Category: News, etc.

Truth time. Easter kinda snuck up on me this year. Now that’s not entirely surprising because most holidays sneak up on me. Every day is kind of the same on a farm, especially an animal farm. But I had people calling for Easter hams, Easter lamb. I had the Mrs. planning Easter service after work on Saturday, which requires tickets at our church because all the heathens show up twice a year (Easter and Christmas). As opposed to us, where we show up occasionally, some of the time. Yeah, we’re holier than thou.

On my calendar, it said “Easter Holiday.”

Somehow I wasn’t prepared for Easter at all. Thank God SWMBO, as always, was.

So when I woke up Saturday all I knew was:

1. I’m dreadfully behind, on everything. Income tax filings, sales tax filings and payments, blog posts, gunsmithing, house maintenance, paperwork. Simply everything.
2. I’m dreadfully disorganized, because I’m so behind. There are stacks on top of stacks of stuff in my office, in the gun room, in my house, all just needing to be sorted into priority stacks (was due a week ago, was due today and Pbbbt! I have plenty of time it’s due tomorrow)
3. Everybody is looking for me, because I’m so behind and they need me to give them answers. I can’t get one thing done because someone comes and asks me about their thing before I can finish. Nothing ever gets completed.
4. I need to work all day to cover for Miguel who was taking a rare day off. Good for him. I’m glad he had a day off, but ugh. Today?
5. We have six tours today and for some reason Spork has a surprise friend over which is cool. But that means he needs the day off too. SWMBO says she’ll cover the tours. But who covers the store? We try to keep an adult close.
6. All this stuff for today needs to get done so we can leave exactly on time so we can get to church on time because it will be a zoo.

So Saturday started off with a bit of angst on how it would go. However it also started off with the pic you see above. A double rainbow, just for me. Then I noticed that the weather was absolutely gorgeous. Perfect temperature, a bit of rain on our dry pastures, then sun the rest of the day.

The store was humming and the girls were knocking it out with time to play in between customers.  Vicente and Josh were getting everything done and every time I came over to ask what they needed help with, the answer was nothing. Go back up front. So I would, and I’d get to see our wonderful customers, smiling and enjoying their shopping trip.

Saturday ended with a great sermon at church. Easily one of my top 5s. What started out as a angst filled day ended up being an enjoyable, productive day. I’m still dreadfully behind, but I’m slowly making progress. In the spirit of being behind, Happy Easter everyone, one week late.

I cannot tell you how happy I am to announce that Yo Momma’s Style products are in our store.

No, not because they are good. I mean, they are good. And unique. The rubs have a really good flavor and the variety and choices mean you can pretty much make whatever you want. Chicken, beef, pork, whatever. And having the Colorado influence is really cool because we get some flavors we aren’t used to in NC, things like green chilis. The jams are great, with flavors not like your regular super sweet boring old jams.

And no, not because Yo Momma’s Style is now officially the closest place to us, even to our leased farms that we operate that are only 5 minutes away. Yo Momma is almost across the street, in Eagle Ridge. Yep, these products are not just home made, they are HOME made. As in they are in an approved and certified home based kitchen, just down the street from us, being made one at a time with love and care. It doesn’t get much more local than that.

No the reason that I’m so happy to announce this new product is that we are FINALLY through our two month long taste testing extravaganza. You know how you wish you could get a job playing video games, or being a wine taster, or flying fighter jets. And then you talk to someone who does it and you find out it’s actually work, like a real job. Better than screwing toothpaste caps on in a factory but still a job. That’s what being a taste tester is. It was super cool! But I put on 10 pounds doing it and had to eat 3-4 dinners per night, all cooked as test batches. The kids were groaning when dinner was served these last few weeks. But that part is over, at least for now.

So this morning, I’m down 4 pounds and we have new product in the store with more on the way. Now it’s time to transition to rolling out these products to you so that you can enjoy the fruits of our labor. When all was said and done, I’d say we had 200 vendors to choose from. Of those, we picked maybe 40 to sample. Of those 40 we picked maybe 10 to actually carry. These are the cream of the crop so we are very excited to get your feedback on what you think.

We are open today from 2-6 and tomorrow from 8-5. We have more products arriving today but I won’t have time to post about them. So stop on by and get your regular goodies and see what has just hit the shelves.

I don’t think we’ve ever had this many cars here at once. Oh sure, we’ve had more people. We’ve had busloads of people show up but this is the first time a farm event has had parking that stretched all the way around to the front of the house. If you look in the background you can see the barn way off in the distance. And this isn’t even all the cars, this was just the first time I could snap a picture!

We had a forecast of rain for the morning but as it turns out, we had a perfect day for everyone to come and visit. It was also our first test of the new store layout with a large crowd. In the old days, more than about 6 people in the store and you were bumping into one another. Now with the new layout, we had 30 people wandering around and it wasn’t crowded at all. Of course, we’d opened up the stock room for extra space but it was nice to see that we can handle a larger crowd now with comfort.

Many thanks to everyone on the Wake County agribusiness council for their hard work in putting this trip together, especially our awesome President Dale Threat-Taylor!

As Dan said in the last post he and I rode all over NC yesterday loading up from our supporting farms and processors. I just finished pulling our pre-orders and behold we have 11 packs of unclaimed Ribeyes. Come grab a pack or 2  for Easter Dinner. Don’t forget to get the pets some snacking meat as well from our $1 lb sale this weekend.

We are open from 2-6 pm today and from 8-5 tomorrow with a few tours still available.

I’m placing my first order today, for our first new vendor for the store. As we bring in new folks, I plan on letting everyone know what is coming and why we picked them so be prepared for lots of posts like this. But our first vendor is special beyond being a supplier of goods to us.

We’ve looked at farmers, sauce makers, etc. But the first question SWMBO asked herself when we decided to expand the store was, “What do I buy at the grocery store all the time.” The answer? Peanuts.

You see, I have an affliction. It’s not my fault, it came from my father. My father always had peanuts on hand. He ordered them special from Georgia I think. He gave them out as Christmas presents to his customers every year. He routinely, when walking through the kitchen, would grab a handful. When he ate ice cream, he’d dabble a few on top. He didn’t pour through them. He didn’t eat large quantities, but he always had a few here or there as a quick snack.

SWMBO can’t have bread in the house. Or potato chips. Or chocolate. They all call to her and she must obey. With me, it’s peanuts. Despite my protests that she quit buying them, she lovingly (and evilly) keeps the pantry stocked with peanuts for me.

So when it was time to look for something for the store, peanuts were the first thing she went for. In that search, she came across a very special place. 

Maybe we are the last people to hear about this place. Like most things of this nature, we tend to ignore it unless we have a loved one who is affected. But as we learned more we were very interested in helping the O’Berry Neuro-Medical Treatment Center.

They have limited production, as you would expect. They were worried we might ask for too much product. We won’t.

We were worried that some of their products weren’t as wholesome or natural as we’d normally carry. Some of the candied nuts have corn syrup in them (it’s how you make a candy shell). There was much debate over if this was acceptable.

In the end, we found that helping the O’Berry center in our tiny way was absolutely what we were going to do. Plus their peanuts are awesome so I’m happy. The kids, who also love peanuts, are happy. And the Mrs, who is watching my pants get snug, is happy.

I hope you are happy.

We don’t have an exclusive deal and we don’t want one. You can drive to Goldsboro and visit their gorgeous store. Maybe you’ll get to meet Shirley, who is our contact there. At 70 she has more energy than SWMBO and I combined and she is a delight to talk to. (Hi Shirley!) They have peanuts, snack mixes, pottery, crafts, soaps, and lotions. We are ordering a smattering of all of it for the store. It will all be priced at the same price they sell it for. It’s all made by the residents there, with lots of help from the professional staff.