Farm Markets Open Now!!

No pictures today but I will paint you a visual. All around the country in towns, cities and even suburbs Farmer's Markets are popping up. Ten by ten pop up tents with tables laden with fresh greens, onions, colorful swiss chard, herbs, pasture raised and FINISHED beef in coolers. Real farmers who love what they do are doing this for YOU! Skip the produce section of the not so super supermarket and find out which day your local farmer's market takes place. Meet the people. Sign up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Learn how to cook things you never tried before.
Savor the locally made jams, and bread. Talk to the artists who make clothing and jewelry. Pick up a tomato plant start or some hot peppers. Localharvest.org is a great site for finding farms and farmers and markets. Also, eatwild.com is a great site for finding pasture raised chicken, cow, pig, sheep and goat. Take a day to visit a farm within 50 miles of where you live... I will be at the 12th annual Food for Life gathering in the beautiful Sequatchie Valley of Tennessee June 3-6th teaching workshops to mostly kids but adults to about many different aspects of our food experience. Composting, garden critters, making bread and BUTTER plus some other great stuff that I will be sharing. Try something new...taste something you never tasted before. What if you couldn't get all of the processed food we have available to us today? What would you eat? It's definitely a question we should all be considering. Would you eat dandelion greens from your lawn for salad? Would you try zuccinni? What about kale, radishes or rutabaga? How would that taste? Would you know how to prepare it?

Food is Love

Unexpectedly my usually very vibrant and active mother in her mid seventies complained of feeling fatigued. After doctor visits and trips to the emergency room she was diagnosed with a rare type of lung cancer and within a matter of less than a month she left our presence for another world.

That's where the food part comes in. When someone dies people bring food. Lots of food. Homemade food and store bought food. It becomes a way of showing love...something people can do to help when they know nothing else to do. After all, even when your grieving you gotta eat.

My mother loved food. My whole family loves food. My niece mentioned that she thought we were one of the only families she knows that the first question we all want to know is, "What'dya eat?"

So what did we eat...
Ham we have eaten lots of ham... I think we've had four hams.
Macaroni and Cheese, lots of pasta...lasagna,spaghetti, pasta salad
Casseroles...chicken casseroles, corn casserole, green bean casserole, potato casserole
Deli meats, chips, sodas, gallons of tea and lemonade
Bread, rolls, cornbread
Pound cake, apple cake, cookies, jello salads

Now, for those that read this blog I'd like to add a disclaimer that when food is made out of love, bought out of love, brought out of love...it takes on a special healing quality. It changes. All of the qualities that I normally would have disdain for...factory farmed meat, genetically modified ingredients, high fructose corn syrup...disappear out of gratitude for the love in the food.

Love that has replaced those negative qualities with a healing energy because the intent behind the food is love, pure and simple. Losing a parent is practically a Universal experience. If you haven't gone through it yet, most likely you will. So for those who have lost someone close whether it be a child, a parent, a spouse or other loved one we understand the paradigm of food is love.

After all it is life sustaining, food. It provides us with our most basic need and I am so grateful to all of the beautiful people who showed us this kind of love. You fed not only our bodies but our souls as well.
And your presence as you filled our home with smells, tastes and textures of your expession of that love. With hugs, smiles and tears and prayers that kept us going through this time in our lives that came all too soon and unexpectedly.

My Mama loved food. Her deep south upbringing required it. Her Mama loved her and all of us with food too. With heaping tables of fried chicken, butter beans, buttermilk cornbread, slaw, collard greens, apple salad, broccoli casserole, crowder peas, jello salad and sugary sweet iced tea.

Food is love...thank you Laura, Jamie, Jackie, Donna, Tracy, Ric, Melba, Mark, Warren, Belinda, Gail, Jessica, Barbara & Mary. Thank you for taking the time to make, bake, buy, bring and love our family through this loss with food.

Farm Market Food Shopping for Everyone!!

