Macon Magazine

From the Dillard House in north Georgia to Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room in Savannah and in private homes in between, bowls of Southern-style fresh summer vegetables will soon anchor dinner tables. The famous boarding-house spreads mimic the menus and memories of traditional farmhouse meals, where everything served up was produced within a horse-and-wagon’s reach of the homestead. And while you may find Brussels sprouts and broccoli among the bowls of stewed tomatoes and okra and crowder peas, it’s the traditional Southern crops that are the main attractions for locals and tourists alike.

That heritage of eating fresh, eating local and eating “in season” has attracted the attention of a new generation of cooks, many more attuned to microwaving a pouch than manually shelling field peas. It’s a quiet revolution, this direct, farm-to-table approach to eating healthy. Grocers are labeling bins “grown locally” when applicable. Farmers’ markets and roadside produce stands are flourishing. And “locavores,” a term coined by four California women in 2005 who wanted to try eating only locally grown food to reduce the carbon footprint left by hauling food cross-country and out of season, are growing in number.

The environmentally friendly and healthy mission of eating less commercial and more homegrown foods was delightfully documented in Barbara Kingsolver’s nonfiction best seller, “Animal, Vegetable and Mineral: A Year of Food Life.” Published in 2007 - the same year “locavore” was named Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary - Kingsolver’s book describes her family’s yearlong “realigning of our lives with our food chain.” Translation: They gave up eating almost everything they couldn’t grow in their back yard or buy from farms within a 100-mile radius of their Appalachian homestead. No California strawberries and no tomatoes out of season, no Italian wines, no lobster from Maine - none of the foods they had become accustomed to buying at the mega-markets, unloaded from long-haul trucks idling out back.

Such self-reliance and provincial eating had been a necessity, not a test of will, for our ancestors. Their diet was limited to the crops they harvested and canned, the cows, pigs and chickens they slaughtered and cured, and the bread they baked. Few of their extra crops made their way north of the county line. They were preserved for winter use or traded with neighbors. It was the advent of big farms, interstate highways and refrigerated trucks that made regional foods more abundant and universally available - at a cost - out of season.

The environmental and nutritional impact of long-distance food transport, however, has finally been noticed, and what was old has become new again. Serious locavores, as well as regular family cooks trying to plan healthier meals, are seeking locally grown foods over more exotic grocery store choices. Our state’s climate, long growing season and variety of crops create the perfect opportunity for eating well, eating seasonally and eating fresh.

Royce Brannen, a regular dealer at the Macon Farmers’ Market on Eisenhower Parkway, lived the original way of being a locavore before it was given a name. He grew up working alongside his father on their Unadilla farm. After retiring from the Air Force, he returned to the homestead with his family to raise a few Southern favorite crops he uses to supplement the larger quantities and varieties of regional vegetables he buys wholesale by the crate in Cordele and resells in Macon by the pound.