Ocheesee Creamery Mini-Adventure

We somehow managed to sneak in a couple of family mini-adventures this week, but first can I talk a little bit about how hard it can be to get out the door anywhere with a toddler?! Jax will be 17 months in a few days and is definitely finding his independence quickly. Last Friday morning we were getting ready to head out for the day, he was not happy and was not afraid to tell us all about it. Needless to say, sometimes we’re all exhausted before we even start the day lol. But still we persist…because we ARE going to have a family day and we ARE going to enjoy it ;)

Anyways, once we finally loaded up and the car started moving, Jax calmed down and actually fell asleep. Maybe he was worn out from the morning too! Matt and I enjoyed the calm and used the drive to recharge. This trip took us about 35 minutes from home to a cool little farm in Grand Ridge.

The Ocheesee Creamery is a third generation dairy farm where you can buy delicious milk, ice cream and other items. Matt and I like eating simple when we can. We have a small garden in our yard and love cooking with the fresh veggies it provides. We also have a few chickens in our coop where we get a lot of our eggs. (Sometimes the girls get lazy or the weather throws them off and we have to buy them at the store). Naturally, the Ocheesee Creamery piqued our interest and we decided to visit for the first time about a year ago. I’ll share some of those photos later.

This was our second visit and we knew how yummy our ‘souveniers’ would be and were very excited. We knew Jax would know a little more about what was going on this time and would definitely enjoy tasting the ice cream! When you pull up at the creamery, you can see the rolling acres of green grass to either side and some of the dairy cows grazing. The fact that the cows are grass fed is one of the main reasons they claim that their products are so good (and better for you!). 

We decided to head inside the little store in front and purchase our haul. Inside, you can watch through glass windows as they pasteurize the milk right there. It’s pretty cool to see. They have different sizes of milk to buy and I wanted to get some chocolate milk this time for Jax to try (nice excuse mom!). We also loaded up on the ice cream. I picked out a half pint of salted caramel for my treat. Matt wanted the strawberry and the raspberry frozen yogurt. We picked up a pint of chocolate for Nana (my mom) too. 

By the way, the ingredients on my ice cream were milk, cream, sugar, vanilla, salt and guar gum as a stabilizer, that’s it! I was on the keto diet for a few months a while back and got some ‘fancy’ grass-fed butter for my bullet-proof coffees that Matt really liked. He had been itching to see if the creamery made butter as well, and they did! I’ll have to let you know if this is a hit with him too. We packed up all of our goodies in the ice chest with some rock salt that we picked up at the grocery store on the way. (We knew we wanted to stop and eat lunch on the way home and we wanted to make sure our ice cream wouldn’t melt!). 

Next came one of my favorite parts about a visit to the creamery…the farm! We hopped in the car and drove a few yards to the first fenced area where the cows were gathered up. The cows are very friendly and use to visitors. Jax and I walked over to the fence (they warned us that it’s electric, so don’t touch!), and talked to the cows. 

Jax’s vocabulary has exploded over the past few weeks and he’s even started with advanced words like ‘moo’. He’s also very into farm animals and all their sounds thanks to Mr. McDonald, so he enjoyed the up close and personal visit. By the way I love this soft jersey jumpsuit and will likely be living in it this summer! It's from Boutique by the Bay in Port St. Joe and only $35 (and has pockets!).

We rode down the other side of the farm stopping to say hello to each herd of cows. When we came last year they had some of the new calves on long leads out in the open where you could walk up and pet them. Here’s a few photos from then when Jax was about 6 months old. They also have special farm days throughout the year as well.

We waved goodbye to the farm and headed into Blountstown for lunch. I asked a friend who lives there for a recommendation and she suggested The SandBar & Grille. It was before noon when we got there so we had the place mostly to ourselves. (Thank goodness, because Jax is getting to the age where we are going to have to be outside restaurant people lol). Our server was super friendly and brought us a little toy tractor for Jax to play with. We got the yummy fried green tomatoes as an appetizer. We had already eaten two (Jax was hangry and we had to soothe the beast!).

Some of the menu items are named after the area and I got the 4 Mile Creek panini (ham, provolone etc) with pasta salad. 

Matt decided on the fish tacos, and macaroni and cheese. 

They were both delicious, but by the time our meals came, Jax was getting antsy, so he enjoyed dinner and a movie (Moana on mom’s phone). We try not to let the phone babysit or give him too much screen time, but we also try not to go insane. Everything was great and I was stuffed, so took the rest of mine to go for later. We’ll definitely eat here again!

We hopped back in the car and were back home just after noon. We seem to be early adventurers these days since we get up so early during the week and of course Jax is our alarm clock on the weekends. This is fine with us, because we had the whole afternoon left to play in the pool, grill hamburgers and rock on the back porch. Great start to the Godwin weekend!