Natural Born Salesmen

I had no idea that the boys were natural born salesmen.  I thought that I would have to coax them into talking to any customers who might come our way, that they might be too shy or nervous to speak with adults that they didn't know. Boy, was I wrong!

There they are, my two little entrepreneurs behind our first ever Mattamuskeet Momma table at the Belhaven Farmers' Market. We had decided earlier in the week that we would make our debut at the Market this weekend, so we worked diligently, putting the finishing touches on our preserves. We made twelve half-pint jars of beautiful, rich Blueberry Citrus Preserves that taste just like the warm center of fresh blueberry pie with soft notes of orange and lemon zest, and twelve half-pint jars of Seedless Blackberry Preserves, a deep purple spread with just a hint of lemon zest to complement its sweet-tart goodness. We used what ribbon we could find around the house to dress up the jars a little bit, and we packed them carefully in boxes for the trip into town. The boys whole-heartedly agreed that I should bake up some fluffy loaves of Cinnamon Swirl Bread because "that was their favorite and people would want to buy it from us", so I stirred, kneaded, and baked 6 rolls of soft bread swirled throughout with melted butter, sugar, and cinnamon. We wrapped it fresh from the oven late Friday afternoon, placed our labels and ingredients stickers on top, and we were ready to go.

The Belhaven Farmers' Market is open on Fridays and Saturdays, and of course the boys wanted to go both days.  Thunderstorms had plagued us off and on all day Friday, but by 4:00, the sun finally started to peek out.  We decided to chance it.  We were the only ones at the Market when we arrived at 5:00, but, buoyed by the excitement of our new enterprise, we quickly set up shop and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Every time someone drove by slowly and looked our way, the boys screeched "Look, it's a customer!" only to say "Oh.  Nevermind,"  as the car continued on.  Eli kept himself entertained by building small mountains in the gravel that covered the ground.  Finally, a car turned into the market, and a nice man walked up.  To us.  Our first customer!  Mr. Julian Goff was a wonderfully sweet man who decided to try our bread and preserves.  He couldn't have come at a better time, as the boys who had earlier been flying high on enthusiasm, began to wilt with the evening humidity and lack of excitement.  We thanked him for coming to see us, and then we went back to waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  At about 6:30 I decided to throw in the towel, my decision aided by lack of traffic and the tired grumpiness that was beginning to over take the boys.  Though we only had one customer, I still felt that the evening was a success just because  we actually did it.  It is one thing to talk about making things and selling them at the Farmers' Market, but it is an entirely different thing to load up three little boys, our inventory, and all of the other necessities for a long wait on a warm summer's evening and actually go out there!  The evening was made even more of a success when I returned home and found that Mr. Goff had visited this blog and left an incredibly warm comment about our food and my boys, and I will always be thankful for his thoughtfulness.

The boys begged to try it again on Saturday morning, and 8 o'clock found us back in the parking lot of the Farmers' Market, this time greeted by a whole different scene.  There was a hustle and bustle of set-up at the front stalls, and Cole, Greyson, Eli and I grabbed our things and headed for an empty table.  We heard a lady ask us if we were setting up, and we said "Yes!" in all of our goofy excitedness.  She gave us a searching look, and began to explain the market to us.  All I can say is, thank goodness for Elizabeth Gurganus!  In my eagerness to begin our Market experience, and not being able to find a thing on the Town of Belhaven's website about the Market, I just assumed you showed up, grabbed a table and sold stuff.  No, no, no.  The tables all belonged to vendors, the stalls were rented by vendors by the day or by the month, and we needed to go visit the Market manager and register.  Seeing the deflated faces of my boys, Elizabeth took care of us and pulled an extra table from the back of her van.  She helped us set up, and introduced us to everyone.  She makes beautiful hand-made jewelry, purses, aprons, and all manner of pretty and useful items - from wallets, to bibs, and so many other items is a gorgeous array of fabrics.    Heike, in the next stall down, sold a lovely array of art, from bird houses to pillows to stepping stones.  Beverly was the main attraction of the morning, however, with her fresh blueberries and mouth-watering baked goods and preserves.  

Archie and some of his beautiful local produce.

With the added vendors on this Saturday morning, there was much more traffic coming in and out of the market, and the boys were soon caught up with the buzz of activity.  So many people to talk to and see, and yes, customers even came to visit our little borrowed table!  The boys were ready this morning, and when the first person showed interest in our goods, Cole asked, "Would you like to buy our bread or our jam?  It's really good."  Greyson piped in "Yes, and if you buy one thing its $5, and if you buy two things, then it's $10.  Don't you want to buy two things?"  I had to put my hand over my mouth so I didn't laugh at loud at their earnest sales pitch.  And this was no fluke, but instead, was repeated over and over again during the morning with no coaching from me.  It was nice to see how seriously the boys were taking our venture, and the responsibility that they felt for selling the things that we made.  Or maybe it was just the visions of the Legos they wanted to buy with their share of the profits that had them so fired up.  I wasn't looking the gift horse in the mouth.

