It's Eat Local First Month

August 30, 2021

Hello from our honeymoon!

Information regarding markets and ordering online:

The Wednesday Night Street Market is canceled this week. Our next Street Market will be next Wednesday, September 8.

We will be at the Saturday Port Angeles Farmers Market this weekend, September 4th.

You can still order online here for Friday pickup at the Farmstand (4-6PM) or Saturday pickup at the market.

I'm typing this email on Sunday morning before I begin packing, but I'm scheduling it to send on Monday when my phone will be off and I'll be enjoying a mini vacation! How's that for tech savvy business woman?! Andy and I are off for a little getaway while the residual glow of our wedding is still wisping around us. We looked up at the sky while walking the dogs this morning and saw the waning gibbous moon peering down at us and Andy said, "It is the last quarter of our honeymoon." We were married on the new moon and the next new moon fast approaches! There are a few etymological explanations for the name "honeymoon". Our favorite is that the honeymoon is a full moon cycle after the day you are married. Our other favorite one is that a newly married couple would drink a cup of mead (fermented honey water) each day for a month after their wedding.

The end of our honeymoon will also mark the beginning of September. We're going to keep the celebratory lifestyle going because September is now officially Eat Local First Month! This is an event put on by the Eat Local First campaign whose entire purpose is to encourage and make it easier for Washington residents and visistors to choose local food first. We're joining the movement to promote the completely divine (not to mention ecologically and economically responsible) experience of eating locally grown food. You can check out the Eat Local First website here. I JUST used their "Food and Farm Finder" tool to find restaurants and local farms to check out while on our honeymoon! (Yes, we're staying in Washington, but that's ALL I'm telling you!)

To celebrate Eat Local First month, Hidden Penny is going to be bringing the fun in all sorts of ways! (Including our first ever farm tour!) Stay tuned for updates on ways you can join in on the fun. For now, I'd like to tell you about an incredible dining experience I had yesterday. It was simple, unplanned, and created right in my own kitchen, and yet it would seem disrespectful to call it anything less than a spiritual experience!

For breakfast I had half a melon. A melon that I grew, the variety is called Emerald Gem and was introduced by W. Atlee Burpee in 1866. The seeds came from Whidbey Island and were planted by me in May and the plants were transplanted in June. That is all well and good, but what I really want to say is: Have you ever had a melon that is still warm from the sun? I think most people think of melon as being a chilled and refreshing experience...but why, oh why, do we put melons in the fridge?! I hope that every person gets to eat a melon still warm from sunlight. I don't feel that I can adequatley describe food warmed by the sun; the best I can do is say that it has a soul in a way that food warmed on a stove or gasp a microwave just doesn't.

I scraped the seeds from the center of my precious melon and placed them on a towel to dry. (This was a particularly big melon for the variety and I'd like to save the seed for next year.) In the cavity left where seeds previously lay, I put a few dollops of yogurt. This yogurt was made last week from the milk of the beautiful big-eyed bovines at Dungeness Creamery. To make it, Andy added some of the previous week's yogurt to the warmed milk and let it sit on a heat mat for a few hours...through the alchemy of fermentation we were gifted the tangy, effervescent delight of homemade yogurt.

I added to my melon bowl a handful of blueberries I had harvested the day before, and with a sigh of gratitude and a flourish of spoon, I dipped into my perfect little breakfast. Heaven on a spoon! The warm and smooth flesh of the melon hugging the cold and zippy tang of the yogurt! The added burst of texture from the blueberries! I ate whole thing with my eyes closed, to fully enjoy the experience.

Food is a sheer wonder to me. It is an experience. It is history and stories. It is memories. It is a mindful indulgence of all of the senses. It is art and creativity. It is community. It is resilience and sustainability. It is medicine. It deserves our reverence.

I hope that you enjoy food so much all the time, and during the month of September we can be even more mindful of the significance of choosing to eat food grown locally by people we know.

Signing off for now! See you when we return!

all the best from our tiny farm,

melissa and andy