Buy, buy, love!

This is the time of year when we plough through magazines and websites looking for that Perfect Something. What’s Oprah giving to her studio audience this year? What’s Angelina putting in the kids’ stockings? How will I afford the Rolls Royce that Jay-Z is giving Beyoncé on Christmas morning? You won’t, and I’ll tell you why. We live in Charlottesville, and not

in Hollywood. We live in a city where the ethic is changing from bigger, better, faster, Meat to local, sustainable, Vegetable, future-oriented. We’ve planted our houses on a spiritual

fault line in the Shenandoah Valley. We’re not going to whittle away our time and money on overpriced inessentials from Robertson Boulevard and Rodeo Drive. We’re special, beyond the thoughtless consumerism of the Christmas season, and nobody can tell us that we’re supposed to buy Rolexes for our husbands when we know perfectly well he’d prefer a CSA cabbage patch (the garden, not the doll).

Maybe it’s hazardous to define an entire city as green-minded. Perhaps it’s unfair to dramatize our local identity like this—we can’t all be yogis and vegetarians—but we’ve met six people that are certainly taking us one step closer to realizing the dream of building a sustainable local economy. Charlottesville is home to a number of green celebrities, people who are influencing the way we eat, shop, travel, build our homes, and raise our children. They deserve as much love as Oprah when it comes time to recommend holiday gifts to the masses. This season, why not change the world one gift at a time?

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Lisa Reeder heads A Local Notion, a local foods consulting business, and writes www.alocalnotion.wordpress.com, a blog devoted to chronicling her adventures in food. She is also the food and kitchen columnist for C-VILLE’s monthly ABODE publication. In A

Local Notion, Reeder writes of tasting blood sausage from a freshly slaughtered Polyface Farm pig with the same foodie enthusiasm she devotes to topping ice cream with grilled local peaches. Her stories stand out not only because they shed new light on old cuisine and show readers the agricultural origins of their favorite dishes, but also because Reeder is interested in the community that produces the food we eat. A principal part of her job is networking with farmers, vendors and cooks around Charlottesville, and befriending and connecting local food purveyors and consumers. She sees shopping, cooking and eating as social experiences and is constantly pulling new people into her tasty network. For instance, many of her best food stories begin with a phone call or a conversation: “Yo, Lisa. You wanna help me break down a deer tomorrow morning?”

After graduating from UVA in 1996, Reeder received chef’s training at the Natural Gourmet Cookery School in New York. But Charlottesville’s unique connection with the land around it drew her back to town. Since her return, she has taught a course entitled “The Power of Food: Nutrition, Food Policy, and Local Food” at UVA’s School of Continuing Education, she has been the chef and local foods purchaser at Feast!, and she has acted as Vendor Coordinator for Vintage Virginia Apples’ Apple Harvest Festival. Reeder considers herself a “pollinator” of the local food movement in Central Virginia. Like our very own Johnny Appleseed, Reeder might carry persimmons, garlic, or pressed apple cider from stop to stop when she visits local farms and businesses. But what will she be carrying when it’s time to deliver holiday gifts?

In keeping with her local-food-as-community ethic, Reeder encourages shoppers to give a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription, which allows someone to buy produce direct from a local farmer. Friends can also share a membership in a CSA program, and meet weekly to collect their fresh vegetables and to partake of the bounty together at the dinner table. You can find a CSA share to your liking at www.buylocalvirginia.org. Lisa Reeder also suggests giving a Year of Cheese ($175), from Feast!. This package offers a yearly supply of artisanal cheeses and their perfect accompaniments, redeemable each month. Reeder points out that Blue Ridge Eco Shop, winner of the 2008 Virginia Sustainable Building Network’s Innovation Award for “Best Green Small Business,” offers fun gift ideas like wall-mounted reindeer heads made from recycled paper ($16, www.blueridgeecoshop.com) and solar powered battery chargers ($22.95). If you know someone with a sweet tooth, you can find Gearhart’s locally made gourmet chocolates at the Main Street Market and Pandora’s organic holiday infusions at the Holiday Market on Saturdays on the Downtown Mall. If you want to spread Virginia’s agricultural wealth in your own backyard, buy heirloom, open-pollinated vegetable, flower, and herb seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (www.southernexposure.com) and brighten a garden near you. Lastly, give your favorite music fan tickets to Floydfest, the four-day music festival in the funky Blue Ridge town of Floyd, Virginia (www.atwproductions.com).

