My Eat Local Challenge

It's Eat Local Challenge time around here and I'm going to try to do it again this year. Last year, the month was September. This year, it's October, so I'll get to experiment with what's local now.

The organization promoting this asks participants to make a statement of participation for their personal challenges. Mine are as follows.

1. What's your definition of local for this challenge? 

For me, local will be anything within 100 miles of The Lo, when I'm in town.  Local also includes the small town businesses that make my community so great.

2. What exemptions will you claim?

Tea and spices that I've already bought.
Anything I need to get me through the half marathon and training (gels, energy bars, and the like).
I'll forgo local when I'm traveling back to Boston (and I ordered school lunch for the few days after that trip since I won't have time to make food that weekend).  Maybe I'll extend the challenge to make up for that.  But, our school lunch company is a local operation called Revolution Foods, and they do as much local as they can.
Any other exceptions I make will be supporting small local businesses. For example, most of the bakeries around here do not get local flour or yeast, but buying from them supports the local economy.  Last year, I didn't eat bread for my local month and maybe I'll do the same again, but I think local goes beyond just the food but extends to the businesses that are local as well.

3. What are your goals for the month?
I'd like to shop at the farmer's market every week. I haven't been doing this because they only take cash and I hate using cash and having to go to the ATM.  I guess this needs to start this weekend since October starts on Wednesday.
I'm going to try not to eat out, but if I do, support restaurants that make a point to support local businesses (I think Borrone's qualifies since they serve acme bread...phew!).
I guess I'll have to quit my oatmeal habit.  I have it every morning...I'll miss it.  Back to the plain yogurt.  Oh man, I forgot that bananas are out too.  That was a bit tough last year.

Oooohhhh...this got me kind of excited for the jam in my cupboard that I made last spring.  I didn't use local sugar though, so I'll have to figure out if that's okay.

I looked at my local food wheel (kind of like a star chart but for food grown around these parts) to see what I'll be eating.   Here are the things I think I'll be eating: apples, mushrooms, strawberries (really?), artichokes, sweet potatoes (excellent), nuts, arugula, beets, broccoli, carrots, corn (really?), pototoes, pumpkins, spinach, and squash.  I might have to make an exception for chicken broth.  I don't think I have the time to make it myself and some squash soup might be nice sometime this month.