The winery at Walker Honey Farm near Temple Texas offered a wonderful variety of wines to taste and farm fresh honey products. The sparkling Mead in the Grouser is absolutely delicious. And the peanut butter and honey mix can only be described as decadent.
…at Lake Tawakoni RV Campground at Point, Texas.
Original 1910 orphanage
We found a wonderful and historic location in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The St. Joseph Center is a non-profit organization based on a historic building that was once a children’s orphanage run by the Catholic Church. The impressive structure was built in 1910 and currently there are several Artist’s Studios inside the spacious old building that houses other functions.
Currently the St. Joseph Center is an educational and working farm. The grounds are really beautiful. The first thing Sher and I did was to take a stroll around the main building, enjoying the old statuary and flower beds. We also got our first look at the garden plots. Turns out that there is a large citizen garden space where locals can come and, for a modest fee, have their own personal garden plot.
Bull, right and cow
Recently sheared sheep
The Farm Stand, in other words the store, offers locally sourced goods ranging from in season produce to canned veggies, jams and jellies, pickles and cheeses. Local sourced flour, grains, and even meats are for sale. We certainly took advantage of Michelle’s opening the store for us and we made several purchases including pickles, pickled green beans and peppered Colby Cheese.
Raised garden boxes
View of the lovely grounds
There are quite a few head of livestock on the farm. Steve directed us to pastures and pens where goats, sheep and beef cattle make their homes. The sheep had recently been sheared ready for the hot summer. I enjoyed seeing the good quality cross bred cattle. Several calves were still on their mothers and would have been fall calves. There are also chickens supplying a great supply of free range eggs.
We bought honey. This is where it was made.
Sher and I liked visiting this educational farm. Owner’s Steve and Michelle made our visit to this sustainable operation very enjoyable. Oh, least we forget, there are two sets of beehives, and we purchased some very, very good honey, produced by the honey bees right there on the St Joseph Center. Here is the farm website.
We bought delicious fresh honey from these beehives. We were at a fun nonprofit farm.
Quite a view from our RV site
Spotted this mural of Scott Joplin the musician in Texarkana. I think this was on the Texas side of town.
Our neighbors tonight
Sher and I had a wonderful stop at a winery outside of Jackson, Tennessee. The Century Farm Winery, located on a beautiful estate provided a warm welcome to this well established and well known business.
The tasting procedure was different than most: you get three free tastings, charges for tasting only come into play if you have more than three. We certainly enjoyed the wide variety of wines that we tasted. All of the wines are made on site
We purchased a chilled bottle of their Nashberry fruit wine. This wine is made from a blend of their blueberry wine and blackberry wine. We both zeroed in this wine during our tasting. Absolutely delicious!
As a bonus, our host offered tastings of their two “wine slushies”. One was Sangria based while the second was a Peach Bellini. My was that Peach Bellini something. What a refreshing treat.
The next time you find yourself in West Tennessee head to Jackson and the Century Farm Winery. This 150 year old family business is worth a visit, and there is room to park you RV as well. This is the link to the winery website.
Sher and I are fully vaccinated. Whew. The CDC advice for folks like us has been very encouraging, and we were able to enjoy going to a winery with our son and his fiancé near Columbus, Ohio.
The Wyandotte Winery is a well established family owned winery with a pleasant and comfortable facility. Tasting was easy, with a dollar per taste cost. We also added cheese and cracker and meat and cheese plates to munch on and accompanying our sampling.
We enjoyed the tasting and bought a couple of bottles and even got a couple of glasses for our collection. But mostly we enjoyed being out in the world again. Seeing and interacting with people is something we haven’t done in, well, a while now. And of course it was wonderful to see our son and our grandkids who we haven’t seen in well over a year. Before we headed to Ohio we also visited another son and his family. There we were introduced to our newest grandson who was born December 20th. What a treat to hug family again!
There are few things on Earth that are more stunning than a colorful sunset view of the Sonoran Desert. This image was taken west of Tucson, Arizona.
