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I live 50 miles from an urban area. But I ilve 10 minutes from 2 grocery stores and other services. I don't walk. I don't walk because it is on a federal highway with no sidewalks, railrad tracks and I am legally blind. I would be a fool to try to do that and carry groceries, too.
I can walk into my yard and gather eggs straight from the chickens, ducks, and geese ... when they are laying ... in the barn or the yard (ducks are pretty crafty about this). Gott'a wash the poo off the eggs, but that's not too inconvenient.
I can walk into my yard and gather up poultry, but I have to process it myself from the live bird to the oven or b-b-que ready condition. "Farm Fresh to You" never had more meaning ... and it works great for getting rid of relatives overstaying their welcome for dinner. We usually process a dozen birds at a time, so one or two are kept for that day's meal and leftovers, and the rest head to the freezer.
We can check on the condition of our beef on the hoof in the corrals or pasture, depending upon the time of the year. Sometimes I have to walk 15-25 minutes down the creek from the house to check on the cows. Every 18 months (or so), a calf is loaded into our stock trailer in the yard and takes a one-way trip to our USDA processor about 70 miles away. Four weeks later, I can pick up the frozen meat order from them.
I buy my pork from a neighbor who is only 60 miles away. We choose the one I want, which is then transported to our USDA processor. I can usually pick up the frozen product in 3 weeks.
Our lamb selection in the pastures and corrals is fabulous ... within 100 yards of our doorstep. We select a half-dozen at a time, and they go to our USDA processor in our two-horse bumper pull trailer. Some of that goes into our freezer for us two weeks later, and the rest is sold at a Farmer's Market or to executive chefs/restaurants as a "local harvest" "all natural" product.
In season, our vegetables come from our greenhouses, about 100 feet away from our house. Again, "Farm Fresh" is the key to our enjoyment ... and there's no transportation cost from a foreign country to our doorstep. Our smallest greenhouse is now an herbarium, and we raise a lot of fresh herbs. We can, dry, or freeze a lot of all this production every year for our own consumption, and the rest is sold at the Farmer's Market in season.
Flour from Hard Red Winter Wheat comes from our own mill ... there's still about 1000 bushels of wheat in the grainary which is about 1/4 mile from our house, although the boys are loading up a semi trailer tonight to take a load to Denver. If we're out, most of the neighbors spill more than we can possibly use in years, so it's readily available.
Now, for a real "supermarket", we need to drive about 32 miles. There is no transportation available except for the ride you provide for yourself, or if you head into town with a neighbor for a shopping trip. At least we can get fuel at the closest truckstop only 12 miles away, and they've got a cafe there, too.
Just to see how we'd rate on the "walkability" scale ... our home address rated "0". Not very convenient to anything by walking on their rating system ... oh, well. For that matter, not very convenient by bicycle to any business or school or library or shopping, either ... especially for the 6 months or so of wintry weather and strong gusty winds we have.
To put this all in perspective ... all you folk that live within a minimal or modest walking distance of your groceries and protein sources ... are purchasing products grown and raised by people like me. The meat in your grocer's case didn't come from the back room there where no animals were hurt, and it's unlikely that your vegetables and produce and grains and beans and rice and corn and soybeans and sugar and flour and other raw food products came from down the street, within minimal walking distance ....
Someone like you used to live on the subdivision that my parents now live in.
Someone like him used to live in the urban center where you now live. I wish urbanists could keep in mind it wasn't just the burbs that were once wildland and/or farmland; it was everywhere! My greatgrandfather had a farm in what is now the Higland Park neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
sunspirit: Hopefully plenty of us who live in cities realize where our food comes from--and consider farming to be a far, far better use of that land than turning it into more suburban subdivisions. Part of the purpose behind things like encouraging walkability and a certain level of density is to avoid higher levels of encroachment on rural landscapes--and that absolutely includes farms! I live in the middle of a valley that produces about half the nation's fruit, and a significant portion of its nuts and dairy. A lot of that amazingly productive land was turned into suburbs in the past decade--thus losing that much farmland. Now, I'm not one who advocates for demolishing suburbs to turn back to farm use--that's an expensive proposition in itself--but I do think it would be smarter to limit how much more farmland we use to expand our cities and suburbs in the first place. I don't begrudge the farmer the space they need to farm, or a road to drive on--but I take issue with people whose quarter-acre lots produce nothing but grass clippings and whose animal stock is a dog and a cat, yet want to pretend they live "in the country."
As mentioned, I have grocery stores within a ten-minute walk, but there are also farmer's markets a few blocks farther out. I also have a backyard garden, which isn't doing much right now (although I did get some chives, green onions and mint for dinner yesterday) but in summer and fall I don't need to buy many vegetables, even at the farmer's market. My next-door neighbor grows citrus fruit, and I recently harvested some of their crop in return for a couple jars of homemade orange marmalade. As to chickens, I don't have any, but apparently a previous owner of the house used to raise them (and rabbits) in my garage. There has been a recent uptick in interest in urban chicken-keeping, and while it isn't quite legal (yet), I have heard chicken sounds from a neighbor's yard a few doors away. I may have to approach them this summer about trading some of my backyard heirloom tomatoes for some fresh eggs.
a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - in this case quite literally
anyway its fine if you live near a grocery store and choose to drive.
The point of this thread was merely to point out that living within 10 minutes of a grocery store is hardly uncommon in the USA, and neighborhoods where most or all live within 10 minutes of one are not confined to a few of the densest cities.
lol, I figured as much, but I was just messing around
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