All You Need Is Love

All you need is love, all together now
All you need is love, everybody
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
(Beatles – All You Need Is Love)

Such a simple thought, requiring such simple actions…love really is all that is needed to make it all better, turn it all around, put a smile on someone’s face.

Kindness, a hug, a hand, a thoughtful word…it makes the day a bit brighter and people a bit happier.

I am all about showing the love, making everyone happy, working my magic…I love to see the smile on people’s faces, I love to know that perhaps I spread a bit of sunshine, in someone’s day, to make it just a bit better…

And, all the market needs is just a little more love in this last hour that we are open! It’s a strong market and we are staying open just so you can feel the weekly love!

We look forward to your orders, we look forward to sharing the market love fest!

You have an hour…

Peace and Love,
Cosmic Pam

This Must Be The Place

Home, is where I want to be
But I guess I’m already there…
(Talking Heads – This Must Be The Place)

There was a summer where all I listened to was, The Talking Heads, and their off shoot, The Tom-Tom club. Talking Heads always remind me of that carefree summer during college. Not a worry, not a care, just summer jobs with a big dose of fun. We all went to concerts, we hung out at local parks, were getting ready to enter our junior years in college bringing big changes, big plans. Half of that summer had me living in my hometown, half down in my college town. Summers had a magical feel down in that town. A bunch of us lived in a house, worked, and since I was the VP of my sorority, at that time, I was in charge of getting things ready for fall rush, getting the sorority floor all spruced up for the sisters who would be moving back, for rush parties, for the beginning of our year.

I remember, one day, as a bunch of us were decorating the floor, we had a stereo blaring Talking Heads, we had a cooler of illegal beer, we were all laughing and talking. This song came on and I remember stopping, looking at the sun coming through the windows, listening to the lyrics and looking at my beloved sorority sisters. I had never known such a feeling of home. Of peace. Of sisterhood and love. I am still so close to so many of those girls even after so many years.

Home…it’s where your heart pulls you. It’s where the people welcome you, love you, laugh with you. It can be anywhere, at any time, with any people. There have been a few places, a few times, that have totally engulfed me and it felt like home.

This market feels like a little piece of home to me. The little local family that we have built. The goodness that we all are centering around. The visions, the goals, the respect. When I think of this market, it warms my heart and my soul. Just like a welcome home. This must be the place…our little local place called home.

We are open until 10pm, tonight! It is shaping up to be another great market!! I would love to see it climb to beat even our best record to date!

Take a bit of time, look at the market offerings, look at the seasonal items that are about to leave us, get to know our new producers, get your orders in so we can get it all ready for you when we see you on Thursday!

It’s always our pleasure to welcome you back…

Peace and Love,
Cosmic Pam

Market Announcements

Just a few announcements that I wanted to post but did not want them to get lost in my Weblog of the day!

This is from Kent, of Nettle Creek…

I’ve added a new chicken product for Nettle Creek Farm and Ranch. We now have half birds that are ideal to put on the Grill! We have also added smaller birds that are perfect for the Crock Pot! And we have lowered prices on some of the larger birds.

From the Ruff family as a reminder…

Lee and Jennifer Ruff of End of the Road Farm would like to invite you on Sunday, June 22nd at 2 pm for a guided farm tour of their sustainable, draft-horse powered homestead. Samples of various goodies made from their sorghum, spelt flour, and pastured eggs will be provided.

Please wear comfortable walking shoes, as you’ll tour the crop fields, mobile chicken and pig pens, two market gardens, and horse paddock/pasture.

We ask that children be well supervised, as this is a working farm as well as our home, and as such, buildings are off-limits.

We look forward to sharing the afternoon with you, and hope you will join us with questions, enthusiasm, and an interest in seeing how and why we have chosen this wonderful farming life! Thank you!!

From LuAnn of Everyday Organics: (LuAnn and her sister, Lori, bring us the lovely granola products!)

Did you know…..The consumption of refined sugar is linked to: Obesity, Diabetes, Hypertention, High Blood Pressure, Inflammation, Depression and more?

Join us on June 24 at 6:30 p.m. for a free workshop designed to permanently change your relationship with sugar!!

So much going on in the locavore world!!

Peace and Love,
Cosmic Pam

Beautiful Day!

