Tag: local foods

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Online Farm Store

My children are probably tired of me telling them that they are living through a major historical event and they should write down the details to share with their children.  I’m tired of living through a major historical event.

When I wrote my last post, in early March, Coronavirus was still something that was happening somewhere else.  I did put out a bottle of hand sanitizer at a farmers market I attended, but I certainly didn’t imagine that five weeks later I would be forced to stay at home by law.

You know this, you are living it too.

I remind my children to be thankful for our blessings: we have a farm, which means we can go outside whenever we want and not risk encountering any people from whom we might need to distance ourselves.  We have animals and flowers and food.  We are okay, and I hope you are too.

In the reprieve from some of the busyness of daily life, although springtime is still busy on a farm, I have been able to set up a farm store.  At first, I intended to use it to make it easy for people to place deposits on the bulk purchase of pastured pork, but I decided to expand it to include cut flower bouquets and eggs.

On the website, which you can access from the Online Farm Store tab on the homepage of this website, or by clicking here, you may pay for items with a credit card and then make arrangements to pick up the items, no contact, from the farm.

For more information about buying a half or a whole hog, click here.  When all the hysteria began over buying food and supplies (I had plenty of toilet paper at home because we bought it in bulk before all of this), I was relieved to think of my freezer of meat at home from my pigs when I saw the empty meat cases.  Purchasing a half or a whole hog is a way to ensure you have a supply of meat, too.

I do plan to attend the Blythewood Farmers Market on April 22 with eggs and cut flowers, but I am sold out of meat until the next batch of pigs goes to market midsummer.

My farm is located on Muller Road, about half a mile from Muller Road Middle School, convenient to Blythewood and I-77.

Please visit my my farm store for more information.

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Put Away Your Cell Phone and Enjoy Real Life, Please!

Last Saturday, my husband and I got a babysitter for our two girls and ate dinner at a nice restaurant:  one with a long wine list and without a children’s menu.  The food was superb: locally foraged wild mushrooms fried in a tempura batter, hydroponically grown local lettuce, local tomatoes, and shrimp caught off the coast of South Carolina.  Because the weather was cool enough for the first time in months, we sat on the restaurant’s patio while we dined.   We had a leisurely meal, talked, did not have to get up to get anyone more milk, and didn’t have to tell anyone to leave her sister alone. 

The folks dining at the next table were about our age, and I presumed, although I did not ask, that they also had someone looking after their children that night.  Instead of talking to each other and savoring their meal, however, they used their cell phones to text or to surf the Internet between courses and any time they were not actually eating. 

Maybe they were doing something important that really couldn’t wait at 8 PM on a Saturday night, but I imagine they were texting other friends, updating their Facebook statuses, or shopping for shoes.  No wonder half or more of all marriages end in divorce, and no wonder families don’t know each other.  How could they if everyone is attached to individual cell phones and no conversation is deeper than one communicated by text message?

I use the Internet too, but I don’t take it to dinner with me.  I enjoy many hours free of TV, computer, and cell phone, and I feel somewhat like a rebellious child when I am unreachable; of course I had my cell phone with me in case the babysitter needed me that night.  I irritate people by forgetting my cell phone is on vibrate and not realizing it’s ringing, or by escaping to the garden during the girls’ rest times without the phone.  Technology enables me to be in contact with everyone, all the time, but that doesn’t mean constant contact is necessary.  Life will go on, even if people have to leave a message that I return later.

Cell phones and the Internet were supposed to make our lives simpler, but they complicate our lives.  These technologies capitalize on the quickly changing minutiae of people’s lives, whether it is the latest celebrity gossip, computer games, or your friend’s status update.  None of this will matter by the next year, and much of it won’t matter in the next hour.  Is it really worth sacrificing time with a real person to find out that someone you graduated high school with but haven’t seen in years cleaned out her garage today, or that another friend had his picture made with a celebrity?   

If you’re going to the expense of having a nice meal out with your spouse, please put the cell phone away.  In fact, maybe your cell phone should be put away any time you eat.  Go to the garden or for a walk and leave the phone at home.  Talk to your children and to your spouse in person, about real things, with no electronic distractions.  The Internet will still be there, that important call can wait, and you might find some peace.