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Better World Betty is the online alter ego of Charlottesville’s Teri Kent. On www.betterworldbetty.com, Betty is a modern, eco-friendly housewife who advises locals on what to buy, where to recycle, and how to make the planet a little greener through creative solutions. Inspired in part by Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and by spending a month in environmentally progressive Sweden, Kent created Betty World Betty to give our

community “practical tools for going green.” The website features search engines that enable visitors to find deposits for hard-to-recycle items like cell phones and packing peanuts. Kent has also done her research on where to shop green in Charlottesville. Her directory of local businesses that aspire toward sustainability grows every month. Whether you’re shopping for furniture or auto parts, the Better World Betty website is a great source for environmentally friendly consuming. The site also showcases local events like community workshops on energy efficiency. Jumping over to Teri Kent’s blog (www.cvillebettyblog.blogspot.com), readers discover tips for wrapping gifts with recycled paper and donating old computers to charity. And this week, Kent has launched her blog series entitled “The 12 (Green) Days of Holiday Giving.”

What are some of Kent’s gift-giving tips? Her overall philosophy is “buy less, buy local, be selective.” She personally tries to avoid purchasing presents when she can. She and her children often get creative with gifts by compiling and binding recipe books made from recycled paper, constructing bird houses from empty milk cartons, or giving babysitting hours to friends who need childcare. She also recommends baking foods with local ingredients or even regifting past presents you cannot use. But Kent also recognizes you can’t always avoid Christmas buying. At least be a conscientious shopper and buy from local artists at www.etsy.com or give a gift certificate to a local music venue like the Gravity Lounge.

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In 2006, Melissa Wiley of the Piedmont Environmental Council of Virginia started a program that virtually everyone I interviewed for this feature cited: Buy Fresh Buy Local. For this program, Wiley generated a website (www.buylocalvirginia.org), a printed guide, and

numerous marketing and outreach activities for farmers and retailers of local food. Wiley is deservedly proud of the PECVA’s contribution to the local and sustainability movement. Since Buy Fresh Buy Local launched two years ago, the program has significantly grown in size and stature. It now covers 20 counties and mails BFBL food guides to nearly 23,000 households in the Virginia Piedmont. Wiley reports that she has personally seen a difference since 2006: “Consumer awareness about the benefits of buying locally produced farm products has increased and farmers are telling us their sales are up.”

Another fan of Feast!, Wiley recommends giving the Virginia Heritage Collection gift box ($65) to friends and family this year. These boxes supply buyers with a wealth of local jams, chocolates, wines, and more. Best yet, Feast! donates 10 percent of its sales proceeds to Buy Fresh Buy Local. Wiley also suggests cutting out the middleman this season and buying some gifts directly from local producers and growers. Edible Landscaping in Afton sells potted plant varieties that are good enough to eat, like raspberries, asparagus, figs and almonds (www.ediblelandscaping.com). The Orchid Station in Barboursville is a wholesale orchid nursery that sells to flower enthusiasts at local markets and at Charlottesville retailers. Wiley also recommends stuffing stockings with Buy Fresh Buy Local reusable bags. These $5 Chico bags with the BFBL logo can be used as a gift in themselves or as creative wrapping paper for another gift. To order the bags, visit www.buylocalvirginia.org or call PEC’s office at (434) 977-2033.

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The question of what and where to buy for the holidays is an easy one for Karen Beauford of Locallectual (www.locallectual.com) to answer. The online enterprise she heads with Jessica Meehan is thriving because it gives a platform to both businesses and consumers that aspire to be socially and environmentally responsible. Locallectual is a dynamic guide to where people should shop in their communities when they want to make a positive

impact on the local economy and a minimal impact on the environment. The website includes a directory of businesses across the nation that pass the Locallectual test. Beauford and Meehan even build custom websites for local businesses such as a recent one she did for Cappellino’s Crazy Cakes. Locallectual features a blog to which Beauford and Meehan both contribute with posts like “How to Explain ‘Made In…’ Labels on Santa’s Toys” and “Deck the Hall with American-made Christmas Ornaments.” Locallectual also has a Twitter feed, a community forum, and an online store that sells t-shirts, underwear and dog apparel emblazoned with the Locallectual logo (all locally made of course). Obviously a junkie for new words, Beauford has recently embraced “locavore” and “relocalizer” in addition to coining her own term “locallectual.”

