 They're little, look how little they are. That early summer brings, there's just so many delicious things to enjoy, but one way that I have found to find out a lot of this information is, good morning friends from the back porch. So this morning I'm just kind of doing my normal morning thing. I am just spending some quiet time and just being able to kind of get myself set up for the day and today is my market day. I thought I would take you through a market day with me since I have been shopping mostly locally and just really focusing on giving back to my community and I know a lot of you had a lot of questions whenever I took you bulk food shopping with me to bulk food stores in the area. So I'm gonna give you some tips and tricks on how to find bulk food stores in your area and some of you wanted to know about the ones in my area. So I'll be sharing about that today as well. Here where I live in central Pennsylvania, it is summertime and it's just the beginning of summer. So it's really a fantastic time to start seeking local produce and other things as you're gonna see today. I'm going to walk you through how I source different things from people around me because that is really, really important and I think it's actually a bit simpler than you might think. You may be surprised at what you can source in your own local area that you didn't even know was right under your nose. For myself, I actually have probably about five different farmer's markets within an hour of me but there is one in particular that I really like to go to and what you have to do is just find out what days those farmer's markets are open. Most farmer's markets have one particular day out of the week that they're open and you can go visit them. One tip I'll give you before we get going is I do like to bring my own cooler bags and tote bags just to be able to put things in them because sometimes things need to stay cooler, especially because I live a little distance a ways from this farmer's market and also I like to have a nice big tote bag. Then I don't always have to use up the farmer's market stand's bags. Just remember, these are small businesses so any way that you can help them out is great. Oh, I think it was there. I just love all of the greenery that early summer brings. There's just so many delicious things to enjoy. So I'm going to go ahead and give you a quick haul and kind of explain how to find local produce. As one question I ask is whether or not it's somewhere local and even if it is labeled local, oftentimes I will ask where it's from just because it's local that it may be a neighboring state that it could be from. It can be from a lot of different places. All right, I'm going to go ahead and start on this side. I did get a bag of green beans today. I know it's a bit early for green beans. This is the first time I saw green beans in half bushels. So I know that they're gonna be good and sweet as the summer goes on. They are not going to be quite as tasty so I wanted to snag those today. My green beans didn't come up as well as I wanted them to. I may do a second planting but I figured at least I'll get a jump start on that. We love mint tea or garden tea and my plants that I planted did not take root. I'm going to be planting some more but there's a stand at market that's been carrying theirs and so I have been getting from them. So that's what this massive bunch of green is over here. This here is lard and some people may not like to cook with lard but lard makes the best pie crust in my opinion and I would rather use lard than vegetable shortening. It's just my personal opinion. So I got this from a butcher. I ordered it last week and he brought it in for me today and then he actually gave me these two containers for free because they are from the bottom of the lard container where there's like sediment and stuff which is fine. It's still perfectly fine. It just doesn't look quite as creamy and clear as this and I also picked up some beeswax candles. These will be nice for a dinner this week. I thought it would be lovely to light some candles and speaking of candles, I also picked up two of these soy candles. I really like soy candles. This one is a roasted caramel coffee and this one is a Vermont maple shortbread. It smells so good. I love my house to smell very warm, vanilla-y. It's my favorite. So this is from a local butcher shop that makes their ring baloney fresh and it is so good. This is their garlic type and then last week I had gotten their onion. I really, really love their onion flavored. This here is Amish butter cheese. Absolutely delicious if you can get your hands on some. It's just, oh, it melts so well. It's a softer cheese. It's great for on hamburgers or cheeseburgers. I got some avocados. Now these wouldn't be local to us but they are from a stand that sells other local things and I just needed a few avocados so I grabbed those. A bakery has, that market has started to carry this and they are like almond flour cookies. So I already had one of them very good because I do eat gluten free. These are some plums. Now these are not local because these are not in season yet. They're getting closer but my daughters love plums and they were begging for some plums so I got them a few. These are local raspberries, black raspberries and we will just do these for fresh eating. I decided not to do a whole lot with raspberries this year. We are getting our second picking of blueberries from a local farm this coming week. We go and pick them ourselves and so I really focused on freeze drying blueberries so maybe next year we can