I Do Not Need 8 Gallons of Mayonnaise

It’s been a long time since our last blog post. I apologize. You see…I’ve been really busy doing busy American things. Things like wasting time at places like Costco. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings if you like shopping at Costco. If I had 15 people to feed in my house, I might be grateful for it. I can even see a reason to shop there if you don’t. I mean, I did pick up a few items but I can get smoke detectors, chicken wings and tomatoes elsewhere.

While waiting for my shopping companions to check out, I wondered what my freaking problem was anyway. I was stressed out by my shopping experience and wanted to bounce….immediately. My mother-in-law, Chris, and my sister-in-law, Courtney, may chalk it up to bringing Courtney’s 3 year old son along for the ride. He wanted this and that and didn’t want to sit in the cart and when he saw cookies he had to have them and NO he didn’t want to eat cottage cheese samples. Aaahhhh!

I can tell you…I’ve figured it out. It’s not the insanity that is shopping with a 3 year old because I think every adult had those same thoughts in that store. Oooh I want that, and let me stuff that in my mouth and a 8 gallon jug of mayonnaise…YAY! The problem with me and my shopping experience was over stimulation. There’s too much stuff in my face and with too many signs telling me what to do (marketing GRRRR) and in a big box with too many people! Wahhhh!

When we were in South America, people would ask us where we were from in the U.S. California? New York? No, Ohio. No, we don’t have potatoes. That’s Idaho. We have football, farms, cows and corn. It dawned on us that we told everyone about the farms but never once have we ever been to one. We’ve been to farms in Colombia and Ecuador but never in OHIO!

This is how I would restore the balance in my brain after big box shopping. Immediately after my shopping trip, we headed off to a local farm, chuckling a little bit since it was located in the middle of the upper class Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill. We were not disappointed. Balance restored.

Turner Farm is an awesome place. We felt so free there. Only the chickens greeted us as we pulled up. We parked and wandered. This is perfectly acceptable. There’s a small store front with no one manning it. It’s honor system. It’s awesome. We wandered in, poked our noses in the refrigerators (as instructed by signage on the wall), grabbed some farm fresh produce and dropped our dollars in the box. So simple and trusting!

We then proceeded to search for the animals. Not difficult. A worker walked by with the largest horse I’ve ever seen in my life and told us a little bit about her as she put her in the fenced in space with 2 other horses. She pointed out where we could find another horse. We visited it in a barn down the way.

Another worker there told us where we could find the piglets. I just loved this wander around, make yourself at home vibe. And piglets…yay! There’s not a chance that I will be buying pork from this farm after seeing these guys.

We spent several hours at the farm checking out the animals and playing with our cameras. For just an afternoon, we felt like we were out on the road again enjoying an “activity”. Hopefully we’ll keep these sort of activities in mind the next time the anxieties of home get to us.