September rolled in with the usual mixed bag – I felt excited at the possibility of a fresh start, yet resigned to the confines of a more constrained work schedule. The beginning of a new school year is always busy, so historically the arrival of September marks the time that I switch over from a diet of mostly simple home cooked meals, to one based on more decadent restaurant faire. Unfortunately, with Phil and I both firmly rooted in the mindset that food is best when it is made from scratch, eating out has become more of a burden than a treat. As we struggled to fit our “cook it ourselves” ideals into our “never home” schedules, I began to think about how much we have changed over the past year.

When we moved to San Diego four years ago, we relied heavily on big national chain restaurants for our daily sustenance. It wasn’t long before we switched from big boxes to small mom and pop, single location operations, eating our way around our new city. As we became more aware of locavore values, we began to seek out farm to table restaurants, and those that offered pasture raised meats, or organic vegetables. Although our preferences changed, our desire to eat out remained fairly constant.

Over the course of the last year, home-cooked began to replace restaurant meals in our diet. For the past five months we have eaten nearly all of our meals at home using locally grown ingredients collected from the farmers’ market or Whole Foods. It seemed that for once we were finally “doing the right thing”.

It wasn’t until my change in schedule forced me into eating away from home again, that I started to question my notion of what is right. If there are restaurants that are “doing the right thing”, shouldn’t we as locavores be supporting them with our business? And if supporting farm to table restaurants is part of “doing the right thing”, then what is an appropriate balance between dining out and cooking at home?

I decided to raise the question with my favorite chicken farmer Curtis Womach, of Womach Ranch Farms, who sells to The Linkery restaurant in North Park and straight to the consumer at the Hillcrest Farmers’ Market. I had imagined that in selling to the consumer, Curtis would experience benefits and drawbacks similar to those I face in my private voice studio, while selling to a restaurant would be akin to when I teach music in a school. With private lessons you set your desired fee, but have to deal with a fickle clientele base, while teaching at a school provides a regular paycheck, but at a much lower hourly wage.

In reality, due to seasonality of product, Curtis faces a bigger problem then I ever could. While we both have slow business during the summer months, my ability to teach lessons remains constant, while Curtis’ production of chickens is dependent on weather conditions. Unfortunately, his slow season for sales coincides with the peak season of production. In the chicken business, it isn’t so much a question of selling to restaurants verses directly to consumers, but rather an issue of having peak production during the warm months and peak interest during the cold months.

After weighing Curtis’ situation, against my original question of what is “right”, I have concluded that the most important thing that aspiring locavores can do is to eat, or at least purchase, with seasonality in mind. When the supply is abundant, we should stock up, and either freeze, or preserve what can’t be consumed right away. Whether the food is made in your home kitchen, or prepared by a trained chef in a farm to table restaurant, the “right thing” is to make sure that it is eaten. While it is certainly worthwhile to support quality restaurants if you can afford to, it is absolutely essential to support the growers.