Before I say anything else, I would like to say that coordinating hours and tasks with an internship is an entirely different beast than working independently.

This quarter I will be working as an intern with Sustainable South Sound on one of their local food initiatives. Before I go into what that initiative entails, I will first begin with what Sustainable South Sound is, for all of you who may not know.

Sustainable South Sound’s About Page retrieved fromhttp://www.sustainablesouthsound.org/about-us/

Sustainable South Sound is an small, Olympia-based non-profit that’s work focuses on creating a truly local, sustainable community. Often times that means creating research or programs that improve local business, and local, sustainable agriculture to better the Olympia community as a whole. I first learned of Sustainable South Sound through my work last quarter on with the South Sound Food Systems Network, at which Rachel Friedman, president of SSS was a thoughtful and helpful presence. She told me about a couple of their local food initiatives, and one in particular that excited me.

The Local Food Revolution Cover retrieved fromhttp://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/252877/the-local-food-revolution-by-michael-brownlee/9781623170004/

But before I get into that, I think that the motivation for my excitement is perfectly expressed through the words of Michael Brownlee, author of The Local Food Revolution which I will be reading sections of throughout the quarter. He writes:

“Meanwhile, we suffer from a different kind of hunger, a deeper, existential or spiritual hunger that is too often unspoken, unconscious, and ignored. Silently, we hunger for meaningful connection with the earth. We hunger for connection with the cycles and processes of nature, for connection with the sacredness of life. And we hunger for the connection in community with each other” (Brownlee 2016: 4).

So with this “different kind of hunger” in mind, I jumped at the chance to help Sustainable South Sound with their project in conjunction with the Olympia Farmers Market to connect OFM farmers with the seven OFM restaurants. At the board meeting that I attended on Thursday to discuss more of the details of this project, it was agreed that the goal of this project is to increase the amount of local produce used by the OFM restaurants, with the hope that this can be used as a starting point to expand to local restaurants throughout Olympia.

Retrieved from http://www.farmers-market.org/

Every project needs to start somewhere, and usually that somewhere is with data collection. That is where I come in to help. We will be conducting interviews and/or focus groups with the farmers and restaurateurs to discern how both parties feel about the importance of this connection, and their potential obstacles in doing so. There will also be a collection of data that assess the assumptions, needs, and wishes of the consumers who patron the Farmers Market.

With all of that being said, I will finish this update with a couple of pillars from “The Local Food Declaration of Independence” from the second chapter of The Local Food Revolution. (I know, very dramatic.) My hope is that my work with the Sustainable South Sound will ultimately push us further in achieving the following:

“We pledge to eat (and drink) as local as possible.

We pledge to actively support our local farmers and ranchers who produce food for our community.

We pledge to actively support local food enterprises that source from local farmers and ranchers” (Brownlee 2016: 15)

I guess we will both see if I can live up to these commitments. Until next time!