The Local Food Report: Nantucket grown

I like it when good ideas spread. And I don't just mean things like Melissa Clark's Salted Maple Walnut Thumbprints. (But DO make those. They won't let you down.) I mean things like Island Grown Initiative—that Martha's Vineyard non-profit we spent so much time talking about back in January and February. I got an email a few weeks ago, and it looks like the idea has spread. A non-profit organization called Sustainable Nantucket, inspired by IGI's success, has launched a farm-to-school program, another program working to pair interns interested in agriculture with local growers, and this spring, it's starting a campaign to promote local produce on the island. It will look like this:

The idea is to give Nantucket farmers a unified marketing platform for their meat and eggs and produce. Sustainable Nantucket will hand out stickers and signs with the logo in the spring, and growers can use them at the farmers' market and anywhere else they sell retail, including grocery stores. Sustainable Nantucket's executive director, Michelle Whelan, says that she dreams of the day she walks into Grand Union and sees this logo popping up in the produce aisle.

On the restaurant side of things, Whelan's hoping to get things up and running by 2012. Restaurants will have to prove that they're sourcing a percentage of their food locally, this will be verified by Sustainable Nantucket through the growers, and the restaurants will be able to use the Nantucket Grown logo on their menus. This won't replace listing the farm names—i.e. Bartlett Farm Tomatoes on a caprese salad—but the hope is that it will help diners who care about local food choose accordingly.

So if you're on the island, keep an eye out. Nantucket Grown arrives this spring!

Nantucket grapes

They said there was a hurricane coming. We took the boat anyways; pulled on our wellies and oilskins in Hyannis and climbed aboard. The rain poured down and wind wailed across the waves, cresting heavy and crashing against engine and bow.

But by the time we reached the island, all signs of her were gone. Hannah was a distant memory, a laughable demon amidst cobbled streets and orderly gray clapboard.

The sun beamed down, and we passed mile after mile of uninterrupted blue as we motored away from Nantucket town and out towards 'Sconset.

Eventually, we reached an old dirt road that led into the only wilds left on this island enclave for the moneyed and malcontent. It led across the moor, past Altar Rock and Gibbs pond and the heather that shimmered purple in the light. Finally, we pulled up next to a cranberry bog and waded in to see the fruit. There wasn't much to see just yet: with harvest still a month away, the bogs sat dry, a waving sea of red and green.

But getting back towards the road, tucked under a canopy of broad, withered leaves, I saw the twisted vines of a Concord grape. I walked closer, peering under the green and into the woody thicket. Bunch upon bunch of purple fruit hung tart on the vine.

The grapes are wild, someone in town told us later. They call them "fox grapes," the vines creeping across sandy fields and roads and up the ready trellises of island homes. Fox grape jams and jelly's used to be the pride of every woman on the island, storerooms packed with jar upon jar tucked away for the long winter.

They're not quite ripe yet, and heavily seeded. I spit the seeds into the bushes as we drive out the sandy track, the sour fruit puckering my tongue. I hope someone still remembers to pick them come October.