Well, when we finally got a hold of some of this peanut butter for ourselves (because we don’t live around any Whole Foods stores,) the jars just screamed out at me. “You are always taking pictures of those sexy wine bottles, but you haven’t taken pictures in a long time of us hearty and nutritious peanut butters!” So, I finally went out and took these pictures – and then promptly forgot about them. How sad, very sad.

I was looking for more photos to post about the farm, and these jars just screamed out at me again! “Don’t forget us! Don’t we look rather strong and majestic there? Sturdy, capable, dependable.”

Oh, and just a little bit coy here.

Just lovely, delicious peanut butter. And just to let you know, after this hard photo session, these two jars of peanut butter were – promptly eaten. They didn’t last long at our house, but were very much enjoyed.

Blessings,

Betty

Paige Brady makes a confession about her brother’s peanutbutter eating habits. Maybe I should make a confession too … When I was in college, sometimes it was just too much time and trouble to go down to the lunch room each morning for breakfast, so I kept jars of peanutbutter in my dorm room at Texas Tech and ate a big spoonful or two or three (depending on the morning) of peanutbutter. That was back when most normal people didn’t have refrigerators in their dorm rooms and good snack options weren’t always available. Anyway, I still like peanutbutter.

Then there is the other funny story about my husband buying me 50 lbs of roasted peanuts so that I could grind my own peanutbutter out of them. Well, he accidentally bought peanuts — in the shell. Needless to say I like the convenience of buying peanuts already ground into peanutbutter in the jar, sometimes I like to use whole peanuts and grind them myself into peanutbutter (or should I say get one of my children to do that for us), but I wasn’t about to “shell” 50 lbs of peanuts by hand and then grind them into peanutbutter.

So — we gave away bags and bags of peanuts and then finally donationed a bunch to the local food bank who seemed to love having 2 lb. bags of salted roasted peanuts in the shell to give to those in need.

Anyway go to the Whole Foods web site and read the blog, look at the great recipes, and print up your own coupon for 365 Everyday Value Organic peanut butter. Ohh, I almost forgot – even a contest to win a case of peanutbutter. It wouldn’t last long at our house. 

My mother is going to be estactic to see this blog. She is one of those moms that would be more excited to see her children on the Whole Foods web site than on the Forbes magazine site. J

Blessings, Betty

So, let’s get back to the really neat project that they did at Anvil. Anvil has a program for kids to learn about where their t-shirts reeeally come from. Children or just people in general tend to think that the things that they buy don’t have any history before the store that they bought the shirt from. Similar to the thinking that says that milk comes from a carton and not from a cow or a goat. A child buys a T-shirt from a store, and he starts to think the store is where the shirt originated from. People sometimes just don’t realize how much effort goes into that shirt before it even reaches the store.

With Anvil’s program, the child takes their new tee home with a “tracking” number on the hang tag to enable the child to see their tee’s journey. Now you really need to go buy an organic Anvil t-shirt for your child to make this a really full learning experience, but if you can’t make it to the big city and a store for a while, try using 730058i08 as a tracking number. To make it clear that tracking number is all numbers except for the small “i” stuck in there. So, that would make the “0″ zeros. Got it? I hope so.

There are tons of information to explore on the site, by when you get around to choosing to look at an organic farmer you might just get a look at our family. If you don’t, you will randomly see another neat organic farm family. It might be Carl Pepper and his family or Jimmy & Susan Wedel.

If you happen to get our family this is what you see -

This is just an adorable site with all of the hang tags and pictures.

As interesting as my little family is, you will want to look around for the lessons plans and all kinds of learning on the different pages. Click on cotton gin and see a running diagram of how a gin works. The learning plans have class ideas and additional information such historical information on Eli Whitney and images of the original cotton gin courtesy of the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop (www.eliwhitney.org.) There are more pages on Textile mills and cut & sew operations. I haven’t even looked at all the information, but I plan to with my children.

There are neat pictures in the Texas Farm image gallery. Towards the end there is a picture of “farmer Bingham standing in front of a module of organic cotton.” That small town southern gentleman would be my children’s grandfather, Dandy.

Notice the organic peanut butter jars at the bottom of the screen. If you click on those, you will see the Wedel’s and see Susan’s recipe for organic peanut butter cookies. Hmmm, makes me want to go make some right now.

If you click on our family, you get a note card of details about us. We do need to update their information a little. Actually the children have grown a little. They now range in age from 6 to 25. And sadly not all our wine is organic any more. The Caprock Viognier is and is labeled that way (with our grapes, click here for my post about it). Really all of our grapes made into wine through 2008 were certified organic. Most of the 2009 is not. But if we get enough consumer support for wine made with organically grown grapes, we will have it certified again in three years. Basically our practices for farming the grapes is quite a bit the same.

Click here to see this very fun and educational site for you and your children – www.TrackmyT.com . TrackmyT.com won a FWA site of the day.

You might want to check it out during the holiday break.

Blessings, Betty