Tag: inspiration

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Best 5 items at the Biao Zhi Men farmers market stands, Zhangjiajie, Hunan, China

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park China

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October 28, 2018

Oh, you read that city name right. Enjoy this #farmstand5 from Zhangjiajie!

(close enough prounounciation “jong-jya-jyay”)

Across time and time zones, farmstand culture highlights how small farm stands and farmers markets are a cohesive force in communities. Whether you’re south of Boston in Cape Cod or in the shadows of the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, there are neighborhood growers with small stands and fresh, local produce. When you visit these farm stands, you get a better sense of the people and the culture of the place.

Thanks to my cousin’s recent trip to China, we can enjoy the absolutely stunning photos of offerings at the Biao Zhi Men market stands. I owe her a big “thank you” for being so thoughtful, to take the time out of her vacation to give us beautiful images and insight into the variety offered at farm stands in Hunan, China.

Spoken language creates a barrier here, but shopping the variety of the local farms helps to break barriers down. One thing you notice right away, neighborhood shoppers at Biao Zhi Men market demand a wide variety of fruits. Stunning. Delicious. Brilliant fruits. I’m happy to show you some varieties you may not see all the time.

#5
Red Pomelo (Chinese grapefruit)

Pomelo Chinese grapefruit displayed at a Chinese farm market

There is a much larger variety of grapefruits in this world than we thought. Pomelos come in different sizes and colors like green and yellow. When sliced they might be white, green or red inside, like these. The thing is, these are not a hybrid. Pomelos were crossed with other citrus, like oranges to create the hybrid fruits we know today. Grapefruits are believed to be the offspring of pomelo, not the other way around. Wikipedia highlights the voyage of this non-hybrid, Asian fruit around the globe.

#4 Hand-roasted cashews

Man roasting cashew nuts at a Chinese market

One of the favorite photos in my house is of a heavily-wrinkled man roasting nuts in a market in Europe. For my #4 farm stand find in Biao Zhi Men, my cousin found a similar moment in time with a local vendor roasting cashews. Look closer. His heat source is an old utility bucket attached to a gas line. That makes me a little nervous. I hope it doesn’t give him any trouble.

#3 Persimmons

Persimmons at a Chinese farmers market. #farmstand5

Have you tried persimmons? Other than the cost, I cannot understand why this delicately-sweet fruit isn’t more popular in the US! I’ve got a persimmon story for you. Last week, I sat down at a community table cafe at my office and a Ukrainian immigrant asked if anyone knew the name of the tomato-orange-plum-looking fruit he brought from home. I did. He was so happy to get the English translation. He said it’s his favorite fruit. But, now I could use help. Do you know the word for them in Mandarin or Cantonese?

#2 Pomegranates

Green yellow pink pomegranates at a Chinese farmers market

Considering that in American English the word pomegranate is used for a deep reddish-pink color, I didn’t realize until I started doing research for this post how many colors and flavors of pomegranates exist in this world. America, guess what? The tart, hard-seeded fruits we are used to are not nearly the best pomegranates have to offer. I hope your local farm stands carry a better variety than our grocery stores.

Bonus! There’s a little glimpse of kumquats in the lower left corner of this pomegranate photo. I used to eat these right off the bushes when I lived in Florida. In a post on forgotten herbs, I mentioned kumquats had a similar flavor to sorrel, only kumquats have a stronger citrus kick.

#1 Kiwano (aka Horned Melon)

Gorgeous spiked kiwano horned melon displayed at Chinese farmers market stand

How could I possibly pick anything other than the fabulous kiwano horned melon to be our #1?! Is it straight out of Dr. Seuss. Inside, the seeds look more like a glossy, green interior of a tomato than what we might think of as a melon. These may not be that unusual to a large part of the US. In fact, they were trending as a Google topic in Colorado and Arizona in 2017. Interesting. I wish I knew how that got started.

It is so wonderful to explore these photos from the Biao Zhi Men marketplace.

Here are some bonus pics.

Add a comment if you can identify these. The green-brown plum-like date in the lower left corner is jujube. I’m not sure about the others.

IMG_0824

Potatoes and tangerines at Biau Zhi Mem farmers market Zhangjiajie, Hunan, China

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park

It all started with the original Farmstand5 on Cape Cod…
Fancy’s Farm Stand, Orleans, MA

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Three Fall craft ideas inspired by my trip to the farmers market

Three Fall craft ideas inspired by a walk through a local farmers market

“Three Fall craft ideas inspired by my trip to the farmers market” as featured on The Painted Hinge on the Farmhouse Friday Night Link Party #79.

3 Fall Craft Ideas

Food is not the only thing you’ll find at a farmers market. You can get do-it-yourself Fall craft ideas there, too! Not too crafty? No problem, you can still pick up a pumpkin or two or 10 to carve or paint.

