Happy Thanksgiving!

A Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving to our entire Market, and all your families!

So many reasons to be Thankful – including being a part of such a vibrant, thriving food community!

Holiday Night Market - NEXT TUE!!

Please help us spread the word!! The Holiday Night Market is BACK, this upcoming Tuesday, Nov 30th at First Place!

Yes, we’re still Open for Virtual Market orders this week – the Night Market will run in conjunction with Virtual Market pickup!

The perfect time to not only grab some Holiday goodies, stocking stuffers, and yummy samples, but to meet your favorite local producers and farmers in person!

This is always such a fun night, and we’ve got such a great variety of vendors who’ll be set up with a wide selection of products (more than they have on the Market!) and information/pictures of their businesses/operations!

And we even have new faces who’ll join the familiar faces from the Virtual Market! So tell your family, friends, coworkers, and join us Tuesday :-)

Adventure Update

For those of you who have read about our ongoing journey and offered encouragement, support and friendship, your kindness and generosity just mean the world to us. Thank you!

Here’s an update of our adventure, and an attempt to answer many questions we’ve had –

No, we do not have a set timetable for when the move will be finished. We hoped to be down before the weather turned too ugly – the roads to our place I don’t want to traverse in ice and snow. I’ve gotten to a point I never thought I’d reach when we first went down to look – I no longer hold my breath at certain spots along the way, and I can even look out the window (and down!) without that unsettling feeling in my stomach. The children got such a kick out of that initially, when they’d say, “Wow, Mom, look!” And I’d look, and squeal, close my eyes, and try to slide more to the middle of the vehicle (more for their giggles than anything, ahem).

We’ve moved some of our beef cattle down (we have a two-horse livestock trailer where we can fit two cows in the back and a calf up front) as we’ve already fenced them a paddock where their water is at their barn as well as three additional connected fields that we can open them into as they need. But we are still waiting on the electric wire we need to come in (why are so many supplies so hard to get right now!? Yikes!) so we can run electric for the fencer and water lines to the other (dairy) barn, before we can move the last two dairy cows down. Thankfully we’ve kept the calves on their mothers so we’re not milking everyone, which simplifies life for us, as well as our two Saintly friends who milk for us in the evenings when we go down to work each week.

Our schedule is so fluid right now nothing is the same one week to the next, and I’m amazed how resilient the children have been, because Mommy feels nothing but haggard (why is it so hard to sleep when you’re so tired! I’d really like to have a Big Red Button to shut my brain off, as would my husband). It makes me laugh, and sigh, when one child or another asks, “When I wake up tomorrow, where will we be?” Or “Where are we sleeping tonight?” Quite the ongoing camping adventure. And only one more license plate to collect… Hawaii!

And more than anything right now it’s a matter of clearing back the brush, brambles, and forest to find the old fence rows (anywhere from 10-50ft back so far) so we can pull out the old 5 strands of barb wire and rotten posts before putting up the new fence, or figuring where we need to clear to make our own new fences work for our cattle, pigs, and sheep – even the garden and orchard are getting 6ft fence with barb wire on top – Lee said it looks like a military compound haha. But deer and turkeys beware – I am not working this hard to feed you instead of us! We’re at a good place right now, steadily working along on fence for the pigs, while waiting on the electric wire.

We’d decided to only take down a few sows, the boar, and a feeder who’ll be ready before spring, and while we’re up in Ohio have gotten some of the other pigs into the freezer – better they feed us than we feed them, and easier to transport! So that’s been a fun fall job, and our Happy Thanksgiving project, although the sound of Lee and ALL the children crunching on cracklings for some reason is like nails on a chalkboard to me, wow.

And as one of our good-customers-turned-dear-friend once said, one of the beautiful things about farming is the diversity of the work – if you don’t particularly like today’s job, there’ll be another tomorrow, or even after lunch!

Turkey Pickup THIS TUE!

Remember! This upcoming Tuesday, November 23rd is Turkey Pickup for everyone who ordered a Thanksgiving Turkey from King’s Poultry Farm!

During regular Market hours, 3:30-6:30pm, you’ve already paid – now it’s time to get your bird! They’ll be conveniently boxed in a sturdy meat box, and remember – these turkeys have never been frozen! They will have just been processed Monday and coming to you from our fridge!

Wait til you taste the difference a truly FRESH turkey can make! Mmmmm :-)

And we’re OPEN tonight as usual, til 9pm!

Thanksgiving Pies!

The Farmhouse Bakery has so many pies to choose from, for all your Thanksgiving Dinner needs!

From classic Apple and Pumpkin or juicy Peach to perfect Pecan and decadent Mixed Berry, it’s a sure way to please all your guests!

Better late than never :-)

At this point I’m sure it’s no shock that I’ve always loved writing. What’s most interesting for me currently is not only having had an outlet and reason TO write, but to get feedback from many of you! When I first had a story or vendor feature that seemed longer than normal, I questioned my husband whether I should (sigh) attempt to shorten them. His reply? “The people who want to read it are going to, and the people who aren’t will ignore a long email same as a short, so just go for it.” I knew I loved him.

And I so enjoy your reactions! The number of folks who emailed or talked at Pickup with tales of their mothers’ saved collections of butter papers, aluminum foil, bread and cereal bags, rubber bands, bread ties, etc. was unprecedented! Or those who grew up on a farm, or with a garden and canning all summer, or your own experiences teaching inner city youth – one gentlemen said he could relate to the stories of my Dayton students because he’d been at Belmont. If you didn’t have such relatable stories to share with me, I wouldn’t be encouraged to continue.