do raspberries, we'll see but of course having some on hand for yogurt or just to eat are so yummy. Here is some celery. I've been doing a bunch of chicken broth lately so getting some local celery is fantastic and isn't it amazing how much smaller these are than the celery you see in the store. I just think that it goes to show that each area, no matter where you live, grows their things in different sizes, things just grow differently in different places. This is local garlic and I may even get some more of this to freeze dry in to garlic powder but these are beautiful and I got some fun multicolored carrots again from a local farm and we will probably roast these with onions this week just as a side dish. Last week we discovered golden beets, I've never had them before, they taste so good and some of us in the household have agreed that they kind of taste a little bit like corn. I don't know why they kind of have that buttery taste but they are just so good. And this is also a great example of the community aspect of going to market. I was standing there saying how we boiled these and kind of tossed them in butter last week and the farmer was telling me that I need to roast them in the oven, that it will bring out their sweetness better and the woman behind me said, oh that's how I make mine and she gave me all of her tips so I'm super excited to try that out. Talk to people, you will learn so much. This is local corn and I tried another stand that had corn but theirs was from another state down south but this here is actually from our local farms so I'm excited to have corn every week, corn on the cob, we love it through the summer. This is local lavender and I'm probably going to dry some of this and maybe even make some of this into a tincture. It smells absolutely incredible. So this is all of the more consumable items that I got. I did get a pair of earrings and a top from a upcycling stand that upcycles clothes so maybe I will show you all that here in a little bit. So this is the beautiful top I was able to find at the one upcycling clothing stand at Market and I just think it's so feminine and beautiful. It'll be a great piece that I can wear through the summer. It's lightweight but it also has three-quarter length sleeves so I could also wear it into the fall as well possibly with a sweater or something like that. I just love the square neckline, it's so feminine and then I also got these leather teardrop earrings. I just like the size of them. I just think they'll go great with a lot of different outfits and I'm just really happy with my find. So a while back I had posted a video about shopping at bulk food stores. Little did I know all of the questions and things that were going to come with that video. So in some areas I guess bulk food stores are more common than other areas and I thought I would give you a few tips on potentially finding them or at least being able to find some local shops that you could buy things in bulk from. So I was brought up in a family where I was taught to definitely ask questions. I love Google, I love that we have Google right at our fingertips and we are able to really investigate and search for things unlike we've ever been able to do before. Google can be a great tool however it doesn't know everything particularly whenever it comes to small shops and local shopping. My suggestion for using Google is to search things like farmers markets, bulk food stores, country stores, country grocery stores, those types of words to see if you can find bulk food stores in your area. Other words that can be associated with bulk food stores that might help you out is Mennonite stores, Amish stores and I'm not familiar with this however I've heard other people talk about this that live in different parts of the country but you can also look up stores that are related to the FLDS or I'm not sure if it would be the LDS as well. I know that they are really big on food preserving, canning and things like that as well just like the Amish and Mennonites but like I said I'm not as familiar with their ways of having stores and things like that. If you are a little more familiar with that please leave your suggestions in the comments of this video. I would love for this video to be a resource for anyone that is looking to shop locally or just be able to resource things and bulk from people around them. So besides Google you can obviously stop in at other types of stores that may be helpful in finding the ones you're really looking for. So places like butcher shops, greenhouses, orchards, dairy shops or some places call it a creamery, pumpkin farms, farmers markets, grain mills like places you would buy feed for animals or even buy grain to mill your own flower and things like that. Livestock auctions, in fact sometimes livestock auctions are also farmers markets and that's something to look into as well. And then in certain parts of the country I know some areas are really well known for local restaurants that serve local food. So if you know it's a restaurant that serves a lot of local produce, local meats you can go in there and ask them where is the best place to buy these things and they will be able to give you some answers. And like I said, Google can be a really great help but one way that I have found to find out a lot of this information is to look to older people around you. Whether you are in a restaurant and you see them eating or you're maybe at another local shop and you see an older person a great way to start the conversation is to ask them if they've lived in the area for a long time