Dear Blogosphere

Dear Blogosphere and loyal followers,

May I call you Constant Readers?  (Probably not.  I bet that’s copyright infringement.  Sorry, SK.)

I am not ignoring you.  Well, okay, I am, but I have a great reason!

I am finishing my PhD thesis under a tight deadline. 

I have very little time for anything else.  Just ask anyone around here.  My husband thinks he’s a bachelor again.

I promise, I’ll be back (with bells on) once I get this behind me.  Close-to-final draft due on Friday!  I have lots of pictures to post and lots of things to write about, once I no longer have this panicky feeling all the time.

I’ll see you soon!

Love always,

Marybeth.

Lunch at The Farmer’s Daughter

This week is Going Local Week in Indiana.  In honor of that (and because we love this restaurant), John and I had lunch at The Farmer’s Daughter Bakery and Cafe today, my favorite restaurant in Princeton.


The owners, Sarah and John, are friends of ours.  (She’s a farmer’s daughter.)  They use as much local (and organic) food as possible.  They also grow quite a bit of the produce for their restaurant on their own farm.
I started lunch with some sliced peaches and golden delicious apples from Nesbitt’s Orchard in Vincennes.  (The best peaches I’ve had all season!)  The main attraction today was their specialty Creole meat loaf sandwich.


Oh, yum.  The pork, beef, and eggs they use in their meat loaf are all locally grown.  The meat is from Hasenour Farms in Huntingburg, IN.  The eggs are from Bob McDaniel (a local farmer in Gibson County).  All the veggies on (and in) the sandwich were from the owner’s farm, Homeward Bound Farms in Patoka, IN.

We finished with their classic crème brûlée…  So decadent…  They torch the top right at the table!






 Tell me you don’t want some right now…

And, in case you’re really curious about where your food comes from, they keep this map with the locations of their ingredients updated on a daily basis!  How neat is that?!


If you’re ever anywhere near southwest Indiana, be sure to stop by The Farmer’s Daughter for lunch! 

Farm Equipment Fridays: Seed signs

I was talking to a friend of mine, and she had been talking to a friend of hers.  (Yes, this is one of those “friend of a friend” stories.  But this one is true!  And it’s important, so pay attention!)

So this friend said that she was disappointed at the number of commercial farms she had seen on her drive.  When asked how she knew they were commercial farms, she said she could tell because of all the signs along the edges of the fields.

If you’ve done any driving at all in any areas where crops are grown, chances are you’ve seen them, too.  And if you have a farming background, then you know what they mean. 

But if, like this friend, you don’t have a farming background, then you might not know what they mean.  In fact, you might make the assumption that this means that Beck’s owns and farms this field.

And this would be a reasonable assumption.  After all, when you see a sign with a name on it in front of a building, you expect to find that business operating inside the building, yes?


Actually, these signs are more like the signs a contractor will put in your front yard when he is doing work on your house.  It’s an advertisement.  “Don’t you love my work?  Don’t you want to grow my seeds, too?”
Sometimes the signs will just say “Hey, we’re great!”

Sometimes the signs will give a little more information about the seed that was planted in that field, like the hybrid number.

The important thing to know about these signs is that the company on the signs does not own or farm the field.  That is simply where the farmer who does own the field bought their seed that year.

After seed sales are done and fields are planted, the seed dealers (sellers) will go around the country, check out the fields, and place their signs in front of fields that have a good looking crop.  And on roads that have good traffic.  (You won’t see these signs on gravel back roads!)

The important thing to remember is that most of the farms in Indiana (and in all of America!) are still family-owned.  They may be incorporated now, but the corporation (farm) is still owned and run by a family.


(Disclaimer – Beck’s Pioneer, and AgriGold have not sponsored this post.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that none of those seed companies even know that I exist.)

Miss the emails?

Okay.  I’ve had a few complaints that Blogger doesn’t have an easy way to automatically send emails when I have new posts, like Wordpress does.  Granted, you can set up an RSS feed, but I will agree that those are not as convenient as emails.  Especially if you’re not really a blogger, and are only reading my blog because I begged you to.  Or because you’re my husband and you feel like you have to.

So.  Due to (almost) popular demand, I will start cross-posting again to both Blogger and Wordpress.  It will be the same content, so those of you who were already getting emails will still be getting emails.  Those of you who are following me on Blogger, or have the Blogger RSS feed set up, you will get the same posts there.

I hope this makes everyone happy!

(P.S. – Stay tuned later today for the next Farm Equipment Fridays!)

Moo.

Wordless Wednesday