It was a vow I made, to support local farmers. Eat more local foods, and even if they cost more, buy them and just adjust how much we eat. It is really easy around here to do that.
You don’t have to fight crowds with carts at grocery stores for many items. I learned to love markets in France. Our first trip to Provence.
My dream home. Provence. If I had my way, I would live there. I speak passable French. Understand more than I can articulate. Fell completely in love with the food and the land, and would move in a heartbeat to live that life style. Shopping for fresh foods locally. I didn’t have pictures of the live chickens. You picked the one you wanted and they dispatched it for you.
So, I do the next best thing. I shop here at our local farms. Even in the winter they are open for business. Today I went food shopping at two farms and one farm stand. We decided to take a ride because it was cold, windy and we didn’t feel like fighting crowds in stores and malls. The itimerary: Breezy Willow, England Acres and Baughers in Westminster.
On a mission. For holiday ice cream. Eggs. Fixings for tomorrow’s venison roast. And, possibly to have lunch at Baughers. I did get some great things there, like out of date peanuts, that they sell for $2.99 a case to feed the birds and the squirrels. Celery and mushrooms. Pears. Mixed nuts in the shell. The mushrooms for the venison roast. The celery to use to make some soup next week.
From Breezy Willow, pumpkin ice cream. Eggs. Great Harvest whole wheat flour, since I am running out of flour from baking.
From England Acres. Cauliflower. Spring Mill Bread. Sausage. Onions. Popcorn. Honey. Goat cheese. Baby Spinach. By the time I came home, I have all I need to make dinner tomorrow, and to make soup next week. And, a salad tonight. England Acres now is buying wholesale from Lancaster Farm Fresh, the cooperative that supplies my CSA. All winter. Open Saturday and Sunday, I can pick up fresh organic veggies from the same farms that supply me my CSA for 33 weeks a year. How can I go wrong with them? They have been my major source of food for the past 20 months. Love what they grow.
So, I use Roots, Wegmans, Harris Teeter and Costco for staples I can’t get at the markets. But, year round, we have great stuff not far from us. Fresher than foods flown and trucked in from across the country and the world. I just wish we had something like this up the road. The Arles market.
Being a locavore is not hard around here. Wishing for unlimited spices, now that is a stretch.
hocofood@@@
AnnieRie Unplugged 
Love that last picture of the spices! I have not been to Provence, but I have been to Paris and walked through a couple of local markets there. It was nice to see people picking out fresh produce for their evening meal. Sometimes I wish we had local daily markets here so I could just buy a few things each day as I need them rather than once a week….but of course, a weekly local market is better than none at all!
All the little towns have markets. You could go to many of them if you timed it right. We saw three markets in five days. Arles, Aix en Provence and Nice.
I really want to rent a house there for a month or so. Maybe in a few years, when we get tired of running around here.
Do you know what’s up with Breezy Willow’s store? They had a store and hours and operations up and running last year. This year: no news of their store on their website.
The store is open Saturdays from 10-2. They sent out an email to the mailing list. Every week they remind us.
Don’t know why it isn’t on the web site.