how long they've lived in the area and then from there you can ask them about butcher shops or other types of shops you might be looking for. This is my personal favorite way to find local resources. I feel like there's so much to be gleaned from the generations that come before us and really that's a lot of the way that they use to shop. There wasn't always big supermarkets in every area of the country and so they would source from the next door neighbor or source from the mill down the road and those sorts of things. And of course not all of those places are still in operation which is a little bit sad but we can still seek out the gems that are still up and running. The community aspect of seeking this knowledge is so key because for me personally even though we have lots and lots of roadside stands lots of markets around us, places, little shops and stores I still have found some of the best resources by simply asking people, talking to people, finding out different farms that I didn't even know existed in my area like that lavender farm where I got the lavender from that's a newer farm. So you have a lot of older establishments but you also have a lot of people out there that are trying to rekindle the thing of doing small farms and small businesses. Along with the social aspect obviously social media is huge and plays an amazing role in being helpful in this area. So Facebook and Facebook groups recently I asked on Facebook if anyone knew of someone I could get chickens from. Just like free range chickens that we could end up putting in our freezer and very quickly I had a lot of responses and people messaging me and getting hold of me letting me know who I could get some chickens from so I actually was able to source some from another mama in my area that they raise free range chickens which I think is just amazing that you can directly help out other families near you by using the resource of Facebook. I am not a very big and active on Facebook however I know that there are Facebook groups that are set up specifically to help you source things locally. This last little tip I have for you is something that I have noticed recently and that is a lot of small shops and a lot of small businesses tend to enjoy supporting other small businesses. So just because you don't have an animal that you're feeding grain to maybe that grain mill is going to offer you something else like maybe a small bulk food section or something like that. A great example of this is there is a local creamery in our area. Now of course they mainly have milk and some cheese and they're very big on making their own ice cream and I have another source that I get my milk from so it's not necessarily a priority for me. However I realized that they carried a local coffee. A local coffee roaster puts their coffee there in fact they even have a grinder right there at the dairy that you can go and they will grind the coffee for you. Now that coffee business is actually probably a good half hour away from that dairy shop but I discovered that that is my favorite current coffee so I will stop in at the dairy place and I will get my coffee there and of course we like to get ice cream but it's not necessarily a necessity to stop there for milk. So I hope that makes sense. You may be able to stop at a greenhouse and find out that they have a little poster up that tells you how you can order a portion of a beef. There's just resources upon resources when you start to dig into your local businesses and realize how much of it is connected. Now most of this information I'm speaking from living in America and also living in my area. Every area is completely different but I hope that some of these tips I've given you will help give you a head start on sourcing things around you. Now many of you are from nearby states or possibly live in Pennsylvania as well and a lot of you are asking if I can list some of the bulk food stores that I showed in that bulk food video. So I will do that in the description box below and like I said, leave comments below. No matter if you live in California, no matter where you live, that's clear across the country from me but I think that there is so many different people watching especially from other countries. If you are from Australia, if you're from another country, leave comments below on how you find ways to source things from people around you. There is just no better feeling than being able to directly buy from a family or a family run business and be able to give back to your own town, your own city, your own area and it's not going through this person and that person and just changing hands and then the person that actually made the product doesn't end up with the full amount of benefits that they could get from selling their product. I hope this video is helpful and I know that this is slightly different than a lot of my normal content but I want to start bringing more content to the table that brings us back to simple living, to sustainable living, to ways that we can teach our children how the old ways, some of the old ways are not all bad and I think that some of them are actually so intelligent. They leave us living a more peaceful life and it actually creates a more thriving, bountiful community around us whenever we can each put in our own part. If you're completely new here, I'd love it if you subscribed to my channel. I do a whole entire pile of different content including cooking and meal prepping and I am working on more gardening content and just simple living. Thank you all for watching and I'll see you in the comments.