New Year’s Resolution: Be a Locavore

As you review the past year and consider the year to come, we at Olympic Peninsula Wineries would like to encourage you to be a locavore.

This is what being a locavore in Washington State looks like.

We don’t mean to suggest that you should eat and drink only locally produced foods and drinks 100% of the time (though what an accomplishment that would be). The joys of biting into colorful, juicy Satsumas during grey Pacific Northwest winters are too great to overlook. We do hope you’ll consider the benefits of eating locally: to your health, to the environment, and to your local economy.

This blog is no place for a diatribe, so we’ll keep it short and sweet. Eating locally:

keeps your money in your community
reduces your carbon footprint
tastes and feels good

Those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest are lucky: we can eat a varied diet of foods grown and raised here twelve months a year. We can grow kiwis and tomatoes and greens and berries in our backyards. We can find a wide variety of artisan, farmstead cheeses, free-range chickens, and grass-fed beef at farmers markets. We can eat wild salmon and Hood Canal oysters. We can drink Washington State wine and cider and beer.

In short, eating local in Washington State means eating pretty darn well.

Be kind to yourself in 2012. Be a locavore.

Find Inspiration in Mountains, Forests, and Wine

Winter can feel long in the Pacific Northwest. Endless days of grey ceiling skies can tamp down our souls and dampen our spirits. We sit and watch our creativity sink into the sodden earth with the rain.

That may be a bit melodramatic, but most of us have had days like that, during the winter, here in the Pacific Northwest.

The Dungeness Spit, shrouded in mist and fog; perfect.

We can wallow in it, or we can stand up, brush the moss from our shoulders, and head to the Olympic Peninsula.

It doesn’t matter if the skies are grey when you’re walking through a forest of towering Douglas Firs. It feels like they’ve reached up and tickled the heavens, and that the raindrops are really tears of mirth.

It doesn’t matter if the skies are grey when you’re bent into the wind, walking out on the Dungeness Spit, and the the spray from the Salish Sea jumps up to kiss your cheeks.

It doesn’t matter if the skies are grey when you’re curled up with a good book in a quiet inn, next to the person you love most in the world.

It doesn’t matter if the skies are grey when you’re sitting in a cozy restaurant, with a glass of Washington State Wine or Cider grasped in your hands.

So when you find yourself feeling that the rain has washed away your spunk, come to the Olympic Peninsula. Take a ferry if you must, and stand on the upper decks where the wind will blow some spirit back into you. Find a place to stay. Strap on snow shoes and explore the Olympic Mountains. Put on your rain jacket and head out to the Hoh Rain Forest. Watch a good movie at The Rose Theater in Port Townsend. And after a full day, sit down and drink a glass of Washington State Wine or Cider, made right here, on the Olympic Peninsula.

You’ll feel better.