I'm so grateful.....

It's been such a long time since I blogged. I kept waiting to get some pictures of our wonderful experiences at Farm Aid, and so far, I still don't have the pix. I hope to get some from my daughter over Thanksgiving, but in the meantime, I'll just talk about something else.

Just look at this awesome heap of local potatoes taken at the end of the summer. Such bounty!

The second picture is a feast of local foods prepared for the St. Louis magazine Best Doctors Event and all the food came from our store! There was lots more, too. What a magnificent spread!

It's been well over a year now since we Farm-to-Family members purchased Sappington Farmers Market. And what a year it's been! Not only have we turned the store around, but we have become deeply involved in HELP (Healthy Eating with Local Produce) as the distributors of farm fresh food to Maplewood Richmond Heights school system. From the number of requests we've been getting from other school districts, we can see that's just the beginning.

Randy Wood and I have also been helping to write legislation for Missouri legislators to remove barriers that make it difficult for schools to source local products. That project is going really well, and we're pretty sure you'll be hearing about Farm to Cafeteria legislation in the next session. That's something for everyone to be grateful for.

As we prepare for Thanksgiving this year, we are very aware of all the things we have to be grateful for. So many wonderful things are happening that we get up each day and just wait to see where we are led today! It's hard to believe that many of the wonderful friends we now have are people we only admired from afar just a year or two ago. I'm especially grateful for my wonderful friends who work so hard to ensure a fresh, healthy food system for everyone and a decent living for farmers.

I hope you'll come visit the store in the coming week and see some of the awesome Thanksgiving bargains we have-cranberries for $1.00 a bag, mushrooms for $1.00 a package, organic celery (Did you know celery is one of the most-sprayed crops?) for $1.99, beautiful sweet potatoes from Arkansas for .39 a pound. I could go on and on.

Unfortunately, local turkeys are NOT one of the wonderful things we have to offer. We had a major communication breakdown with our turkey farmer and we ended up turkey-less. Local turkey-less, that is. We have a great buy on Honeysuckle White turkeys at .59 per pound with a $50.00 purchase. I apologize profusely to anyone who was hoping to get fresh, local turkeys from us. I promise we'll have them next year-and lots of them in all sizes!

Watch for changes around the store as our intern from SLU orders in more local and organic products and helps us display the new items. We're excited to have Justine to help us for her practicum. We only have her for five weeks, but I'll bet she'll work wonders in that time. I'm grateful for the wonderful young people we get to work with, too. One thing is for sure, the future of food is in good hands with all the caring and knowledgeable young folks who are coming along.