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Kitchen Gadget Girl and Urban Homesteader, Gudrun from Menlo Park shares her story with us.
Gudrun, from Menlo Park has been a Happy Child CSA member for three years. Eating locally and sustainably has become an integral part of her family’s life. Her interest in eating locally began after seeing an Eat Local Challenge. The Challenge fascinated her and she decided to give it a try.
Inspired by The Eat Local Challenge, sourcing locally became a goal in her household. She joined a vegetable CSA and had to readjust how she cooked. Previous to joining the CSA, she found recipes and shopped accordingly. When she joined the CSA she had to reverse order her meal plan to find recipes to suit the contents of the box. This new challenge was the impetus to start her own blog kitchengadgetgirls.com focused on healthy family recipes and meal plans inspired by her CSA.
Gudrun’s interest in sourcing locally has turned her and her family into urban homesteaders. She started keeping honeybees in her yard almost 5 years ago and now has a thriving hive that established itself. She needs to harvest some honey soon to make room for all their activity! Neighbors with seasonal allergies are happy for her work and buy honey from her family as a homeopathic remedy to combat their watery eyes and sneezes.
Chickens are the latest addition to her yard. Her family converted her daughter’s playhouse to a chicken coop where four happy, laying hens now make their home. Her husband made them a chicken run so they can go in and out freely. They let the chickens out for an occasional stroll in the yard and so they have an opportunity to take dirt baths in their favorite locales. The chickens are a source of delicious eggs, but mostly they serve as a great way for her kids to directly connect with where food comes from, in this case, their back yard.
Preserving the summer and fall harvest is another project she’s taken on. About 80 pounds of tomatoes make their way into cannning jars every year at Gudrun’s house. Frog Hollow Farm fruit is used for sweet and savory recipes but also finds its way into small batch jams and dried fruit that her family can enjoy after the harvest. Gudrun’s kids are big fans of our cherries and she loves all of the apricots this season has brought. A simple apricot jam was made last week using up the apricots from her box. Gudrun is looking forward to our Warren pears this fall. If you are new to the CSA and haven’t tried them, you are in for a treat!
When Gudrun started her local foods mission she spent a lot of time trying to source her food. She is happy to see how much easier it has become to find local foods, with access to abundant and year round farmers markets and awesome CSA’s like ours, she has more time to raise chickens and keep bees! Thanks to Gudrun for sharing your story with us.
