I hope you are having a great start to the New Year!! We have been blessed with a few Springlike days and have started a few farm chores that we usually put off until nicer weather.

THE FARM & MARKET

Our sheep are due to begin lambing any day now, we have new litter of Kunekune just born and the chickens have picked up their egg production! Spring will be here….eventually.

With the New Year here I want to try and be more diligent with my blog and getting our story out to the people who enjoy our story and want to follow along. I hope you’ll follow along, but if you don't like this new blogging, let me know.

As you may or may not have heard, we are in the process of opening an restaurant and market in our town of Fort Payne. We owned a restaurant many years ago and have been asked regularly if we will ever open another one. We needed a location to sell our farm products and sell for other farmers, and I love to feed people so we are going to give it another shot.

I have always LOVED to cook and create. As I’ve gotten older I have realized that I’m probably equally left and right brained. I have always been artistic and leaned into creative fields. When I went back to Nursing School, I realized that I also loved science (especially Microbiology). Maybe that explains my love for cooking, it is the perfect mix of art and science. I like food and enjoy eating it, but I love to watch the people I love eat the food I’ve prepared. Feeding my people is how I show love.

I had fallen out of love with cooking after we closed our last restaurant. When the economy forced us to close the doors, I was heartbroken… literally. I stopped creating and just basically kept my people alive. Spaghetti, Stroganoff, Hamburgers and occasional baked chicken were the highlights. I wouldn’t even go into our historic building that housed our restaurant. I just shut down to any thing that had to do with the failure and heart break. I think buying the farm and beginning that journey allowed me to heal and move forward - FINALLY. David and I had a discussion last week that if Heaven is our farm, I would be perfectly happy everyday. Even on the bad days it is our hearts’ desire and we are blessed to be able to share it with so many. The only thing I would change would be to live onsite and that may happen this year.

Anyway, back to the restaurant topic. I am looking forward to opening the doors and feeding our community. I have been blessed with strong southern women in my life who taught me how to cook and how to expand my knowledge of Southern cooking. I look forward to bringing the meals that we, as southerners grew up eating and evolving those foods into a healthy, tasty staple for our community. Our meals will be served fresh and also available in our freezers/coolers to take home for later. We look forward to seeing all of you @ Meal & Market in the near future!!

THE FAMILY

Our boys are always in training and eat very healthy. Cooper and Oliver have the “Yuka” app on their phones and scan almost everything they eat. They have helped us to eat better too. We cook a lot now and tailor meals to fit our schedules. David recently developed a shrimp sensitivity, so we removed shrimp from our diets (unless he is out of town). If you know David and follow his Instagram page “Franksroadfood” then you know he was eating out a lot and every meal was accompanied by a beer or mixed drink with bourbon. He has changed all of that and is feeling good about his changes. Parker and Miranda are both working nights (him with FPPD and her at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga), they are both also going to school full time and have a new puppy, so they are very busy! We see them when they have off days or when we grab their pup to run off some energy at the farm while they sleep. I (Stacey) am finishing up Physical Therapy next week and going to back to my Neurologist to see where we go next with my back injury. I feel a lot better with PT and dietary changes so, hopefully I’ll be able to avoid surgery. Oliver has started Indoor Track season and we are excited to see how this year goes for him. We also finally found him a better vehicle (even though he refused to sell the 1970 F100 Truck he was driving), he is now in a 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee and is liking it. Cooper is in his 2nd semester of College and has gotten into to rock climbing. He, Parker and Miranda climb outside a lot together and he climbs indoors with Oliver and friends.

That’s the update! Thanks for reading and we’ll get into farm and market specifics as the year proceeds.