A Trip To The "Market"

Saturday usually means grocery shopping. I still have to go to Meijer for some things later - oh how I dread going there - but I decided to kick things off by visiting a local farmers market.

"But wait," I hear you saying, "a farmer's market in February?"

Yes. We're lucky to have an organization called the Sweetwater Local Foods Market that puts on a market year-round. It's only every other week during the winter, weekly during the summer. It runs Saturday mornings until 1 pm. Check out their motto - it ties absolutely perfectly into what I'm trying to do:

The Sweetwater Local Foods Market is Michigan’s first farmers market that exclusively sells locally grown animal products and fruits and vegetables raised in a manner that enhances biological diversity, builds soil health and promotes animal welfare. Our message is, “Healthy. Humane. Homegrown. Local food you can trust at the Sweetwater Local Foods Market.”

Local, fresh, sustainable. Perfect. About the only thing that isn't perfect is the timing - I always have other things going on Saturday mornings during the spring, summer and fall. But that's on me, for most people Saturday mornings are perfect.

I went this morning and was pleased to see that it was busy. Busy with normal people doing the same thing I was doing, buying real food. It'd be real easy to stereotype this as a hippie venture (nttawwt), but no, things were very normal.

I picked up several items:

* A pound of applewood smoked bacon from Creswick Farms ($5.50)
* A half pound of organic raw milk cheddar from Grassfields ($6.50)
* A pound of grass fed ground chuck ($4.50)
* A dozen eggs from Happy Hill farm ($3.25)

and a total splurge, a package of malted chocolate chip oatmeal cookies from Earthly Kneads bakery in Muskegon ($4.50). More on those in a separate post.

Hopefully I'll have a picture to post here shortly of the stuff I got. (edit: Here it is)



I didn't have a real list of what I planned to get - other than the eggs - so I wasn't as prepared as I hope to be in coming weeks. Most of the vendors had whiteboards with a list of the products they had for sale and prices. I took a few mental notes and hope to be back in two weeks with some menus planned and ready to go.

I made one other stop on the way home. Sunflower Gourmet carries milk from Hilhof Dairy, which is relatively local. It's organic, straight from the farm and packaged in glass bottles. I don't drink a ton of milk, but it's nice to have a quart on hand.