenic levels in EECO Farm’s soil is an opportunity for all of us to own the choices this country has made in agriculture over the last 60 years. Long Island, once the bread basket of potato production in the NE, lost market share to the growing agro-industrial complex and the massive mono-cultures of the West. But during that peak to low, the conventional farming practices left their mark on the soils and the aquifers here.
Luckily there are farmers left on the East End whose mission is to restore the damage done. EECO Farm is one of them. The practical management of working with soils that are in recovery is something all of us can deal with. The consequence of not doing so is loss of a choice that so many of us want to have Ð local sustainable as a way of life.