Sunday, July 24, 2011

Friends at the Fruit Shack aka roadside fresh market

When we started growing our fruits and vegetables, we had a thought of bringing the freshest and sweetest tasting food to our community. It has been an exciting journey and YOU our customers have been there every step of the way. You have supported us by purchasing our products, you have made suggestions about things to grow, worried with us when the weather has been crazy, and some where along the way we have become a community by the side of the road, on Irish Bend Loop.

We could tell you endless stories but we will share just a few today. Let us start with this first one. We stood on the front step of the fruit shack and looked towards the road, the four year old customer was not moving, he was fixed on the tractor coming down the road. He raised his little hand in hopes the tractor driver would wave back. We said," keep waving he has not seen you yet." We will never forget the look on that child's face when Guy spotted him and waved back. The child's Mother said to us," how did you know he would wave to my son?" We replied, "this is farming country and he is our neighbor." That boy was so excited and loved machinery, so this was a fun trip to the farm for him.

Another one our favorite stories is the couple who comes from Corvallis weekly. They have stopped for years and we love to hear about all of their retirement projects. You need to remember, we open June 1 and close Halloween, so there are seven months when we do not see any of our customers. So, when we reopened in June and just the husband came by, we were worried, what had happened? Several of our customers who are regulars recognized him too. They were worried also. We all braced ourselves and finally said, "where is the Mrs.?"
 He started laughing, that is why you were all acting so weird, you thought something happen to my wife. It was a relief to everyone to know, she was recovering from eye surgery and could not be out in the sun light. We were so glad to see them together on their next trip through.

This is not going to sound correct, but we had a good customer/friend that shopped local with us from day one. We nicknamed him "redman". He only ate red strawberries and red tomatoes! Nothing else would do.

You will find our parking lot full of every kind of rig, from the corvette person out for a drive to the local farm employee stopping in for a snack in their tractor or bulk truck.

We never knew when we started Horse Creek Farms what the results would be.

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