The Hunt for Proper Packaging...

Here it is June already! Things have been rather busy around here, working hard to make sure production stays ahead of demand, while constantly on the lookout for better ways to provide the healthiest food and snacks for your family companion. By now, those of you feeding Charley Chow to your pets will have noticed some changes in your frozen food, but only on the surface. For everyone else; we've just upgraded our packaging!

Charley Chow containers are made from bagasse: unbleached sugar cane fibers reclaimed after refining. These new lids are of the same material as the bowls, and the uniform sizes make them easy to stack in the freezer. Spike's Chicken Salad will continue to be sold in 20oz containers for a few more weeks, and then also change to the new style. These 16, 32, and 48 oz flat square containers are biodegradable, so please recycle or compost. They do break down slowly unless shredded; I let the Tasting Team do the shredding.

Speaking of packaging - this next item will only impact those customers buying through Fall Line Farms and Local Roots online farmers markets. In a continuing effort to reuse, recycle, and avoid waste in any way possible, your orders will soon be arriving in soft thermal bags and insulated lunch boxes with your labels stuck to animal print duct tape. In order for this to work as a decrease in plastic and paper bags, you must send them back after each order pickup! I've scoured local thrift stores for suitable containers and hope to have enough on hand every week, but much depends upon you! Please leave these DogTown Lounge containers with the coolers at your pickup location, so they can begin to wend their way back to me. Thanks in advance!

Catnip is getting fluffy and green. Squash, and beets are up and thriving, ready for inclusion