Here are three craft inspirations I found during a walk through an Autumn farmers market. Several of these were also featured in a recent farmstand5, a series on my Top 5 picks from local farm stands.

#1
Vintage bottles repurposed

Bookworm Bottles vintage bottle craft DIY

A young woman creates these upcycled Bookworm Bottles for her mother’s corner gift shop, and you can visit her site to pick one up. But if you happen to have any old bottles at your house or in an antique shop near you, be inspired to create your own!

I’m seeing a lot of bottles used to decorate farmhouse shelves, dining room sideboards and glass door hutches. These will add a little interest and personality to otherwise minimalist decor.

Bookworm Bottles crafted brown bottle

How to repurpose vintage bottles:

Need:

Computer, printer, paper OR stickers to use as labels
Super glue, glue gun or rubber glue
Burlap or fabric swatches
Ribbon, broken necklaces/bracelets, or jute string
Cork stoppers or old wine bottle corks for tops

Print out colorful labels and glue or rubber glue them to your bottles. They look beautiful layered on top of burlap or fabric swatches. You can glue a jute string or cut ribbon around them as a border. To finish them off, tie a ribbon, string or upcycle a broken piece of costume jewelry by wrapping it around the neck of the bottle. Don’t forget to order some corks or reuse a wine bottle cork for the topper. You may have to cut the corks a little to get the best fit. Try to cut them on a taper or just two-thirds of the way to the top so most of your adjustments are hidden below the mouth of the bottle.

#2
Infused olive oil in a glass bottle

Flavored olive oil bottles

Get ready for the season of dinner parties, cookie swaps and holiday festivities with your own do-it-yourself flavored cooking oils. I use these oils to decorate the mantel above my range and window shelves in my farmhouse kitchen. You could even line them up on the tops of your cabinets or hutches. They are so pretty, like food art. My favorite oil is full of dried chilies and one sprig of rosemary. It is delicious with bread, for sauteing chicken or veggies and on pizza. Yep, it’s tres-francais to add flavored (usually spicy) oil to pizza.

Gift bags flavored vinegar and olive oils with dried herbs

How to infuse olive oil:

Need:

Clear glass oil bottle
Your favorite olive oil (inexpensive oil is better)
Dried herbs, dried peppers, dried hot chilies, whole peppercorns, fresh or dried garlic
Suggested herbs: bay leaf, rosemary, sage, lavender

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First, make sure everything is clean and dry – the bottle, the lid, the herbs, everything. Water droplets could spoil your oils. Put any mix of the dried herbs, peppers, garlic or peppercorns into the empty glass bottle. Pour in the olive oil. A funnel would be helpful if you have one to avoid spillage.

Online you can find lots of different recipes for olive oil infusions. Some of them require sauteing the ingredients in a pan. For gifts or making bottles that decorate your kitchen shelves, I don’t recommend the cooked infusions over just using herbs or peppers that were already dried out and preserved. Olive oil infusions you have to cook are quick and easy, but they don’t last as long as just letting dried herbs, spices or peppers slowly infuse into the oils over a week.

#3
Handpainted, dried gourd birdhouses

Handpainted dried gourd birdhouses

A display of handpainted gourds is both seasonal and inspiring at this farmers market stand. It reminds you not to neglect the outdoors while you are decorating indoors! Think about the feeling you would have every time you glanced out of your kitchen window and saw a handcrafted birdhouse in your tree. It will be exciting to see sweet little birds enjoying your hard work as the seasons change.

There are a lot of articles online about how to dry your own gourds for crafting. If you do that, you are our hero! It takes four-to-ten months though…oh, um, no. To get this Fall craft idea going before next Fall, you should probably just have one shipped to your house in two days.

How to make handpainted gourd birdhouses:

Need:

Large dried gourd with a hole drilled in the side…
OR gourd seeds, 10 months of waiting, and a hand-cranked screw for drilling
A pencil
Acrylic paint brushes set
Acrylic paint set (this one is under $10!)
Acrylic prep primer and paint sealer (look for fast-drying sealer)
Newpaper or an old blanket, towel or trap to minimize messes

You can use the Amazon links here to buy anything you need. Brick and mortar craft stores will also have the full rainbow of acrylic paints and brushes.

There is actually an American Gourd Society, and they have gourd-painting experts on hand to offer tips on how to template something fancy for your gourd. It sounds like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not. Here’s the link.

The templates can be pretty intricate. I think you’re better off just priming the gourd, lightly penciling in a simple design or pattern, painting it and sealing it after the paint dries completely.

I would look for inspiration from blouses, plaid shirts, wallpaper and Pintrest patterns. The Pintrest patterns are great. I shouldn’t even have put that link in here because now you will likely forget about reading my next article and get lost in a world of patterned excess.

Come back and visit farmstand culture soon!

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Best 5 items at the Lizzie’s Corner farmers market stand

October 9, 2018

All summer I tried and failed to make it over to the Seymour Farmers Market behind the historic Seymour Congregational Church about 25 minutes drive from New Haven, Connecticut. You should see it. Ok, I should take some pictures so you can see it. There’s a powerful terraced waterfall in the Naugatuck River across the street. The church itself is tall and white, a true classic New England meeting house of worship.

The farmers market is only a half mile from the 18th century preserved Seymour Antiques district. When you walk down the streets in the district, you can feel what it was like to take the same stroll 100 years ago. The buildings have hardly changed, including the little gem that houses Lizzie’s Corner, a handcrafted and specialty gifts shop.

On Tuesday afternoons, the curators at Lizzie’s select some of their finest goods and set up a display at the Seymour Farmers Market. Here are my top picks from Lizzie’s Corner.

#5
Goat Boy Goat’s Milk Soaps

Homemade goat milk soap

It’s enough to make you wish you could get a breath of these fresh scents through the phone or computer screen right now. Goatboy Soaps started 17 years ago. The handcrafted products are produced in small batches using fresh goat’s milk. There is goat’s milk soap in my shower right now. It’s so soothing.

#4 Vintage bottles re-imagined

Vintage bottles repurposed into do-it-yourself inspirational quote decor

A charming home craft turned into a business, these are Bookworm Bottles. Decorating with vintage items is a win-win. Your house looks like a designer planned it, and these old bottles get a new chance at life. The littlest ones would be so cute at a wedding. The warm brown bottles would be beautiful down the center of your table paired with candlesticks and vases of cut twigs or greens from your backyard.

#3 Elderberry apple shots

Elderberry apple shots

Oh stop, you can make gummies with these. Or cocktails. Or shoot some non-alcoholic Elderberry Apple Shots as they’re intended, as part of a healthy lifestyle. Healthy, Tiffany, not boozy. You’ve already read the ingredient list, more or less: elderberries and apple cider vinegar. Both are organic and produced by the small farm that makes the shots, Fat Stone Farm.

#2 Swedish dishcloths

Swedish washcloths

Swedish dishcloths aka eco-friendly cleaning cloths are really starting to pop up in shops, and it’s wonderful! They are all-natural, last for 6-9 months and then biodegrade. Mine will go into the compost bin someday. Google trends shows searches for “swedish dishcloth” started to increase in June 2016. I first saw them in the gift shop at a nature center in Cape Cod. My first one is still going strong after three months. You can machine wash them, but I just put mine in the dishwasher sometimes. They don’t stink like sponges. I’m going to do a whole article on these because I use and love them. In the meantime, see what all the fuss is about. You don’t need a 10-pack, just pick up a few to start.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

 

#1 Homebrew maple syrup

Pure New England Maple Syrup

When it’s time for comfort food and the warm smell of cool-weather baking, enter organic, local maple syrup. In New England, it’s popular to drizzle some maple syrup over sliced, baked acorn squash, another farm stand favorite. My kids and I make pancakes from our own modified recipe almost every weekend. My little daughter licks the plate clean of maple syrup if you don’t stop her. Ahh, childhood.

Have you seen the original Farmstand5 from Cape Cod?
Fancy’s Farm Stand, Orleans, MA

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Skincare advice from 80 years of glowing skin

skincare advice nice skin beauty natural oils

There’s a lot of wisdom in skincare advice from a woman who had beautiful, glowing skin all her life.

Back in the 1990s, I bought oil-free face wash and shampoo that made my skin and hair squeaky clean. Hair so clean, it…literally..squeaked when you ran a strand between your fingers.

I was almost hyper about getting the oils out of my skin and hair. Moisturized, yes. Natural oils, no. No way. I wouldn’t tolerate even a glimmer of natural oil in my t-zone.

black and white close up eyes face
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

My Babci (Polish for grandma, close enough pronunciation “Bahb-chie”) scolded me about how ridiculous it was to remove natural oils from my skin and hair. She argued they were there for a reason, to keep my skin healthy. Why would I believe some over-blown TV commercials over thousands of years of mother nature?

TV commercials are a powerful force. Advertisers have shaped plenty of our modern-day beliefs. Teenage me ignored her and tried my best to combat a mildly oily t-zone (and not-at-all oily hair) with the best knowledge I could find in magazines and on store shelves.

I thought her advice was so old-fashioned I couldn’t possibly take her seriously. My mother was her youngest child. By the time I was born, Babci was already an old lady, born in 1918. She never owned pants. I’m not kidding. My grandmother was born two years before women could vote in the United States, and she wore dresses day and night for her entire 80 years. An approach to ladies’ fashion that was straight out of the 1850s. Besides, every one of my friends and, yes, every model on TV, was using oil-free everything. I really thought those young models and modern advertisers could teach Babci a thing or two.

Oil-free face wash, oil-free soap, oil-free toner, oil-free cleanser, oil-free lotion, oil-free conditioner, oil-free everything…and rice paper to blot my nose just in case there was possibly a speck of oil left on it. Of course, after I used all those anti-oil products, I spent hours at the store, pouring over the well-written promises on the bottles of face creams and conditioners to put even better synthetic moisturizers back into my  skin and hair.

But…

Babci was right.  I didn’t believe her at the time, but now, I embrace her message. Natural oils are good for your skin. You shouldn’t strive to remove them completely. Instead, find a good balance between clean skin and embracing natural oils. Make sure you remember that we are seeking balance, not a full pendulum swing toward over-dosing our skin with oils.

Embrace natural oils in your skincare and work with what nature gave you.

Proof is in the pudding. My Babci avoided stripping her skin of oil, and she had beautiful, glowing skin for all of her 80 years of life.

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When it finally dawned on me

One day it dawned on me.

Looking at the food in my fridge, the eye cream on my nightstand, my modern life was coming full circle. I was striving to eat and live like my great-grandmother did 100 years ago on a farm.

color cook cooking delicious
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

All natural. Farm fresh. Organic. Composted. Home-grown. Local.

The realization reframed the way I approached feeding our family, planting a garden, and choosing my skincare. For me, it sparked a step toward rediscovering farm stand culture.

Farmstand culture is all about the way communities were for millennia. Up until we radically changed and commercialized our approach to daily life, over the past 100 years, neighbors shared their garden surplus, and families ate fresh, homegrown food.

I’m not advocating for a total return to the past. Not really. Frankly, I am pretty happy with modern food supply chains and dental care, especially the dental care.

woman wearing eyeglasses
Photo by Tarzine Jackson on Pexels.com

Of course, it’s not all or nothing here. Embracing some of the best ways of the past doesn’t mean that we should throw away all of the ways of the present. We should choose the best approach, which is probably a blend.

Think about your own approach to living. Have you, too, found that your approach to daily life is a little more about fresh food and clean ingredients?

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Revealed! The stand that inspired me.

farm stand with a money slot cash only

Down the street and around the corner there’s a small, homemade farm stand. I’m sure most of my neighbors don’t think much about it.

The little stand is painted dark red with a blue umbrella. It has a brilliant little slot you can slip cash into on the days when there is even something there for you to buy. It’s not a new stand. It’s been there for years and years. They don’t stock it very often any more.

One night this week, they set out three recycled egg cartons and pushed up the umbrella. I had to stop and buy one. Not because I needed eggs, truthfully, I had two dozen at home. I stopped because this was the stand that started it all for me, and I had yet to actually visit it.

farm stand sign

I drive by this stand almost every day. Over the years, I started thinking about where the people behind the stand got the plans to design and build a custom farm stand with a money slot. What inspired them? Was it an abundance of produce or a desire to connect to their neighbors?

Why would anyone have a farm stand anymore? There are grocery stores and farmers’ markets in every town. There are very few, if any, neighborhoods left that need a farm stand to offer fresh eggs, produce or goats.

Yeah, goats. I’ll explain in a minute.

One night, I was driving home past this stand and the idea hit me. It’s only very recently that we stopped having a need for local farm stands. It’s sad, if you think about it. We don’t need our neighbors to share their saved seeds or host a “First Peas” party. We can go to the store and buy peas anytime. Just buy your seeds from Amazon. Done. Easy.

Maybe there is still some need for farm stands. Maybe it’s actually reemerging. It’s very personal to get to know the people who grow your food or make your skincare products. They will tell you what made them choose a certain variety or process. They’re not squeezing profits out of their operation. Some motivations are purer than profits.

goats for sale

Or maybe they just have too many goats. Occasionally, when there is an abundance of goats, they write “Goats for sale” on the little sign next to this farm stand. They don’t actually, technically sell goats at the farm stand. There’s never been goat milk or soaps available at this stand, but I’ve always thought the little goats for sale sign was adorable. It also highlights the variety of goods you can buy from your neighbors. We might think it’s a little funny to procure goats from a neighbor, but we might be the first generation in history to think that way.

I don’t know if I myself will ever have the flexibility in my schedule to open a farm stand. Writing for Farmstand Culture might be as close as I come. I’d be ok with that outcome. The name, the original series and the inspiration behind this site all began with a little red farm stand that captured my day dreams.

farm stand with goat sign

There aren’t enough items available at this stand to list the Top 5! But there were at these other farmstand5 hot spots.