Lent 3 - Farm shopping

Today we had a fabulous afternoon visiting some of Worcestershire's farm shops. We went to Top Barn farm shop, near Grimley. They had lots of fruit and veg as well as meat and dairy, confectionary and cakes (that's all the major food groups right?) We have already finished all the fruit we had and don't get another delivery for a week so we got some English pears and fair trade bananas. We also found some made in Worcestershire butter!

This morning, on the way to our baby-sign class, Bella and I had spotted a farm shop in Rushwick called Roots, so that was our next stop. This was a real find. They had all the fruit and veg, meat and dairy as before, but they also had a freezer section with locally made ready meals, loose frozen veg and ready to bake frozen croissants, pain au chocolait and apple turnovers! They also had porridge oats. I still haven't found anywhere to buy breakfast cereal so this could be an alternative. I'll just have to allow more than 2 mins for breakfast!

The guy in this shop was really friendly, especially when we told him about our lenten observance, and he said they had a fishmonger coming tomorrow so we'll probably give that a go. He said that everything they sell is organic and most is locally produced. We could see the chickens that lay their eggs in the field behind the shop!

As well as all this local produce they also stock Ecover cleaning products, even offering to refill some products. I have a feeling we might be popping to Rushwick quite a lot! It's in easy cycling distance (Bella and I cycled there this morning for our class) so we can be even more eco-friendly if we really want!

The other thing we did today was plant some seeds for some home grown veggies. Probably only the lettuce and the cress will be ready in time to be part of this experiment, but it felt good to be laying foundations for a summer of super fresh veggies, and besides, Bella's been watching Mr Bloom's Nursery and he keeps telling us to get growing!