Although it's late in the growing season the local farmers are still producing some great late season veggies. If your local farm market hasn't closed yet or your CSA has a winter CSA it's a great lesson in eating seasonally. Fall greens, root  vegetables and squashes are full of dark green, oranges and reds. The darker the color the more nutrition you are getting. I think it also opens us up to trying new and different varieties of foods that we might not try otherwise. When you are a gypsy mama it can be difficult to belong to a  CSA because we are usually never in  one place long enough to join one. That however doesn't deter us from seeking our homegrown, locally produced food. The food movement is on! And we haven't traveled to a place yet that didn't have a way for us to seek out and find the best of what this country has to offer. Industrial farming in unnatural and even the organics found in supermarkets and big box stores are shipped from far far away from where you buy them. Imagine purchasing fresh vegetables that were grown, nutured and  picked with loving care only hours before you receive them, instead of days and thousands of miles possibly from their source. These real food farm markets we are finding are carrying all of the things we purchase on a weekly basis...dairy (including milk, cream, eggs & cheese), animal meats that are raised and fed the way nature intended, fruits, vegetables, canned and preserved goods (jams, jellies, pickles, relishes) and many baked goods too. The Franklin Farmer's Market we attended yesterday has all types of artisans too, clothing, knitted items, jewelry, musicians and lots of wonderful people with their dogs walking around shopping supporting local agriculture. This was our second visit to this market as the gyspy husband's company was working in this area before.

This gypsy mama knows that the heartbeat of the communties we visit through our travels are at these farm markets. We make it a point to search for local. For example we wanted pizza Friday night, we wanted it locally owned and operated. I even called a old friend who has lived in the area we are in for years to get a recommendation. Unfortunately, all he could suggest were two chains. I finally found one by googling "Locally Owned Pizza" and the name of the city and state. We found a great little local place and we're very happy with and the pizza was really good, plus we felt good about supporting a local restauranteur.

Here are some photos of our wonderful finds from the farmer's market, I am looking forward to turning all of this beautiful food into some delicious meals. I just know that with ingredients like this not only will our bodies be nourished but our souls as well.

Revisiting a Classic

I know that I was assigned many classical literature books in high school or college but sometimes a book has to find you before you can find yourself in the book. So over the last year or so…since I became a gypsy mama and gave up the suck your brain out of your head box otherwise known as the television, I have revisited some classics.

I just completed reading John Steinbeck’s, “Grapes of Wrath” and so many things are standing out to me in this book. I have been reading passages out of the book to my children. Not the passages that tell the story of the Joad family but the passages where Steinbeck talks about what is happening with the small family farms during the 1930’s. The passages where Steinbeck comments on the farming industry. While reading these passages and rereading them I am coming to the realization that this is the time period when the concept of “factory farms” starts. This is when it all began….and now we are coming full circle and starting to see the impact of what has been happening over the last eighty years or more.


This book was a pretty big hit when it was published and a lot of folks were pretty upset with Steinbeck’s commentary. This is a story about the great depression that took place in the 1930’s but it’s also about the beginning of factory farming, the beginning of the disconnect between man and earth and food. Did anyone else get this then? Have all the people that have been reading this great piece of literature taken note of this? And if we did notice why has it taken us so long to do something about it?


The food movement that is happening in this country is one of  the most important issues we face today. Food is what sustains us, food is what nourishes us, food brings us together when we celebrate and when we mourn. The energy that goes into how food is grown comes to us when we eat it and through us. No wonder so many people are on anti-depressants.  The attitude and the intent behind the growing of the food all the way to the preparation and the serving of the food is some powerful stuff.

I want to put a passage from the book here for you to read:


From "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck






He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor - its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with blades -- not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And pulled behind the disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders -- twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without passion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.


Passionless. Loveless. Factory farms are not about love or passion. They are only about profits...the bottom line, regardless of the true costs.  Local small farmers are passionate about what they do…sure they want to make a profit, after all they must generate an income too but they do it with thought to the land, thought for the sustenance they provide. It is done with intent and reverence. Talk to a local producer at the farm market…they have passion in their eyes, in their voice and in their hearts. Over the past year or so we have met many local, sustainable agriculture farmers. Real farmers…from Joel Salatin to Jason Mann and I am telling you these are the people we want growing our food!


Folks who care about the kind of food they help to co-create. Personally this gypsy mama & her brood went from being a conventional processed food family to basically 100% organic. Always searching for local sustainable agriculture while we're on the road. We went from eating at the arches to vowing never to eat fast food again…ever.


At this time of Thanksgiving when we are all poised to gather for a meal that has so much thought and intent that goes into the planning and the preparation, I pause to reflect the gratitiude that I have for the food. Consider the passion, consider the love, consider the intent.