Monday, September 12, 2011

HomeGrown, Well Done!

We did it, with very little lead time and lots of last-minute thinking, planning, planning, planning, my husband and I pulled together an informative and fun garlic-tasting at Ann Arbor's 4th Annual HomeGrown Festival this past Saturday night. True to form, just like being at our 3 local farmers' markets, neither Dick nor I sat down until the very end of the evening.

The event went from 6 until 11. We left home by 4:30, just barely had time to set up by 6 pm, only a few minutes before the 'we LOVE !! local food' crowd started arriving in droves.  Other vendors/non-profits (including Project Grow's tasting of 50+ heirloom tomatoes, which we have grown tomatoes for and staffed in past years) closed or left their booths around 9, but we kept going until close to 11 pm with people who just did not quit wanting to taste our garlic! Dick was sitting down by 10:30 (creaky old football knee injuries are to blame, not lack of energy!) but I had enough stamina and excitement to not sit down the entire time. :)

We are already planning our participation in next year's 5th Annual HomeGrown Festival, without the last minute worry and frenzy of the past 10-12 days! Just for fun, here is an article about the event, complete with photos. If you look carefully through the photos, you'll see our brand-spanking-new banner in the background of the photo of the woman in the 'ear of corn' costume along with my husband behind the garlic-tasting table. I don't know where I am at that moment, maybe handing out our garlic-tasting menus to the crowd mingling in the aisles, or helping out at our garlic sales table, or helping in the background supervise our wonderful volunteers who sliced garlic for the tastings and kept the cherry tomato 'chasers' stocked.

I have some photos that I will get downloaded and posted on our farm's Facebook page as soon as I have time to sort through them, edit, and label for you to enjoy. I'll post up a few here, too.

(Our new farm logo in full color - our banner uses part of this image in a simpler format with a yellow background, to complement our yellow tablecloth. Garlic, garlic scapes, red Russian kale, our raised beds filled with the 42 different garlic varieties we grew this year, and the sun coming up each morning to greet our future - you will also see the sun rising on the cover of my book) :-)

No worries - 'chapters 3 and 4' are still coming, but I need the time to sit down and think, both clearly and deeply without a 'must do now !! or yesterday !!' list of things to do.  I am getting there........ :-)

If I had the time, I think the image of our garlic fields on our logo qualifies for a posting on my most inactive blog www.cancervictorygardens.com. Our desire to finally pursue an 'old' dream (in spite of the enormous number and depth of uncertainties and fears involved with 'life after cancer') and the perseverance to actually do it, represents a victory over cancer from both a physical and a spiritual perspective. I love looking at the image, I feel like I cannot take my eyes off of it!, and I have slept well the last two nights. :-)

"Cultivate your life - you are what you grow - inch by inch, row by row"

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

2 comments:

Uncharted Journey said...

Diana, I hav been reading about the benefits of turmeric as an anti-inflammatory. In one book,
Anticancer, A New Way of Life,
the author says that for turmeric to be assimilated into the body, it must be mixed with black pepper.
This is the only place I have seen this information about black pepper. Do you have any comments? Thanks, Elizabeth Holland Kern (epkernel@gmail.com)

Diana Dyer said...

I have heard this but not studied up on the particulars. Seems like a good rule of thumb to add a little black pepper when using any type of curry that contains turmeric.
Diana