Dakota Grown

In Fargo.  Right now.  Right this minute.  The business center at the Holiday Inn, to be exact, as this little blogger forgot her netbook and is still living under a rock without a smartphone.  Boo. 

A wonderful woman named Kathy Pinke (she has a blog!  check it out here!) is shaking things up as the newest employee at the ND Dept of Agriculture by adding some extra social media muscle to their promotional toolkit.  Being the smart lady she is, she invited a few local bloggers to this weekend's Dakota Grown Conference, discussing local food initiatives.  And guess who snagged an invite...

So Ms. Dakota Pam (she has a blog too!  right here!) and I hopped in my little Nissan and cruised down I-94 this morning, passing the drive time with stories of potty training, blogging and commentary on how awesome it feels to be away from the kids and husband, if only for a quick 36-hour trip.

(Hi honey.  Miss you!) 

I've met some amazing people: the herb garden artist Holly from Gardendwellers; a man named Hero that has great ideas for moving the Bismarck Farmers Market out of its current undesirable location in a Kmart parking lot; the enthusiastic Sue, who is recording the kitchen stories and recipes of the elderly German folks in south-central ND, and in turn inspiring me to make goose lard in my kitchen; and the amazing Linda with the Great Plains Food Bank, an organization feeding thousands of North Dakotans with the food the rest of us consider as excess.  And even the folks from Sysco, the company that I viewed as an evil corporate food empire, meeting them and hearing them say they are here to meet local growers to incorporate more local produce into their supply chain...and how they actually wish their clients would cry out louder for locally produced food. 

There are plenty of food issues that need to be addressed in the state.  Production, distribution, and access to real, healthy, good good food for all North Dakotans is something we should all care about, and I'm tickled to be here and meet these great people who are working every day to solve these problems in their own little way. 

And maybe, somehow, in some tiny way, this little blog is part of the solution too.  Maybe we are all tiny parts to the solution, every time we cook up dinner at home using kale from our CSA, eggs from the farm down the highway, or venison we harvested in the Badlands.  Every little meal making a difference.  What a beautiful idea.