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My neighbor Terri said her cousins told her about a cool grocery store near Washington, MO, with all local grocery, produce, and meats, and we went to check it out, driving about 25 minutes to Old Highway 100, before you actually get to Washington, and after a while we saw on the roadside a kind of tumbledown farm stand. Was this it? "This can't be it," said Terri. "My cousins said it had a deli and cafe," and GPS pointed us half a mile farther and we found it: the Farm to You Market at 5025 Old Highway 100.

The place is an old factory refashioned into a grocery store, with aisles and freezers and checkout lanes and all. Terri and I rolled our carts once-around-the-store to check it all out, and talked with the owner. The farm we'd first seen, with the tumbledown stand, was his. This store was way different! Two young women staffed the deli; it was impossible not to order the "Peppered Pig" sandwich (peppered pork salami, jalapeno cheese) and the fruit salad as a side, and oh the delight when it arrived on marbled rye bread, my favorite. Terri had the turkey sandwich. There was indeed a cafe. I'd also grabbed a one-serving-sized bottle of local peach wine.

So I bought sausage, two reasonably-priced Porterhouse steaks from grass-fed beef, honey, horseradish mustard, an acorn squash, some peaches, and Terri bought among other things some fresh butter churned at the store (and later shared it). The most awesome items I saw were the many goat cheeses and huge bags of shelled pecans. I even sampled the homemade bologna. I asked the farmer/owner (he has a beard)  if he would one day please stock fresh-milled wheat flour, because the St. Louis area has none; the nearest mill I could locate is in Louisville, KY. He said the buyer would look into it.

In the meantime this will be my source of organic beef and pork, and will have another Peppered Pig sandwich for sure. They will also cook you breakfast. Check it out.

The Old French Trading Post

Toured the private historic site Fort LaCharrette with its proprietor, architectural historian Wheelock Crosby Brown, who showed me around the oldest horizontal-log cabin west of the Mississippi and the fur-trading post founded in 1762 by Frenchman Joseph Chadron and his Osage Indian wife. Lewis and Clark visited Fort LaCharrette, the last white settlement on their way west, in 1804. Brown, a specialist in historic restorations, saved the buildings from ruin and lovingly restored or rebuilt every inch with original materials or as close as he could get. The cabin, trading post and authentic outbuildings perch on a bluff high above the Missouri River near Washington, Mo., and Brown (the bearded guy; degree from Stanford) flies there the old French flag and the 17-star American flag of Lewis and Clark's time. He gives tours, by appointment, to groups or to individuals such as myself. I got to sit in an 18th-century chair hollowed out of a log and upholstered with a blanket, and listen as Brown described the Chadrons' business and home lives. The fireplaces work.

Brown explained that Fort LaCharrette wasn't a military fort. Back then, anyplace people could run for safety and shelter was called a fort. A "charrette" is a wooden wagon (pictured) of the kind that Joseph Chadron filled with furs he bought or bartered from white and Indian trappers, and took down the bluff to a boat and to St. Louis to resell.

Things to remember: "Osage" is from the French "Aux sage," meaning "wise ones." "Missouri" is from the Siouxan, "Ouimisourite," meaning "men of long canoes." Here's another article about Fort LaCharrette.