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.

It seems like avocado recipes were a good way to follow up the tour of an avocado farm and the interview with a farmer sharing tips on how to find the perfect avocado. Not only did I have a box of avocados at the house, I have friends who write about food all the time!

Avocados Recipes & Hard Avocados

Who hasn’t run to the grocery store and bought avocados wanting to make guacamole or something immediately. As Mimi Avocado told us in the podcast, avocados give us a chance to grow as people as we work on being more patient. She gives you a lot of tips on what to do with hard avocados (and what crack pot ideas she’s heard that simply do not work) on her site. She has another post that gives you all the tips on handling avocados at home and how to tell whether an avocado is ripe or not.

Making Guacamole

You can’t mention avocados without a lot of minds going straight to guacamole and chips! I can still remember my first visit to San Diego and sitting in Old Town enjoying it so much that i had absolutely no room for dinner! But there isn’t just one way to make guacamole and people get some questions, so I have a few guacamole recipes I want to share. I love that Mimi has so many to choose from but also have some other farmers who love guacamole too. Several great avocado recipes here!

A Good, Basic, Easy Guacamole

My friend Jent in Indiana shares a good recipe for fresh guacamole on her site Farm Wife Feeds that sounds really familiar to me. She says her daughter is the guac pro and every time they make it they munch it all up!

Making a Big Batch of Guacamole

Mimi’s story of how she met her husband and was captivated by his big bowl of guacamole for a potluck makes me smile. But seriously, making a guacamole for a crowd isn’t that easy unless you know how to get a lot of avocados at peak all at once!

The Fastest & Easiest Guacamole

Sometimes, you have a ripe avocado ready to go but maybe you don’t have all the other fresh ingredients? Mimi says the fastest & easiest guacamole which includes simply salsa and a season salt, fresh cilantro takes it up a notch. Some times she even adds proteins to it to make a heartier snack like these smoked ham guacamole bites.

Avocado Toast

I’m going to start by admitting I’m not a great cook but I love certain foods and learn to prepare those at the very least. Making avocado toast has brightened several days during quarantine.

While having the perfectly ripe avocado is the most important piece, I am also a bit of a bread fanatic. Many friends and family are busily tending a sour dough starter and baking bread, I love bread fresh from the over but admittedly, I’m not a regular baker. I love that I can get sour dough from my local grocery via Instacart. My options range from St. Louis’ own Companion Bakery or from Izzo’s in San Francisco.

I didn’t have any fresh cilantro, which I love with avocado, so I used just a little cilantro-flavored cotton seed oil. It was awesome!

Mimi Avocado tells us how they make avocado toast and it sounds like they do ALL THE THINGS since they have acres of avocado trees I toured in their back and side yards. She uses mashed avocado sometimes, slices the avocado others. And she talks about a range of toppings that go well with avocado. Since a friend is going to the seafood market today and dropping by a few things, I may have to try out some new ideas myself based on Mimi’s inspiration!

Avocado Frittata for Breakfast

My friend Jenny, met her true love and moved from California to North Dakota. Although she loves the prairie, she misses some of the local produce that was always so incredibly accessible. Of course, grocery stores and home delivery can cover most of us wherever we are. She talks about all of that and more as she provides a recipe for the avocado and tomato frittata that looks awesome and rounds out our avocado recipes nicely!

The post Five Avocado Recipes You Really Need to Check Out appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

The search for the perfect avocado is a search many of us have been on. 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. Listen as she shares favorite recipes, some of the everyday ways the Holtz family enjoys avocados, insight on how the crop is grown and tips for delighting kids. 

Selling Produce Direct

The family started a business called California Avocados Direct several years ago and it has found a real niche for itself — her son Ben keeps this building and daughter Maryanne is working with customer service. I’ve ordered several times over the years and recording and editing this episode certainly made me crave the perfect avocado so I have a box on my table now! Because they have so many different varieties, and different varieties are ready at different times of year, they have subscribers who get boxes monthly. I hadn’t realized the fit avocados have for people with celiac disease or vegans/vegetarians using them as a staple in diets. But those groups alongside avocado enthusiasts like me love getting the best flavor possible. And really…. the farm employees picked & boxed avocados for me on Monday and they made it from Southern California to my front porch in St. Louis Wednesday by lunchtime!

The farm also grows tangerines and sells them by the box. And Mimi pointed out that with the process so well established for years on those crops & so many people staying home, they are now packing produce from other farmers too. They quickly adapted to source and pack potatoes, onion, celery, various fruits, nuts and more that was available. The boxes have been getting rave reviews on Facebook and how cool to know it could be could potentially be reducing some of the waste some farmers are suffering.

Varieties of Avocados They Grow

One of the reasons the Holtz family can do year-round direct avocado business, is Ed Holtz has kept tending and planting different varieties of the fruit throughout the decades he’s been in Escondido.

Mimi points out that most Americans are familiar with the Haas avocado — one with a bumpy, thick skin that ships well. The variety did such a good job with production and throughout the supply chain, that the US market moved largely to Haas variety decades ago. And that success has led to more Haas avocados being planted in Mexico and other countries who supply US consumers with fruit.

But the family has always enjoyed the different flavors and textures of various varieties. And different varieties ripen at different times of year too. Mimi explains that April is peak season for the fuerte variety and I have to agree with her… the flavor of fuertes is so much richer than what I’ve gotten from grocery stores. The box above is of fuerte avocados and you can see the skin is smooth, it’s also really thin. They also grow Bacon avocados (they don’t taste like bacon but everything goes well with bacon!), Reed avocados which are big & round like cannonballs, Nabal, Gwens and more. In fact, when I was there in October, Ed gave me a few Mexicola avocados that were new to the farm. They had a really deep purple skin (you can see they sort of look like eggplants) and the skin was really thin which was notable once I cut the avocado. I did a short video at the time if you would like to see.

Favorite Ways to Enjoy the Perfect Avocado

While I tend to eat out several times a week and travel a lot, I have been home and cooking. I told Mimi about making lots of avocado toast and slicing some up for chicken tortilla soup recently. She has a million ways to use them!

“Well, we sliced them on top of scrambled eggs or with an omelet. You know we buy those bacon bits at Costco and put them into the scrambled eggs with a little onion maybe. And then slice avocados on top with a little cheese.” Mimi explains. “We always have tortillas in the refrigerator so that we could make a burrito or a taco or quesadilla and then, you know put slices of avocado on top or we mash the avocado and do different kinds of guacamole. You don’t have to have, you know, the traditional guacamole. You could just grate onion into mashed avocado and try that or add a little crab meat if you happen to have a can of crab in the pantry or some in your refrigerator.”

I love that she also cuts shapes out in avocados! It certainly brings a smile to your face to have a heart sitting atop a bowl of soup or salad and she sends a clear stay home message with an avocado house.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Mimi Holtz (@mimiavocado) on Apr 1, 2020 at 11:57am PDT

More on Avocados in the Podcast

Listen to the episode to learn more about avocados including:

• How to store avocados at home
  
• Understanding avocado trees growth & care
  
• How long do trees produce?
  
• Food safety
  
• Pruning and picking

Links Mentioned in this Episode

• A video tour of the perfect avocado farm (this is my adjective, I’m sure Mimi & Ed would laugh and say not perfect but always working to be better)
• Mimi Avocado’s blog (includes great recipe, farm stories, etc)
• Website where the Holtz family sells avocados & other fruits & vegetables direct  

The post Getting the Perfect Avocado For Our Kitchens & The Farm appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

Join me as I tour an avocado farm. This video was shot in late October as we looked at young fruit on the tree. Those same avocados are being picked and packed as we publish the tour because April is when California’s avocado season gets underway offering great flavor!

Our host was a woman known in social media circles as Mimi Avocado. Mimi showed me around as her husband, son and others were busily working to care for the trees on the farm outside of San Diego, California.

Hope you enjoy learning about growing avocados from a farm family who proudly grows them. You can even order some to be delivered from this farm directly to your door via CaliforniaAvocadosDirect.com.

Young Avocado Trees

First up on the avocado farm tour for us was young avocado trees. The family plants trees regularly as they want to maintain the productivity. As we looked at a nursery field of newly planted trees, Mimi pointed out how the shiny leaves are a good sign they are healthy and getting enough water, etc. Young trees will produce blooms and try to grow fruit but for a couple of years they have growing to do before they can really contribute to yield so the farm has a routine for replacing trees that allows them to keep producing year after year.

What Avocado Flowers Look Like

Once trees get taller, more leaves and branches, the fruit (both blooms and the avocado that will ultimately be picked) grow in the sun. It’s really different from a lot of other tree nuts (including our beloved pecans) and fruit trees in that it has blooms on it for one year while fruit is also ready to be picked. That tropical nature is pretty cool. The blooms have a bright yellow to them while avocados can be a bit camouflaged in all the greens of the tree.

But dang there were lots of them!

Caring for Mature Trees

Mimi explained that pruning is a part of the regular care of trees and it serves a couple great purposes. It helps clear out any limbs that may have broken, etc that could pose safety concerns to pickers. And it also means the tree will need less water. It is so interesting that along with pruning them, sometimes they cut avocado trees down to the trunk and let them start regrowing.

I love that avocado trees are always shedding leaves and putting on new ones though I’m not sure I’d love it if I had one in my yard. It is kind of convenient to have all the leaves on my trees drop in just a couple of week period.

More on Avocados!

The new podcast episode with Mimi talking all things avocado will be coming out tomorrow so check it out in your favorite podcast app or come back and listen to it here.

Mimi has a fantastic website mimiavocado.com with lots of information about avocados — recipes for all the avocado dishes you can imagine, some glances around the ranch/farm, and based on a conversation I had she may have put this one together on how to freeze avocados — I also find chopping them up and putting them (airtight) in the fridge makes avocado toast so dang easy for days!

You can join me in ordering avocados from the farm via californiaavocadosdirect.com.

And you may enjoy a few photos and video from the first avocado farm tour I ever took — it was at Mimi’s years ago!

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