Karen Beauford’s long list of gift ideas include recycled fleece clothing handmade by Ryan Williamson of Earlysville. You can find his Mouse Works line (www.themouseworks.com) at Blue Ridge Mountain Sports, Freestyle, and Vivian’s Art to Wear, Art for Living on the Downtown Mall. Williamson swears that in an entire year of Mouse Works production, he only generates one bag of trash. For locally made beauty and body products, Beauford suggests the Brigit True Organics line, found at Rebecca’s Natural Foods and Charlottesville Arts Cooperative Gallery. If you’re shopping for holiday libations, check out Sperryville’s Copper Fox Distillery (www.copperfox.biz). A bottle of Wasmund’s Single Malt Whisky ($36.90 and available at ABC stores) is 100 percent local from its barley to its barrels.

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For six years, Kathryn and Michael Bertoni have run Appalachia Star Farm, a Nelson County CSA enterprise. Young farmers with a young family, the Bertonis are model citizens of the so-old-it’s-new-again local agriculture economy. Every year, consumers pay the Bertonis in advance for their vegetables through a farm subscription. This money allows the Bertonis

to finance their crop, which they then divide among the buyers. Everybody wins (and eats) in this ingenious system. On a given week in the summer, CSA subscribers might receive a box packed full of garlic, onions, asparagus and cucumbers. At the Charlottesville Farmer’s Market or at Appalachia Star Farm, you actually shake hands with the person who grows your food. CSA subscribers also receive a weekly e-newsletter containing recipes, special events and information about the season’s vegetables. The Bertonis always host two farm events for the season’s subscribers, like their annual Tomato Tasting, where you can sample up to 20 varieties. They also schedule volunteer days where members can visit the farm for labor, potluck and fun.

Kathryn Bertoni still has local food on the mind during the holiday season. For gifts, she suggests giving friends and family a basket of agricultural goods like cheeses, meats, and jams that are always in season. Or give the gift of a great meal by hosting a local holiday dinner. Thinking ahead to next year, you can give a share in a CSA subscription or learn to make your own preserves with local fruits. A personalized jar of jam or jelly is a memorable present, especially if you picked the summer strawberries yourself.

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Peter Warren works as an extension agent for Horticulture and Natural Resources in the Virginia Cooperative Extension. Warren is involved in the effort to educate the public about Central Virginia’s agricultural environment both through the VCE and through his weekly horticulture column in The Daily Progress that has appeared on Sundays for seven years.

The Virginia Cooperative Extension has shared its members’ agricultural expertise with the Albemarle County community for nearly a century. Warren is delighted by the recent surge

of interest in CSAs and in environmental issues, but let’s give credit where credit is due. “I think it is safe to say we have always been focused on local and sustainable efforts, even before it was cool to do so,” says Warren.

For holiday gifts, Warren directs shoppers to local grocery retailers like Rebecca’s Natural Foods at Barracks Road, Integral Yoga in the Preston Plaza Shopping Center, and Feast! (a crowd favorite) on W. Main Street. While you’re shopping at Integral Yoga, walk next door to the Blue Ridge Eco Shop (www.blueridgeecoshop.com) and buy a t-shirt from Green Label Organic. Warren also suggests taking a trip to Vintage Virginia Apples where you can buy local fruit, fresh apple cider, and bare root trees for planting. Lastly, Warren recommends consulting the following websites for local gift ideas: Tom Perriello’s “Shop the 5th!” online resource (www.perrielloforcongress.com/shop), Shop Virginia’s Finest with featured merchants like Aunt Betty’s Biscotti (no relation to Better World Betty) and Virginia Gourmet Peanuts (www.shopvafinest.com), and the Guide to Pick-Your-Own and Select-Your-Own Virginia Farm Products on the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services website (www.vdacs.virginia.gov/vagrown).