They pride themselves on gardening, small ranching, and picking up fruits along the side of the road. They try to eat organic, in-season food.
They’re called the localvores.
Junior Emma Widmer counts herself among them. She hopes to be a large animal vet one day and own a small farm.
“I try to source locally as much as I can, especially when I’m at home,” Widmer said. “It’s obviously a lot different as a college student, but I do have the ‘good, better, best’ mentality. Like yeah, getting organic chicken from the grocery store is good. That would be a good thing to do, because health wise, in regard to nutritional density, all that content, that’s good. ‘Better’ would be getting a locally raised chicken from somebody. ‘Best’ would be raising your own.”
For Widmer, the farm to fork lifestyle started as a family affair.
“It’s especially hard as a college student, but when I’m home, we raise our own eggs, get honey from a person on the side of the road, raise our own herbs and get vegetables and fruits from a local orchard. We buy our beef from local butchers,” she said.
Though organic living can seem impossible with the campus meal plan, Widmer believes otherwise.
“Just Google, ‘local orchard’ and you can call someone,” she said. “A lot of times they would say yes, for a small fee.”
Students might have reservations about paying a premium for food on a college budget. Widmer recognizes this but offers a counterargument.
“It’s not always cheaper if you’re comparing it to the stuff that you get from the store. You can get a really cheap jar of jam from the grocery store, but if you were to get it locally, you are getting fruit picked at the peak of ripeness,” she said.
In fact, Widmer’s family started buying locally to save money.
“A lot of it started as a budget thing for us, like buying the grains in bulk,” she said. “Whole chickens are cheaper than buying just chicken breasts, especially when you learn how to break them down yourself. Then I got involved in 4-H and Future Farmers of America, and I would raise my own chickens.”
Sophomore Caris Fickenscher is also on a journey to eat locally. This summer, she raised her first brood of hens.
“Living in the suburbs of Sacramento is definitely not the country, so it’s fun to have a little bit of farm life at home,” Fickenscher said.
In order to establish a literal “pecking order,” she chose three different breeds of chickens, balancing their personalities.
“Two breeds are definitely more assertive and dominant, and then the others are much more chill,” she said. “They really like it when they’re held, which is kind of unusual for chickens.”
Morgan Morrison ’21 is a staff writer in the institutional advancement office. Outside gardening and raising chickens, he also loves hunting.
“It’s an easy sport to get into, so you can get up to one hundred pounds of red meat if you get a whitetail deer,” Morrison said. “It’s lean meat. My goal this season is four or five deer, with one being made into ground venison, and another jerky.”
Morrison already went on his first hunt this season. The state of Michigan opened up rifle hunting for one extra week this year in order to manage the excessive doe population. Morrison took advantage of this opportunity.
“I grew up hunting in Pennsylvania,” he said. “People like to emphasize that we’re no longer hunters and gatherers. Well, that’s not true. We still do it for pleasure and management. Without hunters, there is rampant disease, especially with whitetail deer. Some people can always afford to buy food at the grocery store, but not all can.”
Like Widmer, Morrison grew up in a rural community. He was a butcher at his first few jobs, which taught him to process any game he takes down. According to Morrison, this keeps the cost of organic meat lower.
“When people debate the cost of eating local organic food, I tell them to think of other costs–the medical costs down the road of unhealthy eating,” Morrison said. “There’s a controversial argument that this local meat should not be more expensive. There are unjust regulations on small scale farmers that prevent them from slaughtering locally, but instead at a USDA slaughterhouse.”
Morrison then explained the “custom butchering loophole,” which allows for people to purchase live animals, such as cattle, and then pay a private butcher separately. The process makes small scale, organic farm meat much cheaper for consumers.
“It didn’t used to be this way. The regulations were meant for good, but have made local meat more expensive and put out of business small butchers,” Morrison said.
Al Stewart, director of Hillsdale College’s Nimrod Center, uses local eating to grow closer with his family. Like Morrison, he loves to hunt. By going on trips with his son, they have made lifelong memories.
“I get to watch the world come alive in the morning when I go turkey hunting,” Stewart said. “It’s a clean process. I get to serve it at Thanksgiving for the whole family. My son goes with me; it’s been tradition for over 30 years. Both of us are able to share that with our family.”
Stewart grew up on a farm, with his small property acting as an extension of his childhood. He continues in his father’s footsteps of hunting, while his wife gardens and bakes. She grows green beans, pumpkins, and various berries in her garden. She then uses the harvest to make salads and tarts for the family.
“This pandemic brought people to evaluate time with their families and nature, so naturally there’s been an increase in the number of hunting and fishing licenses,” said Stewart. “It goes back to the core needs of what humans are.”
When it isn’t hunting season, Stewart enjoys catching salmon in Lake Michigan and walleye in Lake Erie. He sees self-sustainment as an opportunity to connect with both the land and a broader community.
“Realistically, we’re not off the grid. We could be if we wanted, but we do other things too,” Stewart said, laughing. “An 80-acre farm back in the day would have done it. Your money was on the farm and you would barter for what you didn’t produce.”
For Stewart, the benefits of growing and harvesting food ultimately stems back to family.
“These things have been passed down–long family recipes from one generation to the next,” Stewart said. “We forage, raise our own animals and harvest them. Today, everyone wants to know where their food comes from, but we know exactly.”