Uncategorized – Page 69 – Haywood Cooking Blog

First of all, I want to apologize for not getting last weekend’s blog post done. The last two weeks have been a whirlwind around here and I’m just now able to finally start to catch my breath, but I did want to share some photos of my recent trip with you. So here’s my last two weeks packing into one really long post!

I recently packed my umbrella and raincoat and headed out to the Pacific Northwest to speak at the prestigious Northwest Flower and Garden Show and to promote my new book Gardening with Chickens.

I actually began my week by flying to Nashville to attend the Tractor Supply Company annual buyer trade show as the guest of Manna Pro. I hung out in their booth chatting with the store managers, industry leaders and others who stopped by to check out Manna Pro’s new line of products – which includes a new non-GMO Purple Corn Scratch Grain and an organic line of feed!

For those of you who know the Nashville area, you’ll be interested to hear that at dinner at Puckett’s that night, we had the pleasure of hearing star of The Voice Preston James jam with his band. I was also excited to finally get to meet John Metzer of Metzer Farms in person. He is the premier duck expert and a great guy to boot.

Sorry this is so long, but it’s been a crazy busy two weeks around here and I just wanted to catch you all up. Enjoy this peek at my last two weeks!

Unfortunately, I could only spend one day at the show because I needed to head to Seattle for several speaking engagements. I gave a presentation and book signing first of all to Plant Amnesty on Tuesday evening.

By then as you can imagine, I was exhausted from my cross-country trip, so I had wisely left the following day wide open with no commitments, and spent the day doing the “tourist thing” with my friend Brian from The Real Housewife of Snohomish County. We saw the Space Needle, got coffee at the original Starbucks, visited the Pike Place Market and even took the ferry across to Bainbridge Island. Lunch was at a fabulous French restaurant on the island called Marché and for dinner we headed out for dim sum at University Village.

The next two days I was scheduled to present and sign books at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show and what a show it was! The landscape and floral displays were phenomenal and the crowds marveled over them as they browsed vendor booths and listened to the presentations.

I did two presentations and then signed books on Thursday and Friday, but in between I managed to catch up with some old friends and had the honor of meeting Joe Lamp’l, host of PBS’s Growing a Greener World and also the editor of Garden Design magazine!

Speaking of magazines, I snuck out of the show for a bit and headed to the Barnes & Noble in downtown Seattle where I picked up the current issue of The Cottage Journal’s Country Cottage which features an article about my new book!

But my trip wasn’t over yet. On Saturday I headed out to Issaquah for a book signing at The Grange Supply. I chatted with people and answered questions about raising chickens – and it was so much fun to meet in person a few long-time readers of my blog as well as Diana the owner of Scratch & Peck Feeds and Kristin and Nancy from Dookashi!

I also met Yvette for the first time. Many of you recognize the name because she helps me on my Facebook page and often posts photos of her chickens and coop and where they live about four hours outside of Seattle. I also met Ann from A Farmgirl in the Making. She’s local to the Seattle area also. We headed out to Snoqualmie Falls and then enjoyed a delicious seafood dinner at Salty’s to round out my West Coast trip.

I finally headed home, completely exhausted but so happy to have had the opportunity to visit that area of the country for the first time and meet so many great people. Seattle is a beautiful city and I enjoyed exploring, sampling some of the local cuisine and drinking way too much really great coffee!

But my week was just starting. I didn’t even have time to unpack before the people arrived to tile our kitchen backsplash. We are doing a slow kitchen renovation which has already included replacing the countertops and installing a new gas range from LaCanche…which is absolutely beautiful! The tile – I chose white subway tile for its simplicity and clean look – was the perfect touch to complete this stage of the project.

We’ll be shooting a new episode of my TV show Fresh Eggs Daily with Lisa Steele next week, so I really wanted the tile to be done by then. Speaking of my show, the second episode will be airing on March 13th, and if you’re not in the local Maine/NH viewing area, you can watch both the new episode and the pilot episode using the TV Show link at the top of my website.

And because I wasn’t busy enough, I managed to fit in a live TV appearance on ABC’s Good Morning Maine last week. Violet and I sat down with host Blake Lipton to chat about raising chickens and getting them to work in the garden. Violet was the star of the segment for sure!

I’m so glad to be home. As much as I love having the chance to meet so many of you and say hello in person, I really am a homebody and quite the introvert. So I will relish the next few weeks and being able to relax. Well, I guess “relax” is all relative…I’m working hard on my next book (my deadline to submit my manuscript to my editor is April 15th), teaching two chicken keeping classes this month as part of the Maine Adult Education program (I taught one last Wednesday which was a lot of fun) and have to get working on our taxes!

Plus it’s almost time to start planning my gardens for spring and also make out my wish list of chicks and ducklings that I want to raise this year….

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