Thursday May 4

[Shirlv]

Morning All, a sunny 53° and windy. Excited because I’m going to the local farmers market. Something different to do. I requested their newsletter, big mistake. Wanted so much but prices are very expensive. Don’t care if they ride their chickens around the range in a stroller 3 x the price I pay at BJS . I know it’s worth it but not if you do not have it. A mushroom farm opened locally so will buy some, also local strawberry’s and romaine. Judy I have never had any detector need changing during the day. I have never talked or to anyone that has had a positive expiernce dealing with motor vehicle registration, etc. Shelia, sounds like a very long day. Be safe

[Acadianmom]

Shirl, that's funny, riding the chickens in a stroller. I find that food at a farmers market is alway high. There's a lady that has a bakery at her house on the way to Lafayette and she is at the farmers markets sometimes. As much as I would like some Sour Dough Bread I haven't decided to pay $8 for a loaf that is about 8 inches long.

A private business opened here that does most things the DMV does. I don't remember how much more it is but not more than $20. I have never had to wait more than 10 minutes so worth it to me. You can spend all afternoon at the DMV. And the they will answer all the dumb questions I have.

I agree about the detectors going off. I am up in the middle of the night on a 6 foot ladder trying to change the battery.

I was running the road all day yesterday so didn't get much loaded in the camper. I had to go help my son bring his dog to the vet. He was licking a place on his paw raw and he was past due for his checkup. Went to Walmart, came home, changed clothes and went to my meeting. A nutritionist with the LSU Ag Center gave a demonstration on how to make a charcuterie board and we all got to make a small one. That was fun. I learned how to say charcuterie but have already forgotten how.

Have to finish loading and get on the road.

Martha

[OregonLuvr]

Morning All. Not a bad morning outside. Getting ready to go get some plants Shirl inspires me and the weather is ok to plant now. We had a brief wicked thunderstorm last night with the biggest drops for about 15 minutes, then it moved on whew. Glad I hadnt planted yet the plants as they would have been pummeled. I have laundry in and will get Henry to vacuum the guest bedroom and kitchen area. Need to change bed linens today.

I have a hankering for some brownies....tee hee So found this recipe this morning called Brownies For One
https://onedishkitchen.com/brownies-for-one/
I have all the ingredients so will make some this afternoon. Have some sugar free whipped topping instead of ice cream...darn. Off to the "Plant Warehouse" as they have nice plants, and very reasonable.

[Shirlv]

Sorry I’m on my soapbox again. Thinking about how others might might perceive what you say and do. As I have aged everything I have has diminished or slid somewhere else. Can not walk as far or as long, go cart helps. I’m a retired care giver and still looking for something to care for so plants fills the bill. I post what I am having for dinner and hope someone else posts to give me suggestions. I have a close family and before COVID we laughed a lot. The whole world is angry and sad. We all need a safe place to vent, here and within my family. If I’m silly just trying to bring back some of the past. #1 granddaughter having a procedure this morning, fear of the unknown was scared. Afterwards she said “it pinched”. I told her she was so brave. We laughed and laughed like old times, so silly, felt so good. Martha I still laugh at the thought of your cat swinging on the curtain. Karen, wish I was plant shopping with you. Not buying. Lol

[JudyJB]

Loved your comments on the eggs, Shirl! I stopped in a small store somewhere in Oregon a couple of years ago, and they had at least dozen types of eggs. Some were free range, some free range in cattle pasture, some were allowed to eat only from organic pastures, etc. etc. They even had tiny quail eggs. i could not stop laughing at how ridiculous it all was, including the prices, and it was the only time I have taken photos in a grocery store!! So the riding around chickens in a stroller was not too far off.

Also good point about the smoke and other alarms going off only at night, except I did have one go off during the day. The problem was that I was driving in heavy traffic in a city. The stupid thing was almost right over my head, and it not only beeped, it started screaming. It took me several minutes to find a place to pull over, get a stool out, and rip the thing off my ceiling and disable it. And I have vivid memories of the time in my condo where I had cathedral ceilings, and one smoke alarm on the edge of the ceiling right next to my bedroom went off in the middle of the night. I had to go down to my garage and haul up my 8' ladder and then climb onto almost the top step to reach the alarm. Hard to go back to sleep after all of that!!

Got a good night's sleep last night, even slept in, so feel a lot better. Got to go out and refill my hummingbird feeder. These black-chinned hummers complain a lot! They don't hum, but have a distinctive loud trill when they don't like something, like your getting too close to their feeders.

