Slow Food First Coast - Tour de Farm

This will be our first time visiting farmers in our area. So many to choose from. On April 22nd, we took one of the suggested farm tours, Our Rural Heritage, (link to the booklet here) and managed to get to four of them even with three little girls in tow! Everything is free parking and entrance; and each farm had at least one free tasting sample. There were many products to buy so you can control your spending; otherwise all free!
Here is a blog post about last years (2011) tour from Chef Jessica.

We had a really great time experiencing some farm "life" and our granddaughter made the St. Augustine Record, check here.
All my pictures are in reverse order - darn the new Blogger! I haven't posted regularly since the big change, so still learning; but no complaints, still the easiest way to blog and get our family pictures into a book (no more developing photos, printing at home and gobbling up tons or printer ink!).

The order of photos begin with the last place we visited in Hastings, the University of Florida Agriculture Center. Loved the blueberry bushes, even tasted a few! We also sampled a watermelon juice from Chris Faunce of Creative Juices. All Yummy!
We are saving the date for the 2013 tour!

 Alivia and AA shared some fun time together; they loved the plant that the leaves closed up each time you touched it, a moving plant!

 We saw many vegetable gardens, inside greenhouses and outside. We enjoyed a hay ride out to the "fields".

 Yummy BBQ food from one of our favorites: Smokin' D's (small restaurant located at corner of Rt 206 and Rt 1 in St. Augustine).

 Our daughter, Leaa, bought bouquets of sunflowers for AA and Alivia; they lasted for two weeks in our vase at home, so fresh, right from the farm garden!

 We had a little rain on us at the first farm, Sykes and Cooper Farm (same place that has a corn maze in the fall). AA would not go on the huge slides last fall, but this time, she spent many happy trips down the slides when we first arrived.

 Fresh frozen juice pops (from the Hyppo in St. Augustine); we had the strawberry and grapefruit pops.

 Potato crafts; make a creature!

 If you would like to see who has the "Snail of Approval", check out the extensive list and start farm hopping!