Last Tuesday at Market Pickup, one woman struck me in particular, as she said she feels it’s truly the land that connects us all, just in different ways. When she generously said I’d be missed, I told her I feel the same about all of you – you’ve never failed to amaze me at the end of each Market night that you’re all just, well, NICE, individually and collectively. It’s a pleasant place in which to work, and I told her it’s just so lovely what a nice, good group of people we have.

She said it’s that connection to the land – either folks grew up on farms, or wished they did, had or have a small garden, can relate to living off the land or are interested because it’s so far from what they know, or they simply appreciate the work which goes in to producing their food…

Food could be possibly the single unifier of such a diverse group (never more evident just how diverse from the last election til now). And I can watch folks who couldn’t agree on Anything in another setting all willingly choose to come to the same place to shop for local food – that’s very powerful to me. And it’s a refreshing time to have to step away, having been able to witness this beautiful group all making one singular, similar choice, irrespective of anything else.

But I must apologize for throwing many of you for a loop last night – since I almost always open Market with an email, when things went haywire and I just literally clicked the “Allow Customers to Order” button, many didn’t realize the Market was truly open for orders as they received no email! I got wrapped up going over things with Erin as our volunteer Marinda Mucci put everything away, and all of a sudden the folks who hold a meeting at 7pm in our pickup room began to arrive, before we were anywhere close to wrapped up!

So going home thinking I’d just finish up there was, well, futile – we’d packed up in Kentucky and left yesterday morning at 7am to drive back in time (thank the Good Lord Cincinnati was just normal hectic) to get invoices printed, highlighted, and me packed up to meet Erin (late! Ah!) at First Place, thankfully before all vendors showed up except poor Sugar Grove Maple, who was delivering more of their ever popular, always delicious maple syrup and sugar.

So since it’d been just another crazy Market day for the Ruff’s, when I showed up with all these little faces glad Mommy was home, well, many things did not happen last night, least of all the Market email!!

But yes, we’re Back for another happy week, and I’ll see many of you this upcoming Tuesday for Turkey pickups!! Yum yum yum!!

Festival of Trees OPEN til 11:30 this evening!

Troy-Miami County Public Library’s 2021 Festival of Trees features uniquely decorated trees and wreaths, along with other special items, created by local businesses and organizations.

You can bid NOW, and win, these beautiful items and their accompanying gift packages!

The Homegrown Holiday tree from the Virtual Market includes 5 gift certificates, maple syrup, honey, canned meats, mustard, a handmade wool ornament and wooden Christmas tree – over $140 in products!

Visit event.gives/treefest2021 to see all of the participating area businesses and the great collection of donated items you can win, but only until 11:30pm TONIGHT!

A great way to get in the holiday spirit AND support your library!
:-)

Ground Beef from Hidden Springs Farm - Back on the Market!

This week we have Hidden Springs Farm’s Ground Beef and Hamburger Patties BACK on the Market – NonGMO and pasture raised here in Troy!

Plus carrots from Simple Living, Sweet Potatoes and Cabbage from Marrs Produce, Ham Roasts from the Buehler family, and Chicken Liver and Gizzards from King’s!

And a Pot Pie Sale from King’s Poultry this week – 20% off their 9", 2lb Chicken Pot Pies!! The perfect easy meal on a cold day (or when your turkey day prep leaves you scrambling for dinner)!

We're OPEN til 9pm!

Just a quick reminder the Market is Open for orders til 9pm tonight!!

Pumpkin Pie and Citizenship

Our family loves pumpkin anything. So much so my husband and children request pumpkin pie instead of birthday cake. We always thought you couldn’t possibly go wrong with a pumpkin dessert. Then my grandma changed our minds when she described her mother’s first experience with that “American” specialty, pumpkin pie…

My grandma’s parents were Slovenian. And totally unfamiliar with pumpkins. So when my great grandma Rozalia’s brother started telling about something he heard in the coal mine, how pumpkin pie was the greatest dessert ever, Rozalia was intrigued. To these immigrants, being “American” was the most important thing in life. They were in America, they valued their citizenship, and they embraced their new homeland. So of course Rozalia felt compelled to cook the new dessert her brothers were encouraging her to try.

They brought her a pumpkin, which she proceeded to peel, and slice up, layering those beautiful orange slices in her perfect lard piecrust as she would with apple, sprinkling on a bit of sugar and spices, and cooked it – when they all bit into her infamous “pumpkin pie”, they unanimously declared Americans had no sense when it came to good food, and fed the rest to the hog.

Now when I taught Government, on the first day of school I’d tell them their Final Exam was to be the US Citizenship Test – if these were questions any immigrant wanting to become a citizen must prove to know, logically any graduating American senior born and bred in this country should be able to answer the same questions! Right? Oh my of course no. Shame on me for thinking because the test was online and you could practice as much as you want if you were either incompetent or hadn’t paid attention in any history class in your life, it should have been their easiest final exam. Who gives the questions prior to the test!

Lee and I are nerds, and happen to have an ongoing love affair with History, so something like quizzing each other on the Citizenship Test questions is fun in our world. But even if the thought doesn’t intrigue you, if you know a high school student, see if they can pass it – some of the questions surprised me, many I’m sure you could guess would be on there, but I vehemently believe if my great grandparents took such pride in passing that test, to become real Americans, the rest of us lucky enough to have been born here should value what we have a little more than we do – and if we aren’t as well versed as we should be, take the time to do something about it!