Every once in a hot minute we get part of our 15 minutes of Fame.  One day, the GEICO Gecko had lunch on our sidewalk.  We also got to spend some time with Sam from nTelos.  We had our very own moment in a music video.  We look pretty good on film, though the television spots add a few pounds.

You may have seen folks filming more regularly in The Urban Farmhouse from time to time.  We’re pretty open about it, because we feel like we’re kind of creative, and we admire those talents so we give those folks run of the place.  Our most recent endeavor, though, has a larger purpose.

For the past year or so, we’ve hosted a regular series that you can watch on YouTube, Business Mondays.  Craig Forbes is President of The Richmond Venture Forum and Renee Fisher is a Partner at Vaco Resources.  Together, they represent some of the best and brightest in Richmond finance and entrepreneurship.  What’s cool is that they’ve lent their expertise as hosts of this web series that has a Who’s Who of a guest list.  They’ve had marketers, manufacturers, finance gurus, non-profit chairs, and a ton of other really cool people.  And they film them all sitting in the window of our Shockoe Slip restaurant.  A couple of weeks ago they sat down with Jim Cheng, Secretary of Commerce and Trade for the Commonwealth of Virginia.  He talked about the many things that make Virginia such a great place to do business.

We couldn’t agree more, Jim.

You can watch all of the Business Monday videos on their YouTube channel.

Kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it?  Can you really go “up” to the “south?”  Perhaps if your crossing a mountain, but still…

So unless you’ve been living under a rock, and we know that sometimes happens here in Richmond, we’ve officially opened our Midlothian location. 13872 Coalfield Commons Place, just off of Midlothian Turnpike in the new Millworks complex, at the corner of Woolridge and Coalfield Roads.   And what have people said so far?  Here’s some feedback from our Facebook page:

 “Love the artwork you added!”

“Pastries, cappuccino and preserves and breads were delicious! Very cozy and so glad we have something like this on this side of town!”

“Cozy, friendly, yummy!”

“You’re off to a great start. I had worried you wouldn’t be able to capture the atmosphere of the downtown location, but I’m happy to say you’ve managed it quite “well, despite being in a newer building.’

“We just got an Urban Market next to Midlo Library!”

Yeah, we’re right next to the Midlothian Library.

Some have cautioned that by moving to “suburbia” we’re diluting our message or somehow being untrue to the philosophy of The Urban Farmhouse.  Not so much.  We’ve always looked at Richmond as kind of like New York:  A city of Boroughs.  Much like New York has Brooklyn and Queens, we have The Fan, Church Hill, and our original home in Shockoe Slip.  And much like there are those in Manhattan who believe that everything North of 125^th Street is “Upstate,” there are those who believe that everything South of the James River is a Third World Country.  Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t that far and you don’t need a passport.  Think of it as the Long Island of Richmond. 

And we were pretty particular about our new location.  Sure, we went into a new building, but we chose the location based on geography and community.  We are in Midlothian Village, which has a pretty long and colorful history.  It’s been a working community for almost as long as Richmond, and that’s a long darned time.  And it’s full of small businesses, Mom & Pop restaurants, schools and wonderful people.  At one point, CNBC News called it a “perfect suburb.”  But with the history and the people, it’s so much more than that.

So now, as we await the eventual snow and hunker down with a Hummus and Root Veggie Sandwich, a musical interlude from some friends of The Urban Farmhouse.

If you’ve read this blog or are on our email list or read any of Richmond’s local rags – there has been a bit of news floating around recently.  We know that there are some who live under rocks and we are forever optimistic that we will one day attract new viewers and fans of The Urban Farmhouse who will take advantage of the vast and powerful interwebs to track us down, so we’ll give you a hint:

We’re growing up.

That’s right.  Getting bigger, both physically and mentally.  We can’t vouch for our emotional growth because we still get misty when Conto Novo plays that one song, but still.  Alright, we still get confused about “it’s, its & its’” so the mental thing is up for debate, but we’re hard at work on our second location.  That’s right, a brand stinking new The Urban Farmhouse located in the lovely hills of Chesterfield County.

In The Millworks at the corner of Woolridge & Coalfield Roads to be precise.  It’s almost smack dab next to the Midlothian Public Library if you get lost.

But anyway, it’s another location.

But does this mean that we’re changing our moral high ground when it comes to your Urban Farmhouse grub?  Heck no.

When you look at someone like MacDonald’s or Wendy’s or even your favorite chain restaurant (and we won’t judge), they all started out somewhere.  It was cheap and easy burgers or hand-made milkshakes.  It was nicely done inexpensive seafood for the whole family.  And then it got all big and bloated and accountants started planning the menus.  You ended up with pink slime instead of beef, whole wheat buns without any wheat, and vegetables that were sliced and frozen in a land far, far away.  Chickens grown in Maryland were shipped to Iowa to be butchered, sent to Oklahoma to be turned into little dinosaur shaped nuggets, frozen, and then sent back to Maryland to be deep fried in god-awful fats and served to the very farmers that grew the chickens.

