Boston Localvores/Eat Local, Boston is put together by a 100-percent volunteer effort. (Read more about who we are.) It’s a free resource that exists because of the collective contribution of its users, volunteers and organizers. We care about three things very much:

• Local agriculture
• Local economies
• Local eaters

We think having a connection to your food — which means having a connection to where it comes from —  is good for people, farmers and the local businesses that facilitate those connections. (See our FAQs.) We like to promote this pretty little system by hosting events that celebrate local food and activism that furthers the transformation of our food system.

That said, we don’t encourage you to consume everything from local sources. Obviously that would eliminate great joys like chocolate, coffee, tea and olive oil. This is not meant to be an ascetic exercise. We prefer to think of it as a quiet revolution. But it will yield no bloody battles. Only lots of yummy food. And a healthier environment, economy and population.

Do whatever you want with the material here. Our primary objective is to get more people tuned in to what’s wrong with our current food system and what actual, meaningful and delicious steps they can take to change that. Please use our Google maps. They aren’t perfect and our records are not complete, by any stretch. If we’re missing any of your favorites, please let us know.

The story behind the site

This site was conceived of in 2007 after we, Darry Madden and Kristi Ceccarossi, moved to Boston from Brattleboro, Vt. Up there, a beautiful harmony of hippies, urban transplants and old farming families make it very easy to find and consume an amazing variety of local/regional food.

We didn’t really want to have to negotiate the little rules we’d made for what we eat (e.g. no meat unless we know where it comes from), and so we set out, here in Boston, to find sources of local, sustainable food in the area.

Along the way it occurred to us that the info we were gathering might be of interest to other people. So we put it online in May 2008. Pretty instantly people were getting in touch with us, sharing what they had discovered in their own pursuit of local food. We were surprised+happy to hear from some many other people who were doing the same thing.

What’s happened since

Over the last year we’ve hosted several events to get people talking about — and, more importantly — eating local food. (Beer tastings, cheese tastings, pickle tastings. An all-local BBQ as part of the Roxbury Film Festival.) They’ve been a lot of fun and we made a bunch of friends. And our collective knowledge on local food sources in the Bostonish area has grown in a huge way.

We’d like to think that this site functions not only as a resource for finding New England-grown and produced food but also as a virtual meeting space for local food activists. Which is to say, it’s yours as much as it is ours. Even if we have the server passwords. So if you have an idea for an event or a way to enhance our web presence, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Some press we’ve gotten:

Factory Food, Boston Phoenix, 25 June 09
A taste of home, Boston Herald, 22 April 09
This is your brain on green, Huntington News, 6 May 09.
What to Eat, Wool-fm, Bellows Falls, Vt. We were guests on this radio show.
Boston Localvores, a video featuring us and Will Gilson, chef at Garden at the Cellar.