The trouble with building local food systems, it seems, is that each local food farmer inevitably winds up doing his/her own distribution.

We swore up and down that we wouldn't sink our scant working capital in a "reefer" truck (a pallet-ready vehicle with a refrigeration unit for the cargo hold). We borrowed neighbors' vehicles. We delivered in passenger cars crammed with coolers. We shipped product via UPS. We sent product on the tail ends of semis. We tried housing our product in an off-site warehouse and having them pull, pack and ship our orders via regional carriers.

In the end, we couldn't afford NOT to be filling and delivering our own orders. No one else seemed to care enough about our stuff to make distribution happen with the precision and quality we expect of it. After all, the small farmer's reality is that the inaccuracy of a single order can sour a customer relationship that took months to cultivate.

So we gave in and bought our very own hand-me-down truck from a neighboring producer. Our product -- meat -- is quite heavy (2,000+ lbs) when stacked on a pallet, and we needed a truck sturdy enough to carry several pallets from our USDA-inspected processor to our on-farm warehouse and additional rented warehouse space in a nearby metropolitan area.

This purchase seemed necessary, and yet such a maddeningly predictable money pit. We personally don't know anything about repairing a vehicle practically large enough to house our tractor. It makes me nervous to have to drive a truck on which I probably couldn't change a tire even if I tried. And -- best of all -- it averages 6 miles per gallon.

Yet, we can't fill the role we've carved for ourselves -- as a local meat company offering weekly or bi-weekly delivery -- without it.

The best we can do is be flexible about distribution, week by week, day by day. If the load is light, we borrow a neighbor's smaller and more efficient refrigerated vehicle. If we can fill our truck's hold backhauling product for other producers, we do. If we can pull off very small deliveries using coolers and passenger cars, we will.

Distribution -- the often-overlooked link in the local food chain -- will soon define farm networks that succeed and those that fail.