Brew of the Barrens - The Recipe

For the many who have asked about the recipe for the "Brew of the Barrens" homemade root beer we have been making at the market, here it is:
Put 3.5 gallons of cold Glasgow Water Company water in a five gallon cooler. Add 6 cups of white sugar and stir it until fully dissolved. Add 2 ounces of root beer extract (it takes some research to find it, but it is available - Mc Cormick even has it in the spices area of larger grocery stores). Then add the secret ingredient, four pounds of dry ice from Glasgow Ice Company! This puts on the big show with all of the smoke and fog coming off of the mixture...put the top on the cooler LOOSELY and let the brew work for about an hour, stirring occasionally to keep it all going.

On the other hand, you could just keep coming back to the Bounty of the Barrens Market to get your local root beer fix!

Localism in Action

Yesterday I had an experience that was a perfect example of why ownership matters and why the very happiest shopping experiences come in locally owned and operated businesses. It was a simple, yet elegant and totally satisfying experience at Square Deal Lumber Company.

Wednesday night was the first evening of the week that I had time to mow my yard. Of course, it was also too hot for humans to actually be outside, so I waited until nearly dark to do my work. As is usually the case when I try to squeeze an outdoor task into a very limited time slot, something went wrong. This time it was my trusty Echo trimmer that refused to run long enough to tame the weeds around my yard.

Thursday morning I threw the trimmer into the back of my car to drop it off at Square Deal Lumber where I had purchased it many years before. Since we are in the heart of the mowing season, I fully expected them to take the unit in and tell me it should be ready in a week or so, but that is not what happened in this wonderful little establishment owned and staffed by folks who live right here among us. When I walked in the door with by dress shirt and tie on while clutching a very used trimmer, I was immediately acknowledged and within minutes a very nice fellow was asking about my problem with the trimmer. As I described the symptoms he took it out of my hands and walked toward his work bench. "Have you got a minute?" he said, "because if I don't fix it now it is going to be sometime tomorrow before I can get to it." "Why of course I have a minute," said I (even though the prospect of getting it back the next day was way more than I had hoped for).

In five minutes he disassembled, diagnosed, repaired, and returned the trimmer to my hands repaired. He also refused to allow me to pay for the repair! This, friends and neighbors, is not something that would occur at any big box retailer or foreign owned establishment. This is the kind of treatment that can occur in small towns where the locals support these businesses by trading with them even though the initial price might be a little higher than the big box retailer. This is the very heart of localism and the concept of a sustainable local economy where we vote for our happiness with the dollars we spend every day.

Cheers to you Square Deal Lumber Company! Now my neighbors will not have to look at my unkempt yard any longer.

Big Day at the Market Tomorrow!

All Bounty of the Barrens Market Days are exciting. What other word could describe the opportunity to purchase real food, local food, clean and unadulterated food grown by extremely cool folks that live no more than fifty miles from your dinner table?

This Saturday's special offerings will include breakfast prepared by Joellen and John Tubbs. They grow real blueberries right here in the Barrens and they are going to do a blueberry pancake throwdown in the BOTBM food tent that will make you want to throw rocks at your normal breakfast fare! Up on the BB&T - HVAC Services - Square Deal Lumber stage will be Glasgow's own Eric Albany.

Over at the Sustainable Glasgow tent we will be once again, thanks to the fine folks at our own local ice company - Glasgow Ice, preparing our Brew of the Barrens homemade root beer and we will be passing it out for free. With a little luck (and a lot of work by Lauren), we will have our EBT/Debit Card machine working too so you will be able to use EBT cards and regular debit cards for purchases at the market.

Mindy McCully and Kristin Goodin from the Barren County Extension Service Office will also be there to show off their cucumber salsa recipe, and the usual group of fantastic vendors will be on hand to share the fruits of their labor. I can't wait to see you there!

Come to BOTBM Tomorrow!

Time to make plans to attend Bounty of the Barrens Market, behind BB&T on West Main, 8:00 - noon tomorrow. Music will be by Tambra Cambron and her students, local breakfast will be served, local vendors will bring all sorts of locally grown and made items for your enjoyment. We will even have more locally brewed root beer! See you there!

Simple Sandwich - Not So Simple

I am looking for something more elusive than good seats at a concert -- I want a local sandwich with turkey or ham on it that has no other ingredients other than that which was produced by the fowl or the pig. This should be simple, but it isn't for me.

