Alfred Reed Bishop and Doris William Butler

The picture above is the very tap root of Bishop's Homegrown/Face Of The Earth Seed. My grandparents shortly after moving to Pekin Indiana from Greensburg KY in 1947 where they purchased the farm that is now Bishop's Homegrown. This picture was taken in Pekin in front of the old co-op next to the old railroad depot, neither of which exist today.

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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Community, cooperation, and local goods. Pushing the boundaries of a local market!




Community, cooperation, and local goods. Pushing the boundaries of a local market



“Winter is no time for a local Artisans and Farmers market!”.....we blew that notion completely out of the water this past Saturday when 13 vendors and hundreds of customers poured into our first ever Washington County Artisans and Farmers event graciously hosted (along with a breakfast) by the Pierce Polk Vol Fire Dept.



A steady stream of community customers filed into the building to check out all the cool and local handcrafted and homegrown items on display (including a handful of local produce including tomatoes, lettuce, turnips, and greens the week before Thanksgiving). Local (and those from as far away as English) really seemed to dig the wide selection of items including jewelry, baked goods, assortments of soaps and body care items, local meat, hand sewn items, and folk art.



We (Bishop's Homegrown) were there in a corner set up between our friend Mary Beth Morgan and our friends Tye and Laura Gazarian taking in the awe that this project we've all worked (and are working) so hard to put together and promote seems to have begun to pay off in spades. We took the opportunity to use the event to show some of the other complex sides of what we do here on our small family farm by debuting our new Uncle Penns Old Fashioned lye soap (lip balms, body butter, and lotions too!) and Isla Tortuga trading company items (woodworking using 100 year old tobacco laths from the family farm). Of course our Face Of The Earth Seed Company also made a good impression despite the oncoming winter season (the persistence of hope in a gardener is hard to diminish even when the snow flies!)



We look forward to the next event on December 17'th, from 8-12 (once again in conjunction with Pierce Polk Vol. Fire Dept and their awesome home cooked breakfast and an appearance by the man of the season himself Santa Claus) and will use it as an opporotunity to expand on the groundwork the market as well as Bishop's Homegrown has done so far.



-Alan “The Working Man” Bishop



homegrowngoodness.blogspot.com
faceoftheearthseed.blogspot.com
812-967-2073
bishopshomegrown@gmail.com

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