It took me twenty minutes just to clear the snow off of my car this morning. There was a good ten inches piled on the hood and the windshield, somewhat less on the rear window. Once I'd cleaned the car I drove over to Hyde Park, one of Cincinnati's tonier neighborhoods. There are always joggers in Hyde Park and today was no exception, snow and ice be damned. I saw a man jogging down the street holding what looked like a pizza box at first glance. When I got closer I realized he was jogging with a box of donuts from Busken Bakery. The reason I drove to Hyde Park this morning was to meet a woman from Mohr's Animal Acres in Urbana, Ohio. They are regulars at the Hyde Park farmer's market and in the off season they've arranged a pre-order system and they meet their customers in a bank parking lot to drop off the orders. I picked up some lamb for my traditional Irish stew for St. Patrick's day and some smoked ham to put into bean soup.
So since I've set out on my quest for locally produced food during a Cincinnati winter I've found an untended honor system store, where you write down what you took and leave payment in a lock box, I've picked up pre-ordered winter greens from a porch in Wyoming and bought meat out of a parking lot. It seems so very clandestine for some reason and I'm having so much fun doing it. I'm really looking forward to visiting farms that will be selling peas, asparagus and strawberries this spring. Those goodies are generally in season well before the farmer's markets open, but I feel sure they'll be worth the extra effort.