[Cudedog]

Morning All, a sunny 53° and windy. Excited because I’m going to the local farmers market. Something different to do. I requested their newsletter, big mistake. Wanted so much but prices are very expensive. Don’t care if they ride their chickens around the range in a stroller 3 x the price I pay at BJS .

I'll put my oar in here a bit.

Years ago, when I lived on some acreage in the Sierra foothills, I had a big garden, had chickens, a couple of calves, a pig, etc. Grew a large percentage of our own food.

Friends and acquaintances somehow always thought that since we were raising my own livestock and produce, that somehow our meat and vegetables were magically somehow "free", or at least at greatly reduced cost from the store-bought kind.

This really wasn't the case, either then or now. It was actually more expensive to produce our own food than it was to buy it at the grocery store.

What a lot of people don't understand is that the big "factory farms" (be it for eggs, meat, produce or whatever) can buy feed in bulk. It is a LOT less expensive to buy grain by the ton than it was (and is) to buy it by the 25# or 50# bag at the local feed store. We had no way to transport feed at a ton at a time, and even if we had we didn't have a place to store that amount of feed where it would be moisture and rodent proof, we bought all of our feed by the bag.

This is still true today of a lot of small farmers/homesteaders.

Also, the the government subsidies paid to corporate farmers enable certain classes of farmers to produce food really cheaply.

https://www.nal.usda.gov/economics-business-and-trade/agricultural-subsidies

Your average small farmer, of the type that might sell eggs or produce at the local fruit stand, or at a weekly farmers market, does not receive subsidies, and absolutely cannot compete, price-wise, with agribusiness.

It is possible, even likely, that those eggs you thought were priced so high at the local farmers market had nothing at all to do with chicken strollers, but everything to do with a small farmer just trying to get by.

Eggs (when a person is buying grain by the 25# sack at the feed store) are very (and surprisingly) expensive to produce. Those eggs were likely priced nearly at cost - just so the person that was selling them could continue to afford to keep taking care of their chickens.

How do I know? I've been there.

Anne

[Shirlv]

Anne, I know what you say is true. Mom and Pop little stores also can’t compete with large supermarkets because they do not sell the volume. Sadly it does not change the fact that people on fixated income can not pay the higher prices. I’m a country girl at heart and today would have love to patronize the mostly young people selling their good. They were there during the pandemic too. I can’t afford it.

[OregonLuvr]

I love to go to the Farmer and Growers markets we have around us. They have some amazing foods and produce BUT it is expensive. Every once in a while I will splurge and buy one of their breads or scones but not often. Some of their fresh produce like strawberries I will surely buy as they are more expensive but taste doesnt compare to store bought where half the strawberry is still green. I dont go every week and I have not been yet this year. But will go again soon. We have a several growers markets on different days so I have options ha ha Alot of the same people are at all or some of them. I do buy home grown eggs as they are the best. Not sure how much they are charging now but they used to be $2.50 - $4.00 a dozen I will have to check that out. I loved it when I lived where I could have my own chickens and had eggs almost every day. I bought a half of a beef once and it was great. I had a family then and now I dont eat much red meat anyway and now that summer is here I will be making more salads.

Had so much fun at the Plant Warehouse. Bought several types of flowers, even got them planted. Bought my tomato plants , some bush beans, an acorn and zucchini squash. Oh yes and a Peony plant. I didnt get the veggies planted yet, tomorrow is a whole new day LOL I dont want to push myself too much so just spreading it out over time.

[Colliemom]

Very well said, Anne. Raising any kind of an animal be it chickens, cows, pigs etc. is very time consuming and not cheap. We had chickens when I was young and it was feed and water, clean the coop, gather the eggs every day regardless of weather etc. Those big mega agribusinesses can keep thousands of chickens in one building even though they say they are cage free. They are still inside that building, and there are so many of them in there that they can barely move. Not only are they fed from bulk feed supplies, but they are also fed, hormone , and a bunch of other stuff to increase egg production, things that your local farmer doesn’t do. Those chickens in the agribusiness are being taken care of by people who are paid to do that. Your local farmer makes zero per hour. Health wise , local chicken eggs are better than commercial ones. If you crack an egg that you bought at the store in a bowl, and then crack an egg that you got from the local farmer in a bowl, you will notice an immediate difference. The farm eggs have a darker yolk and a thicker egg white.

Same goes for veggies. Your local, farmers have to buy seed or plants, plant them, then hope mom nature cooperates with sun and rain. Then when things start ripening and it’s time hit the farmers market, it’s up at the crack of Dawn, harvest the goodies, load the truck and head for the market. Meantime they aren’t being paid one cent. Don’t forget the gas and diesel fuel for their vehicles and their tractors and other farm equipment. Same for those who raise beef to sell at farmers markets. They get the calves, feed them whether pasture or grain, haul them to the processor, pick the meat up when it’s ready, then haul it to the farmers market. One gal. I know who runs her own farm, go pes to a processor that’s a 60 mile drive one way from here. They are the only ones for the farmers in this area.