It’s a beautiful day
Don’t let it get away
It’s a beautiful day…(U2-Beautiful Day)

I wake up before the sun is up. I begin my baking in the very early hours of most mornings. The Cosmic soul kitchen is all windows, and my most favorite times of the day are watching as the light comes pouring in the windows and door flooding the whole kitchen with beautiful colors of sunshine and light. My other favorite time is when the sun is setting. It’s a lovely view with different splashes of color that spill into the Cosmic kitchen.

This morning was one of those mornings. I was busy with bread dough, downing coffee, listening to the tunes that keep me motivated, and watching as the golden light lit up my kitchen. It just makes you feel so alive, so happy, and like everything is golden and everything is beautiful!! It sets the tone for the whole day.

It’s Monday at our little market, the morning is rain free, the sun was smiling for a moment, and it’s just an overall beautiful moment. Take this time to think about the start of your week, what you will need to get you through, and place your market orders! Your life becomes so beautifully peaceful when you shop with us and then turn the work over to us. All you need to do is show up at market pick up, we hand you the Locally Grown market goodness, and you are on your way to more beautiful days without the stress of trying to shop in crowded places, the stress of doing all of the work, and the lack of local love…

And, where else do you get entered into a Market Love drawing for the Market Love summer playlist??

We are here, it’s a beautiful day, and we want to make it a beautiful week for you! Get your orders in!

Peace and Love,
Cosmic Pam

Daughters

On behalf of every man, looking out for every girl
You are the God and the weight of her world…(Daughters-John Mayer)

Happy sunny Sunday, Locavores, and Happy, Happy Father’s Day to the lovely men who are fathers, in whatever shape or form that may be.

Father’s Day is always a mixed bag for me. Basically, I grew up without a father. My father left, zipped off on his way, see you later, it’s been swell, and goodbye. I have no idea what he does with his life. I have no idea at all about the man who was supposed to be so important in my life.

But, this is not a depressing Weblog nor do I ever, I repeat ever, feel sad for this life changing event that happened when I was young. Because, although it could have made me sad, sent me to therapy, made me bitter, it did quite the opposite.

I was lucky to actually accumulate so many fatherly impacts in my life from so many of the greatest men I will ever know. My grandfather, of course, the man that I adored and still adore even though he has been gone for a good amount of years. The day that my dad hit the road was the day that my grandfather took my hand and led the way.

I grew up in the West End of our town and was lucky enough to have so many families watching over me. So many of the dads of my neighborhood pals took on the role of being the fatherly impacts in my life. They made sure I always had a ride to a practice, a game, they made sure I had enough spending money if they were taking a carload of all of us friends to places. They would step in and give me advice, played catch with me and taught me how to swing a bat for softball.

My best friends dads all adored me. They made sure I went on family vacations with their families, they took me out to family dinners. They always made sure I was accounted for. I was the adopted daughter to so many families.

Dads of old boyfriends were always so kind to me and in fact, long after the old boyfriend was history, I remained, and still remain a friend to some of these fathers. One of them is still on a few downtown boards where my Cosmic shop is located. On my opening day of the Cosmic shop, he walked through the door and exclaimed…You did good, kid!

So, while I didn’t grow up with the traditional kind of father figure, I was lucky enough to grow up with many, many amazing father figures. They all go into the person I have become, and they are why I celebrate this day.

I never ask myself how my life would have been had my father stuck around. I ask myself how my life would have been had I not had so many fatherly impacts from so many fathers watching over me.

Today, I am sending out the local love to all of you amazing fathers who somehow, somewhere, everyday, are making an impact on both your own child’s world and also on the worlds of others. You don’t even need to have kids to be out there making a difference in someone’s or something’s life.

Celebrate the day! Celebrate the love!

Celebrate how all of the positive influences that I have talked about also give a positive influence to our local community, our local environment, our local vibe. It all goes hand in hand. And, this little market is proud to be a part of the local positive vibe.

We are open until Tuesday evening at 10pm…and we are always here for you, making that positive impact.

Peace and Love,
Cosmic Pam

Days Like This

Oh, my mama told me, “There’ll be days like this”…(Van Morrison-Days Like This)

You know how you groove along, everything perfectly planned, executed, accomplished, organized? Well, you know when you THINK it’s all going to play out like that and then all you get is a string of a comedy of errors? One more thing gone wrong? And, it becomes so comical that you can’t even get flustered or upset or irritated? When all you can do is just laugh and go with it? When you are thankful that as things keep unfolding, you have an amazing sense of humor, can operate under pressure and then adopt the attitude that it is what it is?