We stayed until about 10 o'clock, and then we packed up and headed off on a supply-buying trip to Greenville.  I had a table to buy, among other things!  We had a great first weekend at the Market. We met some amazingly nice people, vendors and customers alike.  Everyone was warm and kind, and made us feel welcome right from the start.  At the Market, even if it was for a brief couple of hours, I felt like the four of us were a part of something that we could be proud of.  It was a great feeling.  

I want to thank any of our customers who might be reading this for supporting us in our fledgling efforts at local food commerce, and please tell me what you think of our preserves and bread in the comments section.  The boys and I are already hard at work for the coming weekend, where we will have some new bread and preserves varieties.  We spent last evening picking figs from our monstrous ancient fig trees, and we will be making half-pint after half-pint of glorious golden jam.  See you on Saturday!

Just Off the Boat

Summertime in Hyde County means an abundance of food of all sorts. Beautiful vegetables and fruits flourish in our dark soil, and my boys and I have been enjoying a steady stream from our gardens and local farms. My favorite local summertime food doesn't plant its roots in our fertile earth, however, but can be instead found in the rich waters of the Pamlico Sound that hug our coastline. That's right, I'm talking about shrimp!

The Pamlico Sound stretches over an area of 1700 square miles, and due to a maze of shifting shoals, its depth averages about 15 feet.  Receiving freshwater from the Neuse and Pamlico Rivers and the Albemarle Sound, as well as saltwater from the ocean through multiple inlets, the Pamlico Sound offers a mix of habitats that supports a wide array of aquatic species.  About one-half of the entire state's shrimp production comes from the Sound and its tributaries.  The two most commonly harvested shrimp species in our area are the brown shrimp and the white shrimp, with the brown shrimp moving through the Sound in July and August, and the white shrimp following in September and October.  

So a hankering for steamed shrimp made me round up the boys and head on down to Engelhard.  A short 20 minute drive had us at the docks of Williams Seafood, the place we go every summer for mounds and mounds of beautiful fresh shrimp just off the boat, and today was no exception.

You have to feel great when you pull up somewhere for fresh seafood and this is the first thing that you see.  It can't get any better than this, unless you were actually eating them on the boats fresh out of the nets!  An assembly line efficiently hauled the precious cargo onto the dock, where they were placed into buckets of fresh, icy water, rinsed and drained.

From there, they were transferred to the sorting tables, where a quick-fingered crew de-headed and sorted the icy shrimp.  Cole and Greyson watched the entire operation with rapt attention, and when I asked them what they thought of what they were seeing, Greyson said that he "bet everyone sure had some cold fingers."  I would have to agree with him there!

We left Williams Seafood with 10 pounds of beautiful shrimp and great big smiles on our faces.  As I loaded up the boys for the ride home, I told them that I had "fun, fun, FUN!"  and Cole said, "Mom, why do you sound excited like a little kid?"  I told him that it was because I knew how good those shrimp were going to taste for dinner tonight, but that was only half of the truth.  The whole truth is that I love this!  I love driving around Hyde County and discovering all of these wonderful places to buy fresh, local foods.  To me, there is nothing better than knowing exactly where my food comes from, and if I can't grow it or raise it on my own, then the next best thing is buying it from my neighbors and their local farms and businesses.  Doing this not only gives me the peace of mind of knowing that I am feeding my family the freshest, best food I possibly can, but it also helps support the place that I now call home and those that have made their living off of this land and these waters for generations.  I am doing the right thing for the environment, for my family, and for my community, and that is what what brings the smile to my face and makes me "excited like a little kid!" 

I remember when we told some of our friends and acquaintances that we were moving to Hyde County.  "Just for the weekends, right?" was the general response.  No, we would say, for good.  "Really?" would always come their incredulous response.  "Well, what's there?"  No, we had no family there, and we didn't know many people, but none of that mattered to us.  This place spoke to us - this flat land of verdant fields, wet woods, cypress fringes, and waving golden marshlands.  This place where I see more black bears walking edges of the roads than I see passing cars.  This place where the Tundra swans sing you to sleep on late November nights.  This place where my boys roam wild and free, faces sporting sticky brown Lake mud, warm blackberry juice, and careless smiles. Just like the Robert Frost poem from which Hyde County adopted its slogan, we  too took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

I want to thank those of you who spend your precious time reading my thoughts and ramblings, and please feel free to drop me a line in the comments section.  I would love to hear from you!