Ever since mine eyes were opened about the horrors of our industrial food system, I thought I was getting good unprocessed turkey or ham by shopping at the deli department of local grocery stores. Surely, I thought, if I step up and point to a turkey and tell the nice deli folks how many pounds of it I want and how thick to slice it I am rewarded with the real thing, but, alas, a friend has revealed the truth. The packaging the deli folks peel back to slice off my sandwich staple tells the real story. That oven baked turkey breast actually contains: Turkey Breast, Water, Modified Food Starch, Lactate, Salt, Honey, Corn Syrup Solids (here too!!!! good grief), Sodium Phosphate, Carrageenan, Sodium Diacetate, and it was browned in Oil. As Charlie Brown would say, "ARRRGGGHHHHH!"

Michael Pollan says that if your grandmother would not recognize something as food, don't eat it. My Grandmother never served me any Sodium Diacetate. The folks at Harvard School of Public Health recently confirmed that processed meats are strongly implicated in our spiraling rates of diabetes and heart disease. This study just came out a couple of weeks ago.

So what is an aspiring locavore and dedicated sandwich-for-lunch person supposed to do? Really, I want to know. Other than regularly baking my own ham or filling a crock pot with a turkey breast, is there a way for me to purchase a nicely sliced pound of turkey or ham for my daily bread? When I go to a local restaurant, is the turkey on my hot brown or club sandwich from someone's processed meat inventory? I'm afraid to find out the answer to that, but am eternally hopeful that I will find out that they cooked it and sliced it themselves.

So, I ask you vendors at Bounty of the Barrens Market; I ask you potential local entrepreneurs who might be thinking of opening a real deli, when will I be able to safely go home and make myself a turkey sandwich again? I await your advice with the faint aroma of carrageenan on my breath.

The Glasgow Greenway -- An Idea Ripe for the Picking

A few weeks ago Sustainable Glasgow sent a well thought out formal letter to the Mayor and County Judge Executive laying out a proposed master plan for walking/jogging/cycling paths that would form the Glasgow Greenway. As of this morning there has been no formal response to that letter, but I do know that Mayor Pickett is pondering it.

Just a few days ago an article in the Glasgow Daily Times outlined plans for the repaving and re-striping of West Main Street from the Glasgow Square to L. Rogers Wells Blvd. Since that section of West Main is a component of our suggested Glasgow Greenway Master Plan, this is an opportunity to start the years long process of implementing the plan. We need for our local elected officials to immediately interject the master plan into the current plans to rework West Main Street. If this section of roadway is to receive new traffic graphics, this is the time to establish cycling lanes along this route.

While it is true that a set of lanes from the Square to the Bypass along West Main would accomplish little to provide a usable section of Glasgow Greenway, it is a heavily traveled street which would expose many locals to the concept of cycling lanes and would begin the process of teaching folks how to interact with cycling lanes and cyclists. This could easily be done by taking some space away from the vehicle lanes and from the turn lane in the center of the existing roadway. Taking this action would also get us moving on the concept of steering heavy traffic toward major roadways and arterial routes and away from the Square such that pedestrian traffic can be emphasized and cherished in our city center. If the lanes are tighter, it should follow that big vehicles and trucks will seek alternate routes.

If the newspaper article was correct, this work could begin at any time. If we are serious about working for change, improvement, and new thinking in our community; if we are serious about lobbying to get the Glasgow Greenway established, now is the time to contact people you know in local government to get them interested in this project and this opportunity which is being dumped in our lap right now.

BOTBM 2010 Market Day 1 - Retrospective

The official opening day for 2010 was this morning and it went very well. Perhaps 500 folks, mostly locals, but many from other states, were on hand to share in the bounty of our region and witness what a community can do for itself if it puts its heart and mind into it. Bob and Joanna Harvey christened the new Square Deal Lumber - HVAC Services - BB&T stage by graciously sharing their talents with the folks who attended and about 30 vendors offered to feed us with the products they have produced with the sweat of their brow and the sunshine from Mother Nature. It was a great morning.

Still, we noted several things we can do better and plan to start on those things next week. First, we didn't have anyone there cooking for the attendees and there was not enough there to drink. Next week we hope to remedy that by stepping up to have omelette chefs working with local ingredients available at the market, coffee from the fair trade coffee offered by St. Andrews Church, and other cold drinks offered in recyclable containers.

We also ran into a bit of trouble with our debit card/EBT terminal and hope to have that corrected in two weeks. After that, you will be able to come to the market with no cash and use your debit card on site to acquire tokens which can be spent with any of the vendors at the BOTBM. Also, for anyone who receives government benefits and nutrition support benefits, they will be able to use the EBT cards at the market as well.

For all of you who came this week, thanks, it was a great start, but you really haven't seen anything yet!