It was a cool and breezy spring morning when we stopped in to visit the kitchen at Wild Folk Bakery. Macy from Wild Folk had just pulled a fresh batch of croissants out of the oven and the aroma was drifting outdoors. There is no better smell than freshly baked breads!

Selecting animals for the best traits, breeding, pasturing, and feeding until the mix is just right to ensure you a great local product from their family farm properties right here in SW Missouri.

Raising Food to a Higher Standard. That is the mission statement that Josiah and Shyanna from Every Living Thing Farm live by. After watching a moving food documentary several years ago, the couple began to contemplate the meat they consumed and the quality of life the animals endured.

Abby's flowers are both enormous and strong, the product of patient care and slow cultivation. The results rival anything found at a grocery store. To fully enjoy them, she says, display them in full sunlight and water often. And if you want to enjoy the mums year after year, plant before the ground freezes.

“I see people going for the showy, glitzy look instead of the real flavors and it just disappoints me. Pie is part of who we are. There’s a tradition here of flavor and richness. You need to go back to that. Eat real food.”

“There’s people who make soaps, and there are soap artists. It’s different. I’m a soap artist.”

“I grew up with old-fashioned rag rugs in my home and I like the old-fashioned part of it. It’s an authentic, old craft. It’s been around since primitive times, when they wove reeds and grasses. They didn’t have plastic bowls and things. They wove and did it by hand. That was weaving. They carried water, they made mats to sleep on.”

“I have a vision of retiring from education in five more school years and being fully prepared to continue with the growing. I want to lean towards flowers. But I have to find the people that need them.”

It’s hard to miss Glenda. She’s the tall Texan with a big, colorful tablecloth. She’s always smiling. She greets everyone who passes by, even if they don’t greet back. She says "yes sir" and “sure ma’am” with all the loyalties of her military-brat childhood. And she always works her farmstand solo.

Five years ago, baker Gina Campbell lost 80 pounds from cutting wheat, corn, and soy from her diet. But when she started eating wheat products again, 50 pounds came back.

"I knew, then, that's the problem," she says. "But not having bread is like cutting off a limb!"

So she set out on a search for an alternative. After disappointing experiments with various gluten-free flours, she found a magic solution in spelt.

"It literally almost made itself. That's why I call it, 'The Magic Spelt.' It looks good, it tastes good."

Though not exactly gluten-free, it tends to be less reactive than common commercial wheat. It's one of the oldest cultivated crops in human history and is rumored to have first been used more than 8,000 years ago. Whole grain spelt products are high in protein and fiber, making it a great addition to modern diets.

When Campbell first started working with spelt, the bulk of her baking experience was in sweets like cupcakes and cookies. It took several rounds of trial and error, but she finally found a series of recipes and methods that work for her. At market, she sells whole and white spelt sandwich loaves, round loaves, white baguettes, frozen biscuits, and tortillas. Though not certified organic, she seeks ingredients that are as naturally-sourced and organic as possible, and even employs local honey for a sweetener.

Stop by her booth every Saturday for a free sample of her sandwich bread, and be sure to slather on some complimentary butter!

"Every plant has a purpose." This explains his riotous garden, an ambitious amalgam of straw bale beds, leafy greens beautiful enough to display in wedding bouquets, self-seeding garlic, walking onions, and a plush carpet of native plants -- say, milkweed and tiny confederate violets, just to name a few -- too precious to remove.

Fifteen years and two kids ago, Cortney and Dewain Riddle had a problem: their newly-purchased property was so overrun with grasshoppers that their window screens were falling apart. That's where the chickens came in. …

Leslie Petri and her husband, Buddie Brooks, never considered themselves unhealthy or overweight, but when a doctor called Brooks “obese”, it was time for an overhaul.