Art by Brendan O’Connor
The best part: the freshest eggs in town
Info/cost: Lake Meadow Naturals, 10000 Mark Adam Road, Ocoee; 321-206-6262; lakemeadownaturals.com; free
It lasts: an hour to an afternoon
If you’ve gone to a nice restaurant in this town – Luma, K, Scratch, Rusty Spoon or any other place that bothers to list the provenance of their ingredients – you’ve probably noticed the name “Lake Meadow Naturals” on the menu. Lake Meadow is a natural poultry farm owned and operated by Dale Volkert, meaning there’s a whole big mess of happy chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese running around, laying eggs for your breakfast (and also, sometimes, becoming your dinner). And there’s so much more: goats, bees, fruit trees, hydroponic towers growing herbs and vegetables; you can tour the grounds or just visit the farm store where they sell all that ultra-fresh bounty, as well as grass-fed beef and heritage pork. But it’s not just about shopping or eating – there’s a good vibe that flows throughout the grounds, the product of happy, organically raised animals and dedicated people working in harmony. The farm hosts farm-to-table dinners (like the upcoming Fresh From the Field to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Nov. 8), at which you can enjoy the peaceful, pastoral setting in a more adult, less grocery-bagging-with-the-kids kind of way.
This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2014.
