No Ice Cream Yet, But Sustainability May Exist In Small Pockets

Yesterday I wrote about my desire to make my own ice cream as a way to strike back at the food producers who shrink their products as a strategy for inflating prices while keeping prices relatively constant.  By selling smaller amounts for the same price, they don’t have to mark their prices up and explicitely tell the customer that inflation is taking place.

I talked it over with my wife.  She likes the idea, too.  So, I spent a short amount of time searching for a local milk producer.  My goal is to find someone who, preferably on a small scale, is producing either cow milk or goat milk.  I didn’t find a producer, yet.  But, I did find a couple of interesting links.

One link is to Downtown Phoenix Public Market.  This appears to be a farmers market.  We intend to check them out this coming week.  Hopefully, by meeting and talking to people we can find a supplier of milk.

Another link is to Phoenix Permaculture Guild.  Their members include people raising livestock within the city.  Mostly chickens and ducks, from what I see.  But, again, maybe someone knows someone who “gots milk”.  Not industrial milk.  Rather, wholesome milk.

Several days ago I was also surfing on the web for evidence of local sustainable culture here in Phoenix.  I came across Phoenix Slow Food.  This is local chapter — or convivium, as they call themselves — of Slow Food USA.  They also look like an interesting group of people.  They are fighting the fast food culture by slowing eating down and making it much more of an intimate experience.

This especially struck a cord with me since I recently read Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal, by Eric Schlosser.  Schlosser’s book is an eye-opening work that reveals the effects of the fast food culture on the economy, people, our communities, and on our individual health.  It certainly makes a person think.  It has me thinking about alternatives.

Of course, I am interested in alternatives for other reasons, too.  A big item in my anxiety closet is the phenomenon of peak oil.  I’ll probably be blogging about this more in the future.  Peak oil, in simple terms, is the end of cheap energy, at least for the foreseeable future.  There is evidence that we are at peak.  The implication is that life as we know and enjoy it cannot be sustained.  To what extent this previous statement is true is open to debate.  And that is part of the motivation for this blog.

I am interested in using this blog as a vehicle for discovering, and writing about, what people are doing that is sustainable here in the Phoenix area.