the modern farm

For our lunch break yesterday we rolled down Rittenhouse Road to the Schnepf Farms, an extraordinary farm that includes organic farming, retail operation, and family entertainment.  Their website gives the story of the birth and development of the farm itself as well as the history of Queen Creek.  Originally the area was called Rittenhouse, but in the 60s Mr. Schnepf, the original, and a couple others realized how Mesa and other communities were stretching out, and to preserve the area, they established a community that was named Queen Creek.

It was a good time to be there if you wanted to avoid crowds, which should arrvive at Easter, advertised on their website as Egg-Citement.  And when they host the Peach Blossom festival I'm sure they will have a load of folks coming in as well.

We're talking about going back for their weekend breakfast buffet - or order an omelette off the menu.  And we did buy some of their casa grande salsa, and a bottle of something else.  All guaranteed to be good, I'm sure.

For $1.50 you can grab a basket and go pick your own veggies.  We saw one family doing just that - at least the mother was.  They have rows and rows of whatever you want, all irrigated, all very healthy.

A model train (maybe 1/5 scale) circles the grounds at about 2 mph so we didn't ride it, but it looks appealing to seniors and children.  The people were really nice - too nice, probably, because they talked me into a sample of their chocolate. It was delicious.  And with no prompting, we purchased a caramel roll, the last one in the tray, and it disappeared this morning.  It had to go - it's not acceptable on Lonna's new diet.