So far, the highlight of house-sitting in Maine has undoubtedly been our daily excursions into the surrounding countryside to buy food. There are literally a dozen (maybe more) small farms and homesteads selling fresh groceries within a few miles of Mike and Eliza's house! One of them is a self-service market offering everything from dried beans to green peas to live lobster on the honor system.
Another is a "you pick" place, where we can hunt for ruby red strawberries in long rows, plucking the delicious fruits from their bushes to deposit in green cardboard containers. They are a brilliant crimson all the way through, bearing almost no resemblance to the bland, rock-hard, white-centered things that pass for strawberries in most supermarkets.
In addition to all the recently-picked fruits and vegetables, there is a dairy farm just minutes away that sells grass-fed meat, hunks of tasty cheeses, cartons of newly-lain eggs, homemade sausages, jugs of cream, hand-churned butter, ice cream, and yogurt sweetened with blueberries.
There are few things as rewarding to us as procuring food straight from the fields and then preparing a feast from it the very same evening. We find it satisfying to know that our money is directly supporting local farmers, and the resulting food is approximately a million times better, too—everyone wins. If only it were so easy to shop for groceries like this at home!
