A great local food day!

Today was busy! Not only was it my Daughter's 8th birthday and my in-laws and brother and law arrived to stay for a week and we had my parents and 2 youngest siblings over for supper, we also went and gleaned potatoes and drove out to a dairy for milk.

Here is a picture showing most of our group getting potatoes. We had to drive nearly an hour to the field. We picked up for an hour and got a little over 1,000 pounds. (We got more last year but some ended up going to waste and we didn't have much time today.) It was a beautiful day and we had a lot of fun in the field.

Here is an example of how a lot of the field looked. You have to go through the potatoes so that you don't get any that are cracked or rotten (we also bypass the tiny ones) but there are so many available. Sometimes you will find piles of potatoes where there was a loading mess up and sometimes you will find areas that didn't get dug at all. It is good to get the potatoes within a day or so of the harvesting as if they are in the sun very long they will turn green and yucky.

Here is the other thing I was excited about today. I found out I can buy non-homogenized and non-pasteurized milk that is from Hormone free cows straight from the dairy at just $2.50 a gallon. As milk at Wal-mart just went up to $3.96 a gallon (2%), this is quite a savings. I do have to drive 15 miles to get it but I have found a friend who would like me to get it for her who will help pay the gas. (I am thinking about doing that for others as well.) So I get milk that is better for me, I don't have to recycle containers and I spend less, Yea!! The kids had fun seeing the cows. I bought the cheese there too.

Tonight for supper we had quite a few local things. We had fried potatoes (that we got today), sliced tomatoes and cucumbers (from our garden), coleslaw with some grated zucchini in it (the cabbage and zucchini were from my parents garden), cooked apples (from some friends), Goat's milk (from my parents farm- we would just drink this and not go to the dairy except Ken won't and also the goats dry up in the winter and are already slowing production) and Cow's milk (from the dairy). It is fun to eat so many foods that are grown nearby (most of them organically), are good for you and don't cost very much. That is a win, win, win situation.