Every Saturday morning at 4th & Guadalupe, Austin hosts a fantastic morning market
featuring vendors of all sorts hocking wares ranging from soap to screenprints; from sourdough to seaweed…
One of the most interesting things about all these Local Flavor style businesses are the people who operate them and the variety of ways they are forging ahead to create a new and different kind of world through their work and the local goods they produce.
Sarah Ray at Confituras is just one of those people. When she’s not helping to produce locally sourced jams, jellies, and preserves at Confituras, she’s studying electrical design and has plans to move to Montana to work on a solar farm community. Awesome!
Just next door, Imagine Lavender sells these super smellerrific soaps!
In true Local Flavor style, Julie from Imagine Lavender also makes gorgeous silver jewelry at Formplicity.
The Carlson’s keep the whole family involved with their Swede Farm Artisanal Goat Dairy. Christin is the oldest of 12 children!
Buddha’s Brew is the place to go to “awaken your energy” with their fresh, local Kombucha. Started in 2004, their teas have become so popular that they’re now sold at Whole Foods (or as I refer to it — “Whole Paycheck”) in Houston and Dallas.
Serious Sourdough is the home of “Seriously Good Gluten Free” baked goods.
Straight from the Vine features healthy soul foods.
Local Baby offers local foods from “farm fresh to bib mess.”
Austin Sea Veggies features aquaculture seaweed.
Get your Bokashi compost bin at Microbial Earth Farms .
Composting is a great way to make use of your used food scraps, coffee grounds, eggshells, and more to create rich fertile soil for your garden instead of sending it off to the landfill. I have a compost bin in my yard. It’s surprisingly easy to create and pretty cool to watch the cycle of of life. Call me kooky but I love going out into the yard and turning the compost to see all the bugs and wormies converting my veggie waste into soil for my garden so i can plant and eat more veggies and use the waste to make more soil to plant more veggies to make more soil to plant more veggies to make more soil and so on and so on… Heehee!
Meanwhile in the land of cool apparel, Will Heron is an Illustrator and Screenprinter. His tees are awesome and you should totally buy one.
South Austin’s (my hood) So.A.P People have the most amazing smelling soap I’ve ever laid a nose on. I met them last year and bought some for myself and for family as gifts for the holidays. They loved it. I remember watching my little cousin walking around the X-mas tree all night literally holding the soap up to her face and inhaling like it was the greatest thing she’d ever smelled. Good thing it’s all natural.
Their motto is very south austin too:
“Strong enough for a dirty Hippy, gentle enough for a dirty CEO!”
Love it.
Be Groovy Be Green features live children’s shows and recycled art projects. They encourage children to be friendly and eco-active thru stories, songs, and play!
They’re also looking for some talented kids for their Austin Has Talent workshops. These kids are adorable!
Johnson’s Backyard Garden is a 200 acre community supported farm only fifteen miles east of downtown Austin. Over 1,000 Austinites enjoy their homegrown, organic vegetables, herbs and flowers. They deliver boxes weekly or biweekly to members at convenient neighborhood locations.
I spoke with fellow Photographer and foodie, Christian Bowers from the Austin Food Journal at Bola Pizza for some time about the local Austin scene, how he got started, etc. Much like Local Flavor and I, he started with a blog and some great pictures. These days, Bola has been keeping him so busy, he barely has time to work on the blog. Now there’s a man I can relate to!
Speaking of busy men, last but certainly not least, I ran into the man who inspired me to start all of this, my friend Andy Zubik of the Zubik House. I was there when Andy launched his food trailer in the very beginning on the east side. I offered up suggestions for decor and marketing – fancy ideas like x-mas lights and flyers, yknow…
Andy calls his food “Texas Czech” and features dishes like Czech Benedict, unique kolaches, and his famous fried strawberry.
Nowdays, the Zubik House is growing by leaps and bounds. Andy recently quit his day job to run it full time and is hoping to get into a much needed, much larger trailer soon.
Along with approximately 34 other unique local vendors in Austin, the Zubik House will also be taking part in the 2nd annual Gypsy Picnic on Oct 23, 2011. This year’s festival will be expanded to feature the Sustainable Food Center Demo Tent , a craft beer bar, live music, a market, a cook-off, Mellow Johnny’s bike station, the Prius V Creation Station and photo booth, and Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day area.
UPDATE:
Local Flavor Productions has some plans in the works to hopefully incorporate this same sort of model into the monthly food truck rally now happening in our local Tampa!! Keep checking back for more info!
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