Well, that would be our market, tonight..lol. It was one mishap after another from the time I walked through the door of the YMCA right on up until I walked out of the door. Nothing earth shattering and nothing was ruined but just incident after incident. Luckily, I run the market with the help of my two assistants and fortunately, we were able to laugh, all night, and keep the pace.

Luckily, this market has the best customers in the world who just went with the flow, waited around and chatted. Shared stories, gave compliments, and made the whole scene that much lighter.

We have a wonderful staff and leadership at the YMCA who, yep, you guessed…have a great sense of humor, too. It was a night that all you could do was smile, laugh, and show everyone a great deal of love with a great dose of smiles.

So, as I open this market, I also put this day to rest. Thank you for one of our best market in sales, this past week! Thank you for your continued support in local love. Thank you for all of the kind compliments on this blog, my sense of humor, the Market Love playlist contest, and your overall satisfaction for what we bring to you, each week!

A few announcements!

*Yes, another week, another chance to win a Market Love playlist cd!

*Now that we are celebrating the summer months, our evenings are getting longer. Your market manager and assistants have decided to extend market closing time on Tuesdays until 10pm!!!! You can have your summer fun but still get your orders in on time!

*We say goodbye to Beth and her asparagus…so sad!! Thank you, Beth, for keeping us in the best asparagus during the season! We look forward to next asparagus season, already!

*This could be the last week for The Berry Patch’s strawberries!!! These seasons are so short!!!

*Garlic Scapes…get them now!!!! They have a short span of time are a delicacy in the garlic world…so good and yet are not here for long!

*As we say goodbye to some of the seasonal produce, we will welcome other vendors with more and more produce as we progress into the season!

The market will now open, we love you for being so loyal, and we thank you for understanding that there will be days like this…

Peace and Love,
Cosmic Pam

Soul Kitchen

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen
Warm my mind near your gentle stove…
(The Doors – Soul Kitchen

Soul Kitchen…if you follow the Cosmic Charlie Facebook page, you know that the Cosmic kitchen is often referred to as the Cosmic Soul Kitchen.

Soul kitchen comes from my early love of, The Doors and Jim Morrison. It also reflects my early California days when I lived in Venice Beach, grooved to the bohemian scene, absorbed the tales and haunts of earlier times from some of my favorite rock stars. Don’t even get me started on my time spent living in San Francisco and my love of The Grateful Dead:)

Anyway, in my early, early teens, I had a deep love of all things The Doors. My room was plastered with posters, my early college dwellings were a meca of posters of Jim…

When I moved to Los Angeles, I knew that my very first apartment out of college needed to be in Venice Beach. I knew that The Doors used to hang at a soul food restaurant called, Olivia’s, in Venice Beach. I loved being so close to so much rich history in the rock world. I also had befriended people who lived up in Laurel Canyon which thrilled me to be able to travel the roads and imagine where Jim lived, where Joni lived, where all the magic happened in the 60s and 70s.

Anyway…I have adopted, Soul Kitchen, as the Cosmic baking area, with a loving nod to my love of The Doors. Tunes blare when I am hard at work at baking, and so it seems appropriate that this tune joins our Market Love playlist.

And, with that, we did a HUGE playlist drawing…here are the week’s winners…

*Laurie Cuddington
*Julia Gibson
*Cortney Brugh
*Robert Munch

Congrats!!!

The drawings continue, each week!!! The fun never ends at our little locally grown market!

And, the Cosmic Coupon of Love winner is…

*Kay Schenkel!!

Way to rock the market, locavores!!

See you all at pick up, tomorrow night!!

Peace and Love,
Cosmic Pam

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Thank you so much for ordering from this little local market, this week!!

As always, we appreciate you, your business, and your local love!

Tomorrow, the four winners of the Market Love playlist will be announced as will the Cosmic Coupon of Love winner!!

If you ordered, we will see you at pick up on Thursday! If you missed out, we open the market on Thursday evening…see you soon!

Peace and Love,
Cosmic Pam

Last Call!!

You have 15 more minutes…go, order, be glad that you were able to grab some local goodness!!

The countdown is on….hurry!!

Come Together!

It’s that time on a Tuesday evening!!

The market will be closing, soon, and we need you to get your orders in!! You may even have a few extra minutes because I just finished closing the Mechanicsburg Farmers and Artisans market!

Go work your magic and make me happy!

Peace and Love,
Cosmic Pam