Enthused about the experiment they've labeled Project Good, Ethan and Maryhope prematurely embark on their first adventure to that summer mecca of green: the farmers market. Laugh with them as they make a detour at Stop & Shop and make the stunning, frustrating discovery that nothing they want to eat is actually in season.

If we were to judge the early stages of what we've taken to calling Project Good by how many items we've been able to check off on our list of habits to change to reduce our carbon footprint, then so far we've been pretty successful. We've swapped old lightbulbs for new compact fluorescents, whose hospital lighting we tolerate because it's far outweighed by encouraging facts like this one from Vanity Fair's green issue: If every American household replaced one regular lightbulb with a CFL, the pollution reduction would be equivalent to removing 1 million cars from the road. We've stopped flushing the toilet quite so often, which is gross but edifying in a visceral way. We've cut down on our use of plastic bags. We've stopped rinsing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. We've started printing on both sides of every sheet of paper. We've even dried and then reused paper towels. Easy-frickin'-peasy.

I can think of no reason why anyone in the world would have trouble making the minute behavioral changes we-the laziest of the lazy-have managed. Feeling pretty good about our ability to single-handedly put the kibosh on global warming, we looked at the next item on our agenda: shopping locally for local products and produce. Shopping local, it turns out? Not so easy.

One Wednesday, having run out of groceries, we prepared to do our first local-only grocery trip. We found a few recipes chock-full of vegetables that we thought could get us through the rest of the week, and we looked up our nearest-i.e., walkable-farmers market. It's open only on Fridays. OK. Plan B: We're in rural Massachusetts, so there are farm stands, and we'll just have to find one and drive to it. But it was 5:15, and they close at five. All right. Live and learn. Nobody's fault. But we were hungry. We were bickering. If we weren't going to raid the neighbor's garden, we were going to have to go to the not so local Stop & Shop.

We made a deal: We could go (by car) to Stop & Shop as long as we didn't buy anything we could get at a farmers market. Also: Given a choice among items, we would choose the one produced closest to Massachusetts. In this way, we'd minimize the impact of our failure to plan ahead.

The Stop & Shop in Dartmouth is enormous and well-cooled, and it hums like a television. We felt guilty, and as though we'd failed, simply by setting foot in the place. As we dutifully filled out our discount cards, we asked the customer-service representative if the store had a local-produce section, or in any way supported local farms. Blank look. Shrug. Then: "We have a natural-food section, if that's what you mean."

We ran into our second eco-hitch in the checkout line, when we realized we'd left our canvas shopping bag at home. Figuring we deserved some sort of punishment for this failure, we decided we couldn't use any Stop & Shop bags even though we'd purchased more than we could carry. "No bags?" the checkout girl asked. "No bags," we replied. "We're just going to carry it."

"In your hands?" she asked.

"In our hands," we said. The eye-rolled whatever she gave us was so perfect it should be videotaped and shown to new teenagers as a how-to. I made a shirt-basket, and Maryhope loaded me up. She made a shirt-basket of her own. We still had too much to make it in one trip, so we asked the checkout girl if she'd watch the (environmentally friendly!) detergent until we returned. This time, she actually said it: "Whatever."

On the way home, our unbagged groceries skidded around the backseat at every stoplight and curve. It was like driving a giant maraca. By the time we got home, we were so tired of trying to be good that we cooked some instant mac and cheese we found in a cupboard and turned on the television.

Come Friday, we felt more prepared. We walked to our farmers market, canvas bag slung over shoulder, recipes in hand, anticipating rows of stalls full of fresh vegetables. Turns out it wasn't the season for fresh peas. And tomatoes were rare. Also, no broccoli. In other words, nothing on our list except strawberries, cilantro, parsley, and eggs-which we bought for $14.50. That's roughly three times what it would have cost us at the Stop & Shop. This is discouraging, since we're not exactly rolling in it, and price, sadly, is a big incentive for us.

We did, however, meet a few entrepreneurial supporters of local shopping at the market who gave us some green literature and pointed us to a farm stand where we might have more luck. Most important, they told us about a website they're involved in. This will be immeasurably helpful, as it lists all the farms in our area, what they sell, and when they're open. It also has a nice chart that tells you which vegetables and herbs are available in the summer months, so you don't show up looking for rhubarb when it's not in season.

In the end, we went to one farmers market, one farm stand, and one smaller local grocery store. We traveled 31 miles. We shopped for three hours. And we stopped for one snack. We were exhausted, frustrated, and snippy by the end of the afternoon, but we had made progress along our learning curve. The primary thing we learned is that if eating locally is important to us (which it is, and should be), planning ahead and getting organized will have to become part of eating. There is a lure to the convenience and spontaneity that conventional grocery shopping allows. Plus, there's the money issue: We are both grad students, and Maryhope was just let go from her job.

Trying to walk the line on this one, we turned to the Internet, and discovered we are not alone in trying to balance our budgetary concerns with our ecological ones. The website Eat Local Challenge was helpful, not only for providing reinforcement about why eating local is important but also for admitting that it is a challenge to do so (something we weren't getting from the folks at our farmers market, whose attitude, when we suggested it wasn't easy to shop local, seemed to suggest that it was entirely our fault). Shopping local felt good, but it has its limits and requires a dietary flexibility and patience that will take getting used to.

Our commitment to this is high, but also reasonable: We're going to try our best to eat local, but not be dogmatic about it. We're still going to buy flour at Stop & Shop (from that same checkout girl, we hope). I'm still going to drink coffee. But whenever we can, we will buy our food from local farmers. What do you call that-voting with your dollars? Anyway, that's the plan for now. We'll let you know when the dollars (and patience) run out.

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