Mattamuskeet Momma is Open for Business

Today was a big day for the Mattamuskeet Momma venture.  We were visited by Sherry Batot, a Food Regulatory Specialist with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.  Ms. Batot performed a thorough Home Processor Inspection, which consisted of checking my kitchen and pantry for many things, including cleanliness, dedicated business spaces for processing equipment and finished products, water supply, proper refrigeration, adequate and safe lighting, and proper facilities in the adjacent bathrooms.  She also approved my product labels, and was a great source of information, help, and advice.  The boys and I had spent the last two days organizing, re-organizing, and cleaning the kitchen.  Not that the kitchen wasn't clean, mind you, but we wanted to make sure it was extra sparkling clean for the inspector's visit!  I have never seen the boys so dedicated to helping me clean something.   When Ms. Batot took a look at my Lazy Susan Tupperware cabinet, Greyson proudly exclaimed that he had organized it all by himself, which is no mean feat, as this is the cabinet that Eli hits on a daily basis.  In about one minute, Eli can turn a perfectly organized cabinet into a landslide of plastic containers, strewing lids hither and yon from one end of the house to the other.  After so many episodes of this, I must admit that I had taken to tossing the containers back into the cabinet in undignified heaps and shoving it closed with my foot.  Greyson definitely earned his chocolate ice cream reward this afternoon!

What all of this means is that Mattamuskeet Momma is a North Carolina approved home processor for breads, preserves, jams and jellies, and that we can now sell our products.  The boys were so excited, they wanted to jump in the car and go to the Farmer's Market right now!  I had to tell them that the Belhaven market wasn't open today, and more importantly, we didn't have any preserves to sell yet!  So Cole declared that tomorrow morning first thing we would venture into town and get our supplies, go back home, and get busy making jam.  What kind of mother would I be to not agree with such enthusiasm from a six year entrepreneur?  Speaking of enterprises, the boys' pumpkin patch is coming along beautifully, the plants already almost to Cole's waist.  The sturdy vines are already sending out runners and are studded with male blossoms that have yet to open.  A few female blossoms are starting to emerge, their bases already swollen with the promise of new pumpkins.  A recent severe thunderstorm took its toll on two of our young plants, snapping them off cleanly at the base, while the rest remained, luckily, unscathed.

Our first order of business tomorrow upon returning home will be to transform some beautiful Hyde County blueberries into blueberry jam.  Stumbling across Carawan's Blueberries in Swan Quarter was an unexpected delight.  All last year, off and on, I had asked anyone and everyone if they could tell me where the nearest place to pick blueberries were.  I got a few recommendations to try Grassy Ridge, the predominantly Mennonite area of Hyde County that I visited for some amazing strawberries about two years ago.  I loaded up the boys in the van and we ventured out that way, hoping to come across a sign along our journey.  As we passed peaceful farms and neat homesteads, along with the Rose Acre Egg Farm, we were hopeful that we would spot a homemade sign offering you-pick blueberries.  Unfortunately neither the boys, with their faces smashed intently against the windows, nor I happened upon a blueberry farm, so I continued on to Plymouth to pick up some things at the local Piggly Wiggly.  As we pulled out of the parking lot on our way home, I happened to see a little sign at the stoplight declaring "Carawan's Blueberries - We Pick, U Pick" with a phone number.  I pulled into the nearest parking lot and dialed the number, only to find out that Carawan's was about fifteen minutes from my house on the other side of the lake.  Only in my world do you have to drive an hour in the opposite direction to find out that what you were looking for was right down the street from home! 

We crossed the Lake Road and went east along 264 until we passed Mattamuskeet Seafood.  That's when we spotted the small, hand-lettered sign proclaiming simply "Blueberries" and pointing towards a dirt path skirting a corn field.  We drove down the path and entered a clearing that the boys breathlessly declared as "heaven."  Row after row of head and shoulder high blueberry bushes loaded with their deep indigo bounty greeted us.  A small farm shed sported an old-fashioned basket scale, with the instructions to weigh our berries and place our money in the tin.  We wasted no time, an armed with old plastic ice cream buckets, we commenced to picking.  

This was my first time picking blueberries at a farm.  I was used to picking my own berries at home from my knee-high spindly plants, and was usually ecstatic when I came away with a handful (which was then promptly eaten by one of the boys before I could make it into the house).  We arrived at the field at 7;15, and I told the boys that the goal was to pick 10 pounds before the sun went down.  We picked and picked some more, the boys surreptitiously shoving berries into their mouths whenever they thought I wasn't looking, though their moans of delight gave them away every time.  Eli had no such qualms about hiding his berry eating from me, and promptly discarded the bucket in favor of the two-handed pick and shove-into-his-mouth method.

After the sun went down, we began to get nervous about achieving our 10 pound goal before dark. The boys asked if we were going to stay out here picking blueberries all night, and I urged them into double-time.  Finally, we thought we might have enough and made our way to the scale.  Our three buckets, and my estimation of what was residing in Eli's belly, came up to ten pounds, and we put our twenty dollars into the tin  and headed for home.  Cole asked "how come we didn't know about that place before," and I told him all that mattered was that we did now!  I know that it sounds silly to say that our evening picking blueberries was one of the best ones that we have had since moving to Hyde County, but it's true.  We laughed, made up blueberry picking songs, and had a contest to see who could pick the most.  The boys couldn't stop talking - no one fought, no one cried, and Eli was content to roam, pick, and eat, settling down in the soft grass between bushes to rest in between blueberry binges.  The boys said it must be Heaven the minute they stepped out of the van, and in a way, I think maybe they were right.