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.

After doing the podcast for a few years, we thought listeners would enjoy hearing updates on three popular episodes of Grounded by the Farm. So in this week’s episode, we touch base with three people we talked to some time ago about the latest happenings in their part of the world.

Here’s who we talked to and the background on each of them from previous episodes.

• Popcorn farmer Matt Helms about Ella & Ollie Popcorn the local, premium quality product the family is selling in online and in the St. Louis area as well. You may remember Matt from our first season, episode 102 Popcorn… family legacy and local future and we showed how they got high quality at Family-Owned Popcorn Farm Has Quality Focus.
• Community builder & urban farmer Natasha Nicholes tells us about how things are growing in Chicago with We Sow We Grow. Natasha talked with us about Building a Community Garden in Chicago and Online in episode 114.
• Tennessee Brew Works’ Christian Spears tells us about the craft beer with a farmer connection that took a medal in the Great American Beer Festival and how they are trying to expand. We talked in episode 107 Crafting a Beer that Has a Depth of Local Flavor & Connecting to Farmers to accompany episode 106 when we interviewed Brandon Whitt in Ever met a beer farmer? That malted barley has to start somewhere!. We followed up with him in episode 121, What 2020 is Like for Local Microbreweries & Restaurants (Bonus Episode).

Growing A Premium Popcorn Business

We first talked with Matt Helms about his family’s Ella & Ollie Popcorn business as it was in early stages. He showed us some big storage bins they had just put in and talked about how harvest had been good so they had a lot of popcorn.

As the first of our three popular episodes to update, Matt says the specialty stores in the St. Louis area have been great as have their online sales. They have expanded the number of places selling the popcorn AND they have expanded their product offerings too! Here’s how things have grown:

• The website and specialty markets have a full set of product offerings for popcorn aficionados. There are flavor-infused olive oils and seasonings to sprinkle on, as well as a microwaveable popper that I love so much I have been buying them for friends & family!
• Ella and Ollie popcorn is available in grocery stores for a couple of geographies — Dierbergs Markets in and around St. Louis and Central Markets in Texas.
• The number of varieties they are planted has expanded to five and that has allowed them to provide even more options. They now sell white popcorn on the website & through specialty shops, have movie theaters and gourmet shops all buying their popcorn and sharing the love of local!
• They’ve even started a popcorn lover’s club for folks who really enjoy keeping the good stuff around!

Growing Community In Chicago & Beyond

Natasha Nicholes and her family moved to the South Side of Chicago, into the West Pullman neighborhood and began creating community as they built a community garden.

The location of West Pullman is something that stands out and Natasha is anxious to expand the space available. Their first step is getting the current plots more efficiently organized. She thinks they can expand by a third or more from where they are by utilizing some of the knowledge she’s gained. But they also have a nearby property in their sights that would make a huge difference for in-person meetings, events, planning, etc.

Since we first talked, they have grown the virtual community extensively! Putting Natasha’s master gardener skills to work, but also pulling in a lot of other people who love gardening and have a particular depth of knowledge. She’s held two major virtual conferences helping more people understand some of the highs and lows of gardening, planning, etc and is now building year-round programming. For instance, she’s found experts in composting who are sharing knowledge in the weekly sessions they are setting up for the new subscription-based services for We Sow We Grow on Mighty Networks.

You can hear & see why it’s one of our three popular episodes, that yay at the end says it all! If you are interested in supporting the efforts to build gardening skills and a physical location on Chicago’s South Side, you can make donations to support We Sow We Grow.

Brewing the Best Beer with the Best Ingredients

Covid has thrown a few challenges at anyone in the hospitality and travel industries and Christian Spears says Tennessee Brew Works has certainly had them, but at this point, the team also has several things to celebrate.

First, Christian says, simply staying in business was the primary challenge and sadly many great craft breweries and restaurants were unable to survive. And while the TN Brew team was always amazing, there is a strengthened the sense of community and camaraderie now.

In 2021, the brewery received a major nod to the unique brews they connect back to farms as Farmer’s Beat took a medal at the Great American Beer Festival. It’s a unique offering the craft brewery works with Delvin Farms to get the beets for that and are looking forward to a butternut squash beer with that direct farmer connection in 2022.

The Nashville-based craft brewery is finally getting an expansion online. Spears says the supply chain difficulties have prolonged the expansion of the line but it is getting close now. That, combined with the increased demand for the product in the state, especially in east & middle Tennessee gives the team that excitement about what can come… and they are ready to go.

And if you want a great celebration in Nashville, with great beer and food, the TN Brew Works Instagram offers this tip.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Tennessee Brew Works (@tnbrewworks)

Before You Go….

We’d love to know if you enjoyed the update on past episodes. It felt like a good idea, but we realize we may just want to update with two at a time. It is just too hard to do this in less than 15 minutes!

Also, we have some fun Grounded by the Farm stickers that we want to make available to some of our regular listeners / readers. To get one, just send us a request via the contact form including your name & mailing address!

The post Updates on Three Popular Episodes: Popcorn, Community Gardens & Beer Oh My! appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

In this episode, we talk popcorn with Matt Helms who is returning to his family farm part-time as he starts a popcorn business serving customers in the St. Louis local area and online.

With a family tradition of farming, Matt tells us he wanted to participate in that while still living in the city and working off farm as well. While he and his wife Michelle considered a few things, popcorn rose to the top and has become a family business that includes their young daughter Lily Ella. He talks about taking on that new level of risk and feeling more connected to his ancestors. 

In this interview, Matt also shares his excitement for finding new customers and the help Lily offers as well as telling us about the various types of popcorn grown on the farm — heirloom, butterfly and mushroom. 

He also talks about the various ways the family enjoys popcorn and gives a tip for a recipe that he says was a hit as a holiday appetizer!  

After you listen to the podcast, you may want to check out a video tour on the farm as we learn about moisture testing, a key point in popcorn quality. 

You can order directly from Ella & Ollie’s website and find Ella & Ollie Popcorn on Facebook.

The post Popcorn… family legacy and local future appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.

When a friend told me he was starting a popcorn farm business, I felt certain that I would end up being a regular customer. And I sure have! Having Ella & Ollie Popcorn grown just 16 miles from our city’s skyline dominator (the St. Louis Arch), seemed like a great idea. I had no idea how much I would learn about a favorite snack of mine.

I goofed up and was out of town when he and his family harvested the crop. It would have been awesome if I could have talked my way into the combine — although with Matt, his dad Dale (that’s them in the photo) and brother Fred all working on the crop, I’m not sure they would have had much room left for me! Just the same, I recently hopped in the car with Matt Helms to drive out to the farm.

The weather here this fall was wetter and colder early. And that meant Matt was keeping an eye on the moisture. It’s really important for popcorn to have the right moisture level so it pops perfectly! Matt took me out so I could see the last few rows of popcorn plants — a chance to see the cobs that look so different. Popcorn looks tiny next to either sweet corn or corn grown for grain. I also got to see how he pulls samples and tests moisture to insure the popcorn gets sent to the cleaning facility at the right moment. Check out the video to see what I mean.

Pulling multiple samples from each storage bin on the popcorn farm, from both the top and bottom let Matt check the moisture level and see whether there were any inconsistencies. We found the moisture was in the prime zone so Matt got excited as he thought about getting the new crop through the rest of the process — getting it cleaned and packaged up.

Now I need to get some for Christmas gifts!

You can order directly from Ella & Ollie’s website and find Ella & Ollie Popcorn on Facebook.

The post Family-Owned Popcorn Farm Has Quality Focus appeared first on Grounded by the Farm.