Like Anne said, agribusinesses can get subsidies from the government. Your local farmers can only get loans to pay back with interest. Hopefully by the time the growing and selling season is over, thry have been able to sell enough to make a profit to keep them through the winter and buy what they need for the next spring or else it’s off to the bank for that loan. Feast or famine for the local folks. It’s sad a lot of family farms have folded because they just can’t make it anymore. And the kids don’t want the hassle of it either. Thry can make better money elsewhere.

But as Shirl, said, income plays the part, in where and what you can afford to buy, so you do what works best for you.

[Bethers]

I love buying from farmers markets when I can. But it's hard to pay the costs most of the time now. The local store was selling a farmers eggs at 99c a dozen week before last. I don't know how either the store or farmer was making money but wish I'd had more room in my fridge as I would have purchased another dozen or two. And, like Karen, I'm more apt to purchase strawberries and some other fresh fruits that just taste so much better. I buy frozen strawberries for my smoothies as they taste better than the so-called fresh in the grocery stores. And they help my smoothies get thicker. Oh, and the stores near me now are way too expensive on almost everything. So I'm very careful with my purchases.

Now that I've completely forgotten what I intended to write I'll sign off.

[JudyJB]

I can understand costs for small businesses, but the funny part of the shelves of eggs I saw were the descriptions of how they were raised. They described the field, what had been grown in it, the breed of the chicken, what their nighttime area looked like, how the chickens were handled physically, and some other things that went on for a very long paragraph for each type. A long paragraph is more than I really want to know about the eggs I eat.

While I understand people have to charge what they put into raising eggs, there is a limit to what I will pay for eggs, and some of these prices were way over that. This was about 5 years ago and some eggs were $10 per dozen, and I am guessing they are now even more expensive. When I drove up to our cottage along farm roads when my kids were little, I occasionally bought eggs from roadside stands--the kind where you put the money in a cup. They were usually double supermarket price, which was fine with me at that time.

[Cudedog]

I can understand costs for small businesses, but the funny part of the shelves of eggs I saw were the descriptions of how they were raised. They described the field, what had been grown in it, the breed of the chicken, what their nighttime area looked like, how the chickens were handled physically, and some other things that went on for a very long paragraph for each type. A long paragraph is more than I really want to know about the eggs I eat.

Judy, it's called "marketing". If a seller says the above, people are interested, and might just buy a couple of dozen of this or that, "just to try something new".

If the seller put a card on the same eggs that said "Charging double for eggs today, the price of grain just went up" potential buyers would probably just walk on by, and not give the eggs a second thought.

Apologies to Shirl and others that my original post sounded a bit. . . well, unfeeling. Didn't mean it to be. There is a weekly farmers market here in my town that I don't often attend, just for the same reasons.

Anne

[Shirlv]

No apologies needed Anne, All valid comments. Think we all agree the markets are pleasant places to shop. Recalled a Monet. I was buying strawberries today and said I had trouble eating them before they spoiled and the young woman ask if I would like to buy only half a carton. Food Lion wouldn’t do that. I refused, want to try and freeze them.

[MandysMom]

Sue, it remains illegal to administer hormones, artificial or added to chickens in the US. That's per the FDA.
Velda

[Redetotry]

I am very lucky to live where there are many small farms several that are organic or close to organic. They have growing tunnels and their fresh winter carrots and spinach taste amazing. Pre pandemic I was paying $2.00 a dozen for farm eggs, now they are $4.50. We have an indoor winter market and in April it moves outdoors. There is always local meat and poultry available. I freeze blueberries, strawberries and persimmons to have all winter but I know realize that isn't possible if you are living in your RV. I try not to eat any of the 'dirty dozen' fruits unless they are organic because of all the chemicals.This is the list from this link .https://www.eatthis.com/pesticides-dirty-dozen-2023/
Strawberries freeze well especially if mashed (I don't add sugar) and then put in glass containers. They also will keep fresh longer if you put them in glass jars in your fridge. Blueberries I don't wash before freezing and put them in freezer zip lock bags. Persimmons I put on cookie sheets and freeze then put in bags. They really freeze well. I have a friend who has two big trees and she gathers them for me as they ripen.

Strawberries
Spinach
Kale, Collard & Mustard Greens
Peaches
Pears
Nectarines
Apples
Grapes
Bell & Hot Peppers
Cherries
Blueberries
Green Beans