week 28: rest and nourishment

this week on the little dream farm

Howdy friends!

Coming to you sun-kissed, sun-sleepy, and with a full, happy heart after the most lovely Saturday spent in our neck of the woods.

We kicked off this weekend with a great workout at the gym (our gym is 17 minutes from us with our main grocery store right next door so we do a lot of daily stops for things we need rather than big shopping trips). Followed that with some quick farm chores—blueberry picking (Chris does this one and he’ll go out every other morning for the next few weeks to pick them), string trimming all the spaces on the farm (this takes me about 1.5 hours to do every 2 or 3 weeks) and harvesting some veggies from the garden (kale, lettuce, snap peas, green beans, cucumbers).

We packed up what used to be our beach bag when we lived in Philly and zoomed down to Lewes, Delaware just about every third weekend when we lived in the city… now, that bag is reserved for Lake Life (I’m the only one of the two of us calling it this, haha!).

Last summer we discovered a few nearby lakes and never managed to get to any of them so this summer I wanted to be sure we got a few good days plopped down in the sand while the wind blows through the trees off in the distance, the sounds of the kids playing in the water echoes around the lake, and the smell from all of the families and friends grilling and cooking and picnicking fills the air.

Ahh. It was exactly what I was hoping for, absolutely what we needed, and we had the best time soaking up the sunshine, hanging out in the water, and relaxing together. This state park is only 30 minutes from us in Vermont and I see us coming back here, hopefully a lot, this summer.

I've been looking forward to this for two summers!

Following our afternoon at the lake we stopped by two of our absolute favorite summer Farm Stores one in Vermont and the the other here in New York. We live about 20 minutes from the southwestern border of Vermont so we hop over there quite a bit!

This week’s Haul…so wishing I’d done this every time we’ve gotten a market haul like this in this region!

I realized recently that I wanted to start taking more photos and sharing more of the amazing foods, products, brands, and snacks we buy all in and around this region. In the 2.5 years we’ve lived here we’ve probably had 50-60 hauls just like this one, and I’m kicking myself that I hadn’t been taking photos all along so we’d have some sort of visual accounting, even just for ourselves, of all the amazing things we’ve tried and all the different farms and markets and makers we’ve sampled since we’ve lived here.

Chris and I are huge foodies, healthy snack people, and we love discovering new products. We’re even bigger on whole, natural, clean ingredients and we read every single label of every product we buy.

A few of the things we look to avoid in all of our foods are:

• Seed oils (vegetable, canola, sunflower, grapeseed, rapeseed, soybean, safflower, cottonseed, rice bran, palm kernel, corn)

• Palm oil

• Fillers like soy lecithin, carrageenan, caramel color, “natural flavors”, food coloring, and in some foods guar gum and xanthan gum

• Corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose

There’s a much longer list of sneaky ingredients that make their way into all kinds of packaged, prepared, and ultra-processed foods (that we try and avoid altogether), so the list above are the main things we look to avoid when finding and buying new brands or trying new healthy snacks.

One of our favorite things about living where we do is access to all the local farms, markets, makers, and producers right here in this region. New York also happens to be the fourth-largest dairy producing state, so we’re always finding and trying new milk, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream everywhere we go.

I’ve been into cooking and food since I was a teen. My dad taught me how to make his spaghetti sauce in high school and from that very first recipe I was absolutely hooked. From then on, my parents let me do some of the cooking for our family of six, and when I got my driver’s license they’d give me the credit card (their mistake!) and I’d head to the grocery store and do all our food shopping each week, which I loved back then and still do now since Chris and I do it together.

Chris has always shared that same curiosity and love of food and trying new things and cooking, so over the years its become somewhat of a hobby for us both to enjoy all of it with one another.

I’ve also been a certified personal trainer, nutrition coach, and life coach for the past decade, and am constantly learning about the wide world of nutrition, or as I like to refer to it—nourishment.

It was during the pandemic when I had a major health scare (unrelated to COVID-19) that made me really start looking around while we were all cooped up at home and begin asking, “What’s in this?” to just about every single thing in our home from the foods we eat to the litter we use for the cats to the food we fed them at the time to the products we cleaned with to the stuff we did our laundry with to the makeup and skincare products I use, and more.

I went down a long, deep rabbit hole of learning absolutely everything I could about sustainability, the environment, nutrition, food production, holistic and homeopathic medicines, the food producers in America, and of course, farming.

My biggest takeaway from all of it? Not trying to find perfection, not living in absolutes, and finding the balance and moderation that works for you personally.

And it’s changed the way I look at things, for sure.

It’s what led to us drastically changing the way we eat, some of the ways we shop, and where we buy our food.

It’s what led me to developing a passion for learning about organic farming, no-till gardening, and regenerative agriculture.

It’s what led me to dramatically shifting the way I coach my clients so that I can impart what I’ve learned and help those I work with break up with dieting, fall in love with nutrition and nourishment, and find balance by learning how to eat well and love their bodies.

It’s what made this farm so appealing when we found it—because David farmed this land in alignment with my new-found values (which are actually steeped in very old-world tradition and farming practices) and we knew we’d continue to garden and steward the land in a similar fashion.

I definitely don’t share as much as I’d like to about all the things I know and have learned and care about when it comes to nutrition and food and farming. But I’d like to. Would you like to learn more? Let me know that in the comments in today’s Farm Note and depending on the level of interest I’ll determine how best to pepper in sharing everything I’ve learned every now and then.

In our first two years here on the farm we were doing so much learning and adjusting and orienting of our own. Now that we’re a little more settled in I’m feeling a pull to share share share all this amazing stuff we’ve soaked up over the years—from the strategizing and regimen we learned in the military that makes us so organized in our daily life, to the clean beauty products I’ve spent the last four years discovering, to the nourishing foods and recipes we enjoy. From the way we’ve learned to care for the cats (and the donkeys and chickens) to the way we’ve learned to manage our finances, our home, the gardens, and all the responsibilities that come with this farm. From the way I’ve learned (re: still learning) to get out of my head and get out of my own dang way, to the way I dream and plan for what’s ahead.

If you tell me that’s all stuff you’d love to see then I’ll get my behind in gear to start bringing more of it to you!

So! Now that this Farm Note has gone in a VERY different direction from what I’d planned for today, I’ll leave you with a couple snaps from what’s growing in the garden right now, as I think you’ll enjoy seeing how it’s coming along like we have the last few weeks. It’s a jungle out there right now and everything (except for what the dang woodchucks keep demolishing!) is coming along so nicely!

Let’s take a look at what’s growin’ on the LDF!

Blueberries, Peaches, Plums, Pears, Apples, Watermelon, Honeydew Melon, Squash, Golden Raspberries

Grape Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Leeks and Onions, Edamame, Jalapenos, Peperoncinis, Lunchbox Peppers, Banana Peppers, Slicing Tomatoes

Green Beans, Beets, Potatoes, Corn

The woodchucks are absolutely having their way with the Kale, Salad Greens and Spinach, and Sugar Snap Peas. Thankfully we were able to harvest lots of kale and salad greens before they got to all of it.

We’ve taken bits and pieces of everything we’ve learned these last few years in the garden and brought it all together for this year’s growing season. Thankfully the weather has been on our side and even if the woodchucks are taking their share, the gardens have still been pumping out quite the harvest here on the LDF this year!

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