Kansas City Food Circle

Today I went to an "Eat Local" expo, held in Shawnee, where I work during the week.

It was very well attended... Shawnee is in Johnson County, where there is a healthy per-capita income.  Those are the folks who buy organic, eat organic, and grow organic. (Sorry to be so cynical)

As you see, there were quite a few farms selling plants.

This nice young woman from Sandhill Farm had homemade sorghum and homemade mustard.  I have always wanted to make mustard, but this was REALLY hot.  Thank heavens she was warning people!

This lady was selling organic soap, and I thought this was a neat idea... she was selling it in the blocks in which it came from the mold... and you could cut what you want!  The blocks were 20.00, and I thought that was pretty cool.

These folks were selling cheese... and guess what?  It was SHEEP cheese!  I wish I had bought some.  I totally missed a sign that said you could get a taste of cheese and a drink for 4.50, I would have done it.  Darn!

This was at the Badseed Farm booth... local people will understand this, it is an Urban Legend here in the KC area...

(at least, I THINK it was Badseed's)...

It is a tomato that is not only blooming, it's GOT TOMATOS on it!

They also had many different kinds of heritage tomatoes for sale, peppers, herbs, and lots of interesting things like rhubarb.

I bought a small jar of raspberry jalapeno jam to have on cream cheese tomorrow with Keith... a small container of emu oil hand cream (scrumptious!) and...... sorghum!

I brought home the directory, and am glad I went.  I spoke with the wife of an organic farming duo who used to live in our area and from whom I had bought pullets once.  Sadly, the farm they rented was lost, and they moved to a more remote country area where they do not have the customers that they had here locally. She told me that they are having a terrible problem with predators, and have lost much of their livestock, and I was very sorry to hear that, as they are nice folks.  They have six little towheaded sons, who were all lined up behind their table, too!

This same food expo will be repeated on the Missouri side of the state line in a few weeks.

The new hens are doing well.. the four in the big henhouse picked up on the fact immediately that they needed to come in with the other chickens tonight.  The little henhouse four are not so smart... that henhouse is reached by a long ramp... and they could not figure out for a second night how to get in.  We found them in the doghouse in that yard again, and Keith reached in this time and got them for me.  Hopefully, in a few days, they'll figure it out.  We did find one "strange" egg!  It was a beautiful, big, light brown one.