First, let me take this opportunity to say THANK you to everyone who made it out to Fall Fest. It was a fantastic day, perfect weather, fun, friends and family all around! Lots of folks found their perfect pumpkins and met some of the great folks who are Green Door vendors including Sequatchie Cove Farm, Tru Bee Honey, Gourmet Pasture Beef, and the Jolly Barnyard. Samuel and his wife and 9 kids (yes 9, with one on the way, folks buy some chicken: he has lots of mouths to feed) enchanted everyone who met them. I have NEVER been around more polite and well behaved children for sure. We also welcomed Walnut Hill Farm to our co-op. They will be here Saturdays with sausages and beef and pork items. Their beef sausages got rave reviews! They do a CSA offering ( as does Gourmet Pasture beef) that can be picked up right here at the farm. http://www.walnuthillsfarm.com

We have just 3 more weekends left before we take our winter break. We have added Sunday hours from Noon until 4 to give families a chance to come out and look around the farm, maybe take the hayride to the river, and stock up on some things to get you through until we are back in action next year!

Speaking of lots of kids, as you may know I grew up on a dairy farm youngest of 5 and we always had tons of cousins and kin there too, so there was a lot of cooking going on in our house. Our kitchen was a log cabin that in the early 1900’s was literally pushed up to the side of the house and attached with wood pegs, and a door was cut through to the main house. My Granny cooked on a woodstove all her life and we still used that woodstove after she died until I was a teenager . We stopped using it after my sister mistakenly put in too much baking soda while rendering lard and the bubbling fat rumbled out of the pot down into the crevasses of the cast iron top and began a rather large chimney fire. There were flames leaping out of the chimney and the oven was billowing smoke galore. One of the firemen had gloves that permitted him to get the lard off the stove, but the smoke kept coming out of the oven. The temperature gauge was pegged at its peak of 700 degrees, and the fire chief called out “SHE’S GONNA BLOW!” At that point my mother yells “MY PIES!!!!!” She had totally forgotten about the 4 apple pies she had in the oven, that were now cinders, but had caused all thesmoke. Luckily apple pies do not explode! We got an electric stove after that! Funny now but scary then; well at least until my sweet mother, yelled MY pies! I brought wood stove to Tennessee and hope to get it restored. There was absolutely NO better food made anywhere on the planet than the meals turned out on that stove.

Somewhere along the way we got all tangled up in haute cuisine and cultural issues and overly processed foods and forgot about just plain good food. Simple, slow cooked country food, nothing more. The flavors were coaxed out of the ingredients with patience and the skills of know how to prep the items for cooking and how to layer flavors together to make it all come together. To me, country food seems to be at the root of most prized foodie obsessions, stemming from what smart country cooks could do with the “inferior cuts “of meat and veggies. Think foie gras, hanger steak, sweet potatoes, cornbread…

I grew up eating what is now dubbed “Soul food” as did generations of my family before me. Give me turnip greens, beans and rice, chicken cooked up just about anyway, grits and a veritable country store full of other items and I am happy, as they say back home, as a pig eating slop! Simple, slow cooked farm food: flavors were coaxed out of the ingredients with patience and the skills of know how to prep the items for cooking and how to layer flavors together to make it all come together. The fall is the perfect time to get back to your roots…not to mention root veggies!

This weekend on the farm we hope to build some scare crows. I am none to happy about the crows bombarding the fruit netting, breaking it open, and having a buffet on my muscadine grapes. So we are going to give them an early Halloween spook! If you have an old pair of boots or jeans of whatever to donate to help dress our scarecrow, feel free to bring them. Maybe we can make a scarecrow army for next year! Move over terracotta warriors, the hay warriors are coming!

We are planning our first official “It’s Five O’Clock somewhere Hayride” & “Potluck in the Field” for Saturday evening. This will be a fun opportunity to bring a covered dish and meet our farm crew. So many of our members have come up with awesome sounding recipes recipes, here is a chance to try them out on the public! And the best part… free music. We are happy that some of our farm crew are also great musicians…you can check out Luke and the rest of the guys from the group Kansas Bible Company playing the farm party potluck THIS SATURDAY They are an alternative rocking kinda surf and soul band complete with a grooving horn section …maybe a little reminiscent of the Rolling stones…. they will be playing two sets… one from 1-3… things on the tamer side… then for the adults the 5-7PM set will be wide open and rocking out. I think these guys are on their way to making a national wave. If Nashville can call Kings of Leon home, surely we are poised for the next cool thing to happen in NashVegas! They could very well be it! Check out their video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJjdcytsX40 or their website www.kansasbiblecompany.com for more info. Hope to see you for the big show. You can also check out how hard these guys work if you come out to the farm during the week, as some of them help us harvest our veggies! You can tell they are creative… they built our pumpkin tower!

Again it is a potluck so bring your covered dish and come dish the dirt with us!

Next week we will be twanging things with Don Hill and the Hilltop Bluegrass Boys during the market! Good food, good music and good folks… all right here on the farm just for you!

We are pulling turnips this week! Lovely white lady turnips! We will also be harvesting arugula, eggplant and peppers. We have a few tomatoes still trying to rally, so you will have a few for a last taste of summer salad with the arugula! Also, butternut and sweet potatoes, & hopefully a last rally of late summer squash and zucchini. Head out to the farm this weekend on Saturday or Sunday . If you will be picking up your box on Sunday remember to drop us a note to info@greendoorgourmet.com to expect you then! CLICK HERE to order your box!!