Where is Boulder Belt? Or Why Geography is Important

I am more and more amazed at how bad Americans are at geography. Over the years because our farm name has the word "boulder" in it I get a lot of hits on the Boulder Belt Farm Website (not so much on this blog) from Colorado. I understand that when you Google "Boulder farm share" or "Boulder Organic" or "Boulder Farms" you will get links to Boulder Belt Farm. That said, in the Google description it clearly says that BBF is in SW Ohio and yet they still visit looking for local food information for Boulder Colorado. Okay, but when I get emails and better yet phone calls I have to wonder if people have any clue exactly where in the USA Ohio is. I wonder because every page of the website says at the top Eaton, OH.

-Yes I realize the above paragraph will drive Coloradans to this site-

Today I get an e-mail via Local harvest from a person in Lexington, Ky (which is about 1100 miles closer to us than Colorado) wondering about joining the Farm share Initiative. I wrote back to the person and told her we are 3.5 hours north of her and that she would do better to look for more local food venues-a closer CSA or farmers markets. And in the past 2 or 3 weeks I have had a couple of queries from Colorado about the farm share initiative.

This would not be bothering me so much except Dear Abby today was all about Americans not knowing where the 50 states are located or even that states like Minnesota, New Mexico or Delaware are states. I am a bit of a geography nerd-give me an atlas and I am happy for days or even weeks on end. I was the lone person in my field archaeology class who thought that learning to use a transit and than after we used to transit learned how to plug the raw numbers we got into equations (and I have a math phobia so I should have hated this part but loved it) in order to make a topo map was fun with a capital F. As a kid I would sit and draw maps of places (including a legend and a compass rose) that did not exist. I learned my states and capitals early in life along with how to read a map and use it for navigation (I am the person you want with you if you are driving in a strange place-I do great navigation).

So this whole deal with people not knowing apparently zip about basic geography sorely vexes me. And GPS systems ain't helping out one whit. Now there is no real reason for people to have anything approaching a sense of direction. No longer do people need to know how to read a map, much less how to use a compass. Of course, if the system fails I suppose there will be masses of people wandering around completely and utterly lost.

And here is the irony (I really love this) Boulder Belt Eco-Farm is not in the GPS system. We do show up on Google Earth, though the photo is old and very poor resolution. But we will not be found if you use a GPS system to find us. GPS (and Map Quest and all the other such services) will send you to a non existent address south of Eaton.

So if you want to buy food from us you better bone up on your geography skills and learn where Eaton, OH is and how to read and map