I shop at the Farmer’s Market when I can manage it (OK, once, in a downpour, and since parking is horrible, not since) and at my coop (regularly, since it’s literally a walk across the street). I do buy local whenever I can; if given a choice between blueberries from Indiana or Michigan, I choose Michigan (more similar climate) and if I can get my hands on Minnesotan blueberries because they are closer. But then I have some guilt because I’m a born Hoosier, I still consider myself a Hoosier, and I’ll sometimes throw in the Indiana blueberries anyway as juicy props to my state - and then I put it back. There’s more than corn in Indiana, there’s a whole lot of industrial pollution, too.
People who live off of local food only, even in a top 10 agriculture-and-vegetarian friendly city like mine, have it tough. Every coop in town imports vegetables from South America in the winter (though unlike supermarkets, they do tell you where it’s from. And even though it’s possible to get a lot of buffalo and fish around here in winter, resources are limited and if you’re a vegetarian you’re out of luck unless you are really resourceful with indoor gardening and have already had a talk with the police about all the plant lights in your home.
So I’m trying to imagine creating perfumes from only local products. While I certainly incorporate everything local I can, as an apartment dweller, I rely just as heavily on essential oil producers as my counterparts, and even the most informed of my client base would go through some serious withdrawal - whenever I mention, for instance, that sandalwood is an endangered species, I get a response bordering on PTS blocking.
Still, I’m trying to picture the quintessential Minnesotan fragrance. It would have to have notes from sand, silt, grass, and lilacs, I think. Given where I live there would be neighborhood drivebys where innocent citizens found that any part of the bush that tread onto a public sidewalk got clipped. I’m more than willing to hang out of a car window with giant shears in one hand and a basket in the other. There certainly is a lot of fauna I could use around here - any hardy herb that can survive harsh northern winter, evergreens of every variety, and wildflowers so long as no one caught me digging around their lawns.
But there would be so much loss, more than most I think could bear: gone would be frankincense, sandalwood and jasmine. Anything gardenia or carnation would be straight out of the question. Vanilla and cocoa absolutes? Forget it. Possibly most painful of all would be the loss of citrus - ne’er a sweet orange or tangerine note to be found. And the bases, ugh, the bases - it would pretty much be corn oil or nothing.
Also - my clientele isn’t local. Minnesotans aren’t trusting folk, and won’t buy from me until they have a store to walk into. So even if I made these fabulous local goods, the best I could hope for is to sell them to out-of-staters online. It’s an interesting challenge, even with the corn-based base limitation, and I might just try a version of it to see where it goes. But in terms of overall pragmatism, buying local only just doesn’t work in the world of perfume - not until the day that I can claim my own plantations on three continents, not counting the inevitable fields required in Grasse!
