My dear blog buddy, Yarny Old Kim, happens to live near my current hood, but is relatively new to the area, so we went on a local food gathering field trip last weekend.First stop was to our local 'bee lady' Landi @ Gooserock Farm for wonderful local honey and bee-related products -- some of the most luscious soaps and beeswax-based cosmetic products. Gooserock Farm is in Montville, NJ but if you're not local, you can buy from their website (see link above).
Second stop was the local egg guy (I really don't know his name!) to play with the free-roaming chickens and pick up some delicious fresh local organic eggs. Well, we were playing, the Pennsylvania Reds may have been more disturbed than excited to see us. Other than the colorful roosters, all the chickens had these big red butts, which were kind of amusing (see image above).
The final stop on our local food tour was the most fun. Right around the corner from the egg guy is our wonderful food coop, VeggieHeads run by Susan Sopira and Lisa Cooper. They are amazing and tireless in support of creating opportunities for folks like me to not only buy healthier food for less, but they do a lot to highlight and introduce other local producers to the group. Susan also has chickens and a gardens everywhere. She has surrendered her garage to the coop. I introduced Kim to Susan and it was yarn envy for the rest of the afternoon. Kim is a knitting wonder and I saw first hand how true that is for Susan as well. Being a newbie I marvelled at the yarny talk tried to absorb some of their knitting wisdom (I did walk away with a new pattern for a very simple project - we'll see how simple it is!).
It was so exciting to share these small, but very important, bits of my ever-evolving sustainable world. I'm a big supporter of local stuff, whatever it is and it is so much more fun to gather supplies - beats the supermarket as far as I'm concerned!
If you don't live in my neck of the woods (Morris County, NJ), I bet there are local honey and egg producers somewhere near you and if not, find your nearest farm market and get friendly with those folks!
:)
GD MEG
3 comments:
Oh so the chickens were Pennsyvania Reds, not the elusive NJ baboon-ass clucker. It was a fun day! Thanks so much for showing me this local food bonanza. I picked up my VeggieHeads order late Sunday and I've been enjoying the sassafras tea concentrate most of all. I did over-order some frozen items (I'll get the hang of ordering soon) so my freezer is bursting!
I live locally in Morris County and would like to know where this "local egg guy" is as well as "VeggieHeads"...could you advise? Thanks!
Hi JerseyHendersons! thanks for finding and reading the blog! both the 'egg guy', Mark something (making progress since original post, but didn't retain last name yet) and VeggieHeads are in Boonton Township up Meridan Road. email me @ megan@sustainablegreendivas.com and I'll give you contact information for VeggieHeads.
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