Stonyfield Fun

Hello Everyone!

Today being the first official day of spring, I wanted to wish you a Happy Spring Equinox! It was not so long ago that I was wishing you a Happy Winter Solstice, but it sure feels like it was. What a winter here in New England, we had 6 days without power, under layers of ice, snow storm after snow storm to contend with and me VERY tired of shoveling our long driveway over and over. But, here we are on the cusp of rebirth and I for one am singing a happy song! Perhaps one of my favorite enjoyments of spring is seeing the birds returning. I greet each new one I see with a happy "Welcome Back!". My telltale signs of spring include the return of the turkey vulture, red winged black bird and the great blue heron. I know the traditional-sign-of-spring bird is the robin, but see, we have robins that hang around all winter, so for us that's not the case. The other three are my signs, gifts of hope given to me in the time when I need them most. Birds, wonderful little dinosaur offshoots, aren't they?

Little Red and I were officially invited to Stonyfield Farm for a yogurt tasting. This was cool and a lot of fun. We went to their headquarters right here in Londonderry where we were met in the lobby by a life sized cow they have decorated with recycled yogurt container labels. Very cool. I truly love the fact that I can get organic yogurt made right here in my town. It costs a bit more, but is worth it, so yummy. And really, I can't beat local, now can I? We got to taste test 2 different blueberry and two different strawberry flavors and rate them on a bunch of categories. They did not pay me in money, but ohhh, they gave me free yogurt coupons and you know, to a coupon hound like me, that IS money! They also gave me a copy of Gary Hirshberg's book, shown in the above photo. It's autobiographical about how he started Stonyfield and his amazing ability to produce a successful organic product while still being a steward to the planet and making lots of money doing it. Great read if you are interested in companies that are helping the planet along the way. He tells about other businesses that share similar philosophies and I gleened a new appreciation for the companies that are getting it right, even more then I did before. Unfortunately, I had already gotten a copy of this book free when I sent in qualifying yogurt lids. They run LOTS of great promotions sending in yogurt lids. I've gotten the book free, voted for new flavor names, a year's subscription to Organic Gardening Magazine, donated money to my favorite charities and most recently will be getting a year's subscription to Prevention Magazine, cool man.

So, I find myself in possession of an autographed copy of "Stirring It Up: How To Make Money And Save The World". Hmmm...what to do with it?...I decided I would offer it up on the blog here! If there's anyone who'd like to have a hard cover copy of this wonderful book for absolutely FREE, I would love for you to have it. I only ask that when you are done reading it, you pass it along to someone who might find it equally interesting. I've learned a lot from it and would love to have others do the same. The only thing you need to do to win it is impress me with a trivia fact. Something about nature that you think I don't already know (I'm pretty knowledgeable about that passion of mine, so you'll have to really wow me, okay?). This should be fun, don't you think? Pop me an email with the trivia fact and I'll decide who is the winner once I have all the facts in. Okay, so it's a little silly, but I'm always up for new and fun things to learn.

Have yourselves a great day out there, ~Peacemom