Minnesota Women's Press

The sheep were looking quite sheepish.

Last Saturday was Shearing Day Gale Woods Farm and though the animals in question were none too pleased, the children watching intently were delighted as the shearer wielded his clippers with gentle efficiency while piles of wool gathered at his feet. Later, the young visitors moved from the barn to the activity room, where staff and volunteers demonstrated how wool that just a short time before adorned the sheep was spun into yarn and woven into fabric. As parents and kids practiced "carding" (brushing the wool fibers) and made felted crafts to take home, others enjoyed a delicious sampling of farm-grown lamb, served on warm pita and topped with tomatoes and a refreshing yogurt sauce.

The benefits of eating local cannot be understated: fresher and more flavorful products, economic support for local small-scale farmers and producers, less harmful environmental impacts and better appreciation for the delicious bounty to be found closer to home. But for many food lovers, embracing this philosophy comes with a trade-off.

Call it the Locavore’s Dilemma – how can one reconcile an earnest desire to eat local with the enjoyment of certain foods whose best examples are imported from great distances? Must we resign ourselves to giving up authentic Italian prosciutto or France’s renowned fromages, in effect abstaining from some of Europe’s finest culinary traditions, in the name of conscientious consumption?

Food: we cook it, we eat it, and then we’re done.

Well, not quite. Like the good folk milling around the Tower of Babel, we also spend a great deal of time talking about it, except that we’re not always speaking the same language.

Food is, both figuratively and literally, on everyone’s lips and the discussion has never been so deep or widespread, providing fodder for everyone from filmmakers and politicians to home cooks and bloggers, who all have something different to say about what we eat. The array of issues is so dizzying, it’s enough to make you toss your salad.