Hello friends!

Another beautiful day here and @cmplxty took a few days off work thankfully to enjoy some family time. When we scheduled it the forecast looked bleak but that was a week and a half out. What was the weather today, the first day? Beautiful! It was 80, sunny, just enough wind to cool you down and not a single cloud in the sky as far as the eye could see. Gorgeous!

CSA

Today was also a special day because it was the first day of our yearly summer routine: CSA time! If you don’t know what that is, it stands for community shared (or supported) agriculture. You basically buy a share of the farms produce ahead of time and you help support a local business and you get fresh, minimally processed and minimal distance travel food! It’s been incredible and we typically save about $1500 during the summer not having to go to the grocery store. The farm is beautiful as well, lots of nice hills and plenty of wide open space for the kids to explore and run around. This one has a huge chicken coop too! I will have to snap a picture of it next time we go next week.

The best part about it as well is you are keeping a small business afloat. Times like we’ve had recently will make you really appreciate them and what they do since they are a family just like you and I are. The Walmart companies of the world steal enough money, we don’t need more of them. The farmers who run the stand also get to know their customers. They took a bit last year to get to recognize us but today they asked for our name and had an idea what it was and commented on how big our son was getting since the last time she saw him. He would ham it up with her last year so she loved him. The other awesome thing about these small businesses is that so many people don’t even bother going to them. Their farm store has a lot of the same things as grocery stores but they are usually empty of people! One of them we go to is literally directly across the street from a grocery store but it’s only filled with loyal customers, while people wait in line to get into the grocery store to spend more on the same items.

A little challenging to see but there’s a couple fish in the brook there. The brook cuts the farm in two; the farm store and chickens are on one side and the farmland is on the other. It’s pretty nice!

Strawberry Picking

The other thing we did that we’ve loved to do was to strawberry picking! A huge thing in the New England area is going to farms to pick your own produce. Apple picking, strawberry, blueberry, peach, apricot, plums, pears and some more I can’t think of now but we have it all! We are hoping when we move we will be able to have an area near us that shares the same things we like to do such as this.

The really nice field that we were picking in. It’s remarkable because we were really close to a major interstate highway but you couldn’t hear it at all! It was very peaceful. It was a picturesque New England shot, there’s a nice rolling field, a farm fence and a nice big tree to shade us. We actually hung out in this spot for over an hour it was very peaceful! There wasn’t a cloud or chemtrail in the sky it was great.

The boys hard at work getting the prime berries.

One of the other things that was very nice was they had a big patch of clean grass for the little one to run on! In our condo area they spray the grass with all kinds of nasty chemicals and have signs posted on the lawns not to let kids go on them, it’s a damn shame. So we took full advantage of the opportunity to let him run around as much as he wanted. We also made sure to tell him he could take his shoes off and run barefoot! He’s never really run in the grass without shoes because of the above issue so we were excited to see him do it and get his reaction. Needless to say he loved it!

There was a really nice horse when we were leaving that we couldn’t just walk away from! Had to give him some attention. He certainly appreciated it!

Stay well and positive!

Ssiena [A Hive original and exclusive]