And that’s assuming that the dinosaur shaped nuggets still contain a modicum of chicken.

And what will we be serving?  Honey from Hungry Hill Farm in Nelson County.  Delicious seasonal fruits from Agriberry.  Breads from The Flour Garden and eggnog from Homestead Creamery.  In other words, good, wholesome fresh stuff.  And if we can’t get it locally or from here in Virginia we’ll look for national partners who peddle things that are in keeping with our mission of serving you organic, sustainable and good foods.  We’ll leave the secret chemicals and excessive processing to the bigger guys.

Local musicians playing live tunes?  You bet.  You won’t see a Clear Channel promo or big beer logo behind our gang of minstrels.  And we’ll be as committed as ever to featuring the best local artwork on our walls, all created by exciting and up-and-coming artists.

And our message is stretching beyond the tired brick walls of our Cary Street restaurant.  We’ve spent the fall participating in the GrowRVA Farmers Market, and hope to keep that going in the spring.  Not everyone has the means to join us here, and even though we’re adding another location, being at a farmers market often gives access to good foods to people who wouldn’t see it otherwise.

Ironically, there’s a MacDonald’s on nearly every street corner in America.

And another darned thing:  Contrary to science and our current weather, it’s going to get cold at some point this winter.  And not everyone has a decent coat.  That’s why we’ve joined proverbial forces with a bunch of other like-minded small businesses here in Richmond for the inaugural Bundle Up RVA.  Go to B-Sides, The Fountain Bookstore, or any of the other participants and donate your used coats and other cold weather gear.  We’ll gather them up and distribute them to the various Richmond homeless shelters.  Drop off a coat – grab a sandwich.  And feel good about it all the way around.

So, sure, we’re getting a little bigger.  But we’re still just a little gathering place with tasty foods and refreshing beverages.  Just The Urban Farmhouse.

Supply and Demand, right?  That’s what drives prices?  It would seem to make sense that supply and demand drives the price of your groceries, just like everything else.  But the true cost of your food is calculated in ways that you could never have imagined.

It would seem that nature would play a large part in the cost of food.  A drought, a plague of locusts, or other natural calamity can wipe out a crop and drive up prices.  That certainly happened last year, when wildfires in Russia wiped out millions of acres of wheat.  Much of Europe then looked at countries like us for the grains that they needed, and a modest price spike occurred.

The real price hike, however, happened when commodity speculators sought to take advantage of this.  They began to trade crop futures like little boys with baseball cards, and each trader sought to cash in on the hope that wheat would become like gold.  For a while, it almost did.

Another factor in the price of food is the cost of oil.  Farmers need fuel for their tractors, and since not everyone lives on a farm, we often have to transfer their crops great distances to get them on our tables.  We have a somewhat unique conundrum in the United States, as we subsidize corn grown for bio-fuels.  While it is better for the environment than regular old gasoline, the federal money for ethanol crops leads many growers to reap for the gas tank first, and the breadbasket second.  As the cost of gas goes up, so does the cost of corn.

This high cost of corn also impacts the cost of meat.  Contrary to what statistics are telling us right now, people make more money now than ever before, and as a result are more inclined to dig into a t-bone.  As we become wealthier, more and more of us have access to and an appetite for meat.  Acting contrary to nature, we feed our animals a whole lot of corn, and as that cost goes up, so does the cost of your steak.

A couple of years ago, we all became anxious when gas went over $4 per gallon.  Do you know what else went over $4 per gallon?  Milk.  Does a body good, but won’t get your SUV to the store and back.  Much like meat, this cost was also directly related to the cost of fuel.  Between 2006 and 2007, at the height of our fuel crunch, the amount of corn grown to produce ethanol increased 52 percent.

That’s over half in a single year, and keep in mind that in 2007 it was almost 4 billion bushels of corn.

There is a husband and wife team who recently released a book, The Locavore’s Dilemma:  In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet.  While we preach about local food, and still try to maintain a pretty steady diet of foods from right around Richmond, they do make some good arguments that going strictly local is a boneheaded idea.

What do we do when it’s wintertime?  What if you live in an area like New York City?  Will people in Toronto never again taste a strawberry?

They did some research and found that when people jumped into a local food diet they generally didn’t fare very well.  Going local was often the result of things like war, and not having access to transportation for food often lead to millions of people starving.  One of the good things about our great carbon-soaked blue marble is that when there is a raging prairie fire in the wheat belt of Russia, they can count on friends like us and the Chinese to send them grain to make bread.  It’s like the Red Cross sending hot meals to a tornado-stricken town, but on a much larger global scale.

We like to meet the guys and gals that grow our stuff.  We like to, whenever we have the opportunity, go out and smell the earth, see the blooms, and watch things grow.  We like to offer meals that come from farms that have been growing and smoking and harvesting for decades.  Makes us trust them.

All of this “commodity-fuel-cost” stuff is just food for your brain.  Besides, what do we know?  We run a restaurant.