Christmas Trees and Cheese

On Saturday, December 5th, we traveled right at 100 miles to visit Jill's parents at their mountain house on Bluff Mountain in West Jefferson, NC. This is a yearly tradition. Our wedding anniversary is on December 9th and from the very beginning of our marriage we have decorated for Christmas on December 9th. In order to decorate on the 9th we have always gone to West Jefferson to get our tree the weekend before our anniversary. ...[continued]



For years, Jill's dad has maintained a small-scale Frazier Fur crop and we have always been able to take one from there. It's a fun day trip and it usually entails other fun activities like making homemade apple cider using a manual press or hand-making our own wreaths using a wreath making table. We then tromp through the trees and after diligent searching select and cut down our tree.

This year was particularly beautiful because snow fell all day and the place was a winter wonderland.

One of the fun ways we implement our "local" buying is to take advantage of local items when we travel to other parts of the state or country. Living in Davidson County our 100 mile radius does not reach to the beach. However, when we were at the beach on vacation this past July we were outside of our 100 miles and we had access to a separate buying radius. We had traveled there anyway for vacation, why not take advantage of "local" items only available there - such as fresh seafood.

So in anticipation of this we took an empty cooler with us. Then on our way  home the last day, we detoured a few miles to Calabash and visited one of the many shrimping boats that are docked with fresh shrimp caught that very day. We bought about 40 pounds of shrimp and then packaged them in one pound packs and froze them to use over the next year. So, we have "local," fresh shrimp to which we wouldn't normally have access. Locally, the only seafood generally available is in the grocery store and it likely didn't even come from the US. And I don't know about you, but when it comes to seafood, I'm just not going to trust some guy on the side of the road in a pickup truck to tell me his shrimp are fresh.

Well, this past Saturday, we implemented our satellite local buying guidelines and while we were in West Jefferson, we stopped by the Ashe County Cheese Store for a resupply on cheese. In July, I had an occasion to go through West Jefferson and bought a hoop of cheese and some other cheese. That lasted us until just a week or so ago. We bought quite a bit of cheese this past Saturday for a variety of uses, but hopefully because cheese has such a great shelf life, we'll be able to have cheese readily available until we have an opportunity to return to West Jefferson.

I would encourage you to think about what is local where ever you go. And when you visit other places take advantage of their local items to extend your menu just a bit.


~ Mark Watkins