Well, we just got back from the Blooming Prairie (Iowa City, Iowa) Food Co-op Year 2000 Vendor Show. It’s kind of like a huge homeschool convention, except the topic is organic foods.
We only had time to tour the food vendor halls since we had to go to the library later in the afternoon. There were two halls, and they were packed with hundreds of booths. We had a ball……at first, anyway. All through the first hall we sampled and ordered the new foods, talking with the vendors and other customers. We tasted our way through the numerous cookie displays, chips and salsa, fruit popsicles, soy cheeses, cashew butter sandwiches, carrot juice, and chocolate candy (organic, of course). Started to slow down after the spinach stuffed ravioli, but thankfully Ava had a bottle of water ready for me. Felt bad at the seaweed rice cake booth after I sampled there. Then on to the second hall where we ran into jalapino sardines (ordered a case for Harvey), soy chocolate milk, tomato spiced tofu, more cookies (organic sugar), and then a big plate of some kind of Chinese food. But I think it was the green tea that finally did me in.
It was at the smoked oyster booth where we ran into some old friends. They started asking all those questions you get when your homeschooled kids are now grown up. You know: what are the kids “doing” now (they’re still living at home sponging off their parents), is anyone dating (no, we don’t believe in dating, in fact we keep them locked in the closet), is anyone going to college (no, they all have low IQs and no college will accept them). It was at this point that I started to break out in that cold sweat you get before you faint or get sick. I excused myself from our friends and started out the door, loosing all interest in food and vendor halls.
But the day was not all lost. We went to the university library and had a nice time looking for the books we needed. Johannah located some cheese making books and some of the lesser known stories of Alfred Ollivant and George MacDonald. Found a copy of Cowper’s Tirocinium; or, a Review of Schools.
Arrived home to find out that Harvey hates sardines.
(August, 2000)
Oh how I remember the Blooming Prairie annual meetings.
I was the president of our food co-op when we lived in Fruitland, Iowa (just outside of Muscatine) in the early 1990’s.
I have always thought it interesting that the two kind of people who were represented at that time were often liberal homeschoolers and conservative homeschoolers. We weren’t homeschooling at the time but that is when I first became interested.
Your homeschooling comments remind me of what Voddie Bauchaum just said at the ICHE convention:
Stranger: “Are all those kids yours?”
Quiverful Homeschooler: “No, we picked a couple up in the parking lot!”
i don’t generally ‘LOL’, but that totally did it for me. Your homeschool answers are brilliant and should be stitched into a pillow