How Far Does Your Salad Travel To Get To Your Table?

There is a common expression used in Peak Oil circles, as well as sustainability circles, how far does your food travel? The carbon footprint for many food items is insane. A salad can travel thousands of miles before it reaches the supermarket. This is why I started to grow my own food. I can do my part to reduce my carbon footprint, and most of all I save money. Growing lettuce is a lot cheaper than buying it at the store. It's about as easy to grow as it is to buy at the store. Drop the seeds in the ground and then pick off leaves as it grows.

The photo is a proud accomplishment of the first lettuce picked from the garden last month. Tasted very fresh, very letuccy, a new word I just made up. It really did taste more like lettuce than what I would buy at the store. So right now my salad travels about twenty five feet to reach my kitchen, another five to ten feet to get the to the table. I haven't measured, just approximating, but I would be confident to go in front of any lettuce court in the county. The prosecutor would challenge me and it would go like this:

Lettuce Prosecutor: Mr. Mayer, how far does your salad travel to get to your table.
Me: I am proud to say that it is less than fifty feet. I may add that I picked it myself.
Lettuce Prosecutor: Mr. Mayer will you please keep your answers to the questions asked.
Me: I was just pointing out that I grew the lettuce myself and that I don't live next door to the supermarket.
Lettuce Prosecutor: Mr. Mayer that is obvious unless you lived in the supermarket.
Me: I wouldn't say that was obvious........
Lettuce Prosecutor: Uh, Mr. Mayer, do you add anything to your salad?
Me: Do you mean other vegetables?
Lettuce Prosecutor: Yes. Any tomatoes, mushrooms, other vegetables of that kind?
Me: No, I just have a plain salad. My tomatoes haven't grown in yet.
Lettuce Prosecutor: Do you add salad dressing to your salad?
Me: I would like to plead the fifth amendment and refuse to answer any more questions.

OK, so I do put salad dressing on that has probably traveled a bit to get to the supermarket. My salad is not 100% local just over 90%. But the great thing about growing lettuce in the northwest is that it can grow most of the year, hearing that from what I've been told. It is my first year growing lettuce, but as long as it keeps coming up I'll keep tearing off the outer leaves and eat them. I need to add different varieties of lettuce, I'll probably do that around early September when the temperature starts going down. I'll add them the same time I plant some beets. My goal is to have enough lettuce to have a salad for Thanksgiving.

I'll proudly pick and eat my lettuce and think of how much I can save in one year. Might be enough to bail out my blue cheese dressing. Boy that Lettuce Prosecutor is one mean dude.