Jack set the table “for the feast” with gusto. Martha Stewart would have frowned on his innovation
– taping our name cards (6-year-old’s authentic font in pencil on index cards) to our napkins. Just such quintessential moments are what the Google gods were tapping with the turkey doodle.
Did you see it? What a fascinating interactive! Apparently, (we took it to the Farley family to confirm and subsequently looked it up in the Christian Science Monitor) there are 2,985,984 possible combinations of the 12 options of footwear, hairstyle and each of the four change-able feathers. One could spend more time playing with this digital dress-up bird than fixing the entire feast solo!
Okay, Google isn’t local, we know. But the digital version of the traditional hand-traced bird caught our eye and captured our imagination. The form is simple. There were only six changeable components with 12 options and yet customizing them was (embarrassingly) satisfying and the variety produced seems endless.
Our proudest moment in our week was when members spoke glowingly about their farm-based
Times Argus Story Nov 25, 2011
feasts (and we really look forward to hearing more of these tales on Thursday!). Another good moment was viewing Sylvia’s Times Argus article about the farm with Jeb’s great photos. The story emphasized our farm’s unique offers, both the customization of the “free choice” Omnivore Share as well as the options to be a Farm Stand Member or simply a retail shopper. In retrospect the stories of your feast and ours are like when you choose all purple feathers and the Google turkey gets a wand and a white rabbit… magic! Hopefully, our simple offer of 40 plus veggies in season, +/- 5 types of meat in various cuts, canned and frozen goods, gives you enough variety to make millions of meals.
This is where it all comes together. Often localvore lore focuses attention on what isn’t here, how cider can only stand in for citrus until it is brunch and one “needs” a mimosa. But we had an incredibly enjoyable weekend as the farm slowed down and we ate iterations of turkey and found magic in combinations of all-farm meals.
Lucky for all of us, as the day lengths shorten and our variety wanes, Diane Imrie is going to do a demonstration and tasting here at the farm, Sunday December 11th. She and Richard Jarmusz wrote Cooking Close to Home: A Year of Seasonal Recipes which includes 150 original recipes designed to follow the Vermont seasons. Nearly every dish receives a full-page color photo as well as tips, shortcuts and cooking methods abound. We’ll have our copy of the cookbook over at the farmstand the next couple of weeks so you can check it out.
If the busy season makes it impossible for you to partake in the demo but you still want autographed copies of the book, one can leave a note for Diane with what inscription you want and we can make sure you have it in time for gifting or simply enjoying.
If cooking close to home is proving so satisfying that you want to do your holiday gift shopping close to home also, do mark your calendars for the Floating Bridge Food and Farms Cooperative Holiday Shop December 10th and 11th at Twin Pond Retreat in Brookfield.