Every year, as the holidays roll around, all the gift guides start popping up, and I have so much fun going through all of the ideas folks offer up. I love gifts from the farm, handmade gifts, and other kinds of gifts that people don’t see every day. Unique gifts that leave folks smiling and asking, “Where on earth did you find that?”

This year, I’ve been thinking through all the farmers we’ve interviewed here on the podcast, and there are so many that provide gifts that are bound to make the people in your life smile. So buckle up for the Grounded by the Farm Holiday Gift Guide! You can get these great gifts from the farm & share the farm’s story too!

Lavender Luxury

What is more luxurious than lavender? Lavender from Long Row Lavender Farm, just west of St. Louis, Missouri. Their online shop has everything from bath and body to food and cooking items (made with lavender, of course) to items for the home, like linen sprays and sachets. They’ve even got a men’s line of personal care products.

Tracy Smith, her husband Chad, and their four children started the farm several years ago as a way to spend time together outdoors. They would take things to local farmers markets and eventually decided to build a gift shop. Later a cafe was added and with seating around the farm, it’s become a popular destination. If you are nearby, make a next trip and get gifts from the farm!

• Visit the online shop: Long Row Lavender
• Listen to the Interview (includes a video tour!): Longing to Visit a Lavender Farm? Get to Making Plans!

Hams, Bacon & Other Southern Favorites!

Broadbent Foods seems to take over the steering of my car whenever I’m driving through Kentucky and my stomach says thank you. That was happening before I met and interviewed Ronnie & Beth Drennan. Since then, I may have been accused of starting a friend’s addiction to ordering online from Broadbent.

Whether I “need” bacon or not, a few packages of peppered bacon is always in order and I love the small end pieces for seasoning various things I may cook up. And putting some hot pepper jelly in a thank you gift for a weekend with friends may have earned me a forever welcome invitation.

• Visit the online shop: Broadbent Country Smokehouse meats and don’t forget to check out the pantry items, etc.
• Listen to the interview & see a behind the scenes tour: Hickory-Smoked Country Ham & Bacon on the Menu with Broadbent

Breakfast and Beyond

If you’re looking for something they really won’t find anywhere else, take a look at the Funks Grove offerings! You may remember Jeff Hake from our episode on pawpaws. Well, Jeff does more than just forage. We talked about the fruit leathers, but you have really got to take a look at their pancake and muffin mixes, sweetened with their very own pure maple sugar. If you’ve got a bread baker in your life, be sure to take a look at their heritage wheat which they sell either already ground or as whole berries for folks who either want them whole or want to grind the flour themselves. And then, of course, there’s the Maple Ramp seasoning blends, the maple black raspberry sauce, their very own, handmade fruit leather, and more. This is a small operation, so they don’t sell from their website, but you can reach out to them via email or phone and they will ship!

• Check out the Funks Grove offerings: https://www.funkspuremaplesirup.com/
• Give them a call or email to check availability: ​​(309) 874-3360 • info@funkspuremaplesirup.com
• Find shops that sell their products (in Illinois)
• Listen to the interview and take a tour: Foraging Pawpaws, Fruit Farming and Making Fruit Leather in Funk’s Grove

Fresh Avocado Delivery

The search for the perfect avocado is a familiar one for many of us. But avocado farmers like Mimi Holtz, who is known simply as Mimi Avocado online, know what to look for and what impacts the tasty goodness we all crave. Mimi and her family run a fourth-generation farm outside of San Diego, California, and they can take the pressure of finding the perfect grocery store avocado off by sending you the very best, perfectly picked and packed avocados directly from their farm. So if you know someone who loves their guacamole or avocado toast, an avocado box might be just the perfect gift!

• Shop for Avocados: CaliforniaAvocadosDirect.com
• Listen to the interview: Getting the Perfect Avocado For Our Kitchens & The Farm
• Take a video tour of the avocado farm

Gourmet Popcorn? Yes, PLEASE!

Something about popcorn just feels festive. But you’re not going to want to string Ella & Ollie popcorn and hang it on a tree. You’re going to want to eat every last, fluffy, delicious piece of it. Matt Helms and his family run a popcorn farm just east of St. Louis, and their popcorn is just *chef’s kiss* the best. Of course, you could string it to decorate your tree, but I prefer it drizzled with a little truffle oil or just simply air popped in their handy microwave popper and lightly salted. Seriously, this is good popcorn. In addition to giving it as gifts, I just keep it on hand for when I want a quick snack. (And yes, popcorn IS a whole-grain food!)

• Shop for popcorn, poppers, and accessories: Ella & Ollie Online Shop
• Listen to the interview: Popcorn… family legacy and local future
• Take a video tour of the farm: Family-Owned Popcorn Farm Has Quality Focus

Gifts for Teachers

The joy of discovery paired with the growing interest in where our food comes from makes food and farming a perfect way to enjoy learning. The Grounded by the Farm curriculum has a great fit for teachers, parents, troop leaders and others who spend time trying to unlock the magic of science, the utility of math, the comprehension of our language…. even ideas for entrepreneurship! It’s really limitless how many things the world of farming and food opens up.

• Grounded by the Farm Lesson Plans on Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT)
• Grounded by the Farm Lesson Plans on Etsy
• Listen to our interview with Whitney Choate, the teacher who worked with us to develop this curriculum

The post Holiday Gifts from the Farm! appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

When you search for Dino Giacomazzi online, you find a farmer who is focused on the environment. You also read a lot about dairy farming, but last year, the Giacomazzi family sold the cows & shifted their focus to crops including the almonds they had nurtured for the past five years. Dino shares how that came to happen and how environmental sustainability learned in the dairy is leading to innovation in reducing water use. He also has sons (12 yr old Miro & 7 yr old Gio) join us to discuss the new business they started while out of school due to the corona virus.

Growing Almonds — Two of the Hottest Topics

Dino says he’s known people ask certain questions about almonds, but the family’s move to a direct supplier – customer means he gets those questions more directly. Appreciate his addressing the question of bee health and water use as both topics have been discussed widely but rarely include a farmer’s voice.

What Growing Almonds Looks Like

Millions of Americans eat almonds, but only a few of us have ever been lucky enough to go visit an almond farm. This post provides photos and videos that will help you visualize almond trees and get a feel for farms like the Giacomazzis.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

• Blog post that includes a look at almond trees at various times of year 
• Buying almonds from the Giacomazzi Brothers or GBNuts.com
• Video of Dino and his father Don on the dairy farm with a post I wrote while visiting years ago
• Article highlighting some of the environmental work in almonds Dino is doing
• Video of the Giacomazzi Brothers 
• Nut milking exposed video (so funny) 

Other links of interest:

https://californiagrown.org/blog/meet-a-farmer-dino-giacomazzi-of-giacomazzi-dairy/

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The post Growing Almonds and Starting a Flavored Almonds Business appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Almond trees weren’t part of my world growing up. The latest episode of Grounded by the Farm, I talk with Dino Giacomazzi about growing almonds and his family’s new business with flavored almonds.

When I was a kid, I remember sitting down with a nut cracker to open up so much goodness from the various shells. Pecans and walnuts were something we saw a lot of since we had trees in the family, but almonds… now and then we’d get almonds. They were different, unique. I loved how the almond shell seemed to tell a very different story was and pondered what almond trees looked like.

That was in the times of encyclopedias rather than Google and YouTube, so I had much more creativity than answers and photos. So when I started working in agriculture and found myself in California on farms for work, I’d drive and look at trees and plants. It’s amazing how your mind can rush with new images. And with the number of orchard nuts and fruits all in the valleys, I spent a lot of time pulling over on the roadside and using my zoom lens to try and get a view of what I was looking at.

Closeup of almond trees in full bloom courtesy of AlmondGirlJenny.com 

Spring — Almond Trees in Full Bloom

I have to confess, being in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV) in spring was disorienting. There are SO MANY blooming trees…. and if you aren’t familiar with them you struggle to identify anything. I always felt most confident about plums, peaches/nectarines/apricots and walnuts based on what I saw most often at home. But you suddenly have all the things blooming!

Now I can say with some confidence that almonds are among the prettiest blooms and these days they are likely the most abundant too! An estimated 80 percent of the world’s almonds are grown in California’s Mediterranean climate.  And with all those trees blooming in the spring, and lots of honey bees needed to do the pollination, the SJV is buzzin!

Friends Holly Christine & Trent Bown did a video when they visited a mutual friend one spring…. it shows you how beautiful those blooms are as well as gives you a little feel for an almond farm.

Autumn — Getting Ready for Almond Harvest

Like other nuts, almonds have a husk on the outside that protects them through the season and slowly starts to open up as the almond matures and the temperatures drop for fall. I can remember seeing almonds on the tree at that pre-harvest phase and being a bit confused by what I was looking at. You can see in this photo that various colors start coming into play as harvest nears.

And you can see how the almonds begin peeking out of those husks in this closeup.

The reason the almond shell always intrigued me is it looks so rough compared to the smooth shell of pecans or walnuts. And seeing how flat it is compared to the rounded or oval nuts…. well, it still catches the eye making me wonder. Of course, most of the almonds I buy now are all shelled, maybe combined with granola for breakfast, coated with a savory flavoring or even dipped in chocolate!

Parts of this article previously appeared on a post on what almonds look like on the tree and as we talked about the Boersma family in the A to Z of farms on my lifestyle site. 

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