If picking backyard blueberries for my cereal qualifies as the farm-to-table movement, then I’m an expert-on-vacation, visiting places touting farm-fresh foods, neighborhood brews, farmer’s markets, picnic spots and restaurants owned by community folks.

Eating matters on vacation.

Western Michigan has towns up and down the big lake’s edge enjoying foodie trends, plus a track record — and plenty of pride —being sustainable and environmentally conscious too.

My house could be greener, even though three recycling bins fill far faster than one little trash basket, so I was in a learning mode all along Lake Michigan in hotels and restaurants sporting LEED certification and winning honors for energy-saving, breath improving paints, furniture and buildings.

That Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design check list is a tough one, certifying materials, energy, atmosphere, water efficiency and sustainability.

City Flats Hotel in Holland, Mich., got the gold and only two other hotels in the world can make the same claim — the Element in Massachusetts and Gaia Hotel and Spa in the Napa Valley.

Seems like reason enough to book a trip: rest well on hypoallergenic bamboo linens, tread lightly on cork floors and breathe better because the paints are all low in volatile organic compounds called VOC.

Why here? Part of a regional trend, it seems. “Ten percent of all America’s LEED certifications are in western Michigan,” says City Flats owner Charles Reid, president of Charter House Innovations.

In fact, nearby Grand Rapids has 32 LEED certified commercial green buildings, Reid notes, with another 50 on the drawing boards.

Reid worked with a 12-member design team so City Flats is handsome as well as healthy and he sees this as a prototype for more. Furnishings and décor in all 56 rooms are from rapidly renewable resources, and more than 30 percent were manufactured locally.

“The cost of doing green sustainable design is not out of reach,” he says. “It’s all attainable.”

Greener America’s farm-to-table movement has plenty of lofty benefits, but simple food fun matters on a holiday. Donning an apron for a cooking lesson with a local chef and eating the results is one of the ways to do that in Lake Michigan beach towns.

My traveling partner and photographer G. W. Tibbetts did so at Artisan Cooking School in Grand Haven.

Roasting spaghetti squash, hand crafting spinach pasta, stirring up a basic red sauce and an Alfredo sauce headed the class menu.

Concocting a citrus buerre blanc with lemon zest, shallots, garlic, canola oil, Pinot Grigio, hot cream and cold butter chunks figured in too for the three-hour class, plus time to eat the meal.