Favorite day of the week :)

Friday is my favorite day of the week! One reason is because it's my day off (!!!!!!) and it is also the day of the farmer's market near me.  I LOVE farmer's markets.  Especially the one I go to because I always find great produce there and since I don't yet have my own full garden to eat from, I am glad to buy from the local farmers that I know are organic and I want to support their business.  There is one farm I buy most of my produce from, and he is also the most popular vendor there because he's got the most amount of produce, it's fair priced, and it is all VERY good.  Today I came away with some red butterhead lettuce, beet greens, baby swiss chard, green beans, basil, sage, calendula flowers, onions, zucchini and squash, cucumber, radishes, and broccoli.  From other vendors, I got some yummy big tomatoes, green peppers, shallots, and some pretty multi-colored carrots. 

What a bounty!! Was it really cheap?  No, but this will feed us all week with nice big salads, grilled veggies, and herbs for some extra flavor.  Almost all of the veggies will be used in salads, which we eat pretty much everyday, if not twice a day!  If for some reason I don't end up using all my herbs, then I usually dry them and store them for the winter.  As for the calendula flowers, yah they are really pretty to keep on the table to look at, but my bundle from last week is steeping in olive oil to make an ointment and the bundle from this week I am drying to make a hand salve.  Calendula flowers actually help heal skin wounds and irritations, so it's sort of like a natural first aid cream, without the nasty petroleum base.  I'll be mixing some dried calendula and lavender flowers with cocoa butter, beeswax, vitamin E capsules, and olive oil to make a hand salve that will smell and work awesomely!  All of these ingredients can be found at natural health food stores and most everybody has olive oil in their pantry.  Beeswax I found was actually quite cheap, I found a good sized block for about $4 and you only need a little bit. 

If you don't have a lot of room, time, space, whatever for a garden to solely feed your family from, then the next best thing is the farmer's market.  If they are organic (you will want to make sure, though most at the market are) then they have the same ideals you have when it comes to feeding your family.  You want good quality produce that you know has no harmful chemicals applied to it.  For many farmers at the market, this is their full-time job and working the markets is how they feed and support their own families.  With gas prices going up, prices at the grocery store are going up to and you're really only paying for the travel of the food to get to the store.  Let alone having to travel there and back home yourself.  This is why it is so important to support our local organic farmers because if everything else goes down the tubes, at least you'll know where you can find good food.  Most of the things we really need in life, we can find in nature: gardening, hunting, fishing, sun, wind, and rain.


Let me remind you, this is all still a learning process for me, but I feel it's important to share.  While I may not be able to do all of the things I want to do right now with gardening and such, I can learn about it and share it and do more with the coming years.  If you are like me and have limited gardening space, a great book with a lot of info is Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces.  Also, if you have any questions about ingredients in beauty products or gardening feel free to leave a comment with your questions :)