Self Sustainability Night

On July 23rd, 2010 Zach and I participated and co-sponsored the Beats, Beets and Eats Self Sustainability Night. The whole event was designed to encourage hobby farming, re-skilling, community growth and of course, self sustainable living.

We shared a booth with our good friend Liz Waters and through joint effort, we collaborated an assortment of hobby farming information and products. We brought our handmade baskets and blacksmithing items, fiber, roving and hand spun yarn and my portfolio of animal portraits, (the horse is shown framed). We also brought the hand carders and let people try out carding.

Liz gathered a collection of hobby farming articles, magazines and best of all...

live chickens! They were of course, a big hit with the kids!

The evening was filled with laughter, farm stories and delicious food. The dinner served that evening was grilled bar-b-que chicken, potato salad and ice cream. Yum!

Some of the other vendors included Porter's Orchard located in Goodrich. They had delicious frozen apple cider slushes, sweet cinnamon sprinkled dougnuts, amazing apple sauce and containers of fresh blueberries, among other things. Visit their website at http://portersorchard.com/ They have a variety of events to offer like pick your own apples, petting farms and fall festivities.

There was also a Dulcimer Band who played a beautiful assortment of Folk/Renaissance type music. It softly floated through the open summer air and gave the whole event a sense of old fashioned, simpler time spirit. 

There were also several people with farmer's market type booths selling local produce.

One of my favorite vendors of the evening was the Milford Spice Company. 

They are a wonderful on-line company who provide the freshest hand ground spices and seasonings. They explained that they try to get spices that are as locally available as possible then work their way outward, as some spices are only found in certain parts of the world. Let me tell you, you can smell and taste the freshness!

We purchased several of their spice blends to use in the smoker. We made a Brisket the other night using their "Pontiac Trail Pig Powder" (which you can also use on beef) and it was delicious! I'm particularly excited to try their "It's a Mad Mad Mole'" on steak. Mole' is a sweet/salty seasoning used traditionally to flavor meats, it includes the unique flavor of cocoa which lends a particularly interesting twist.

Visit their online store at http://milfordspice.com/

Finally, our last vendor that I will talk about is a very talented young man named Ty who welds his own lawn ornaments. He uses recycled metal objects to configure adorable animals, plants and other decorative and useful objects. The amazing thing is that he's only about 13 years old, but has been welding since he's been six!







To view the Beats, Beets and Eats summer schedule visit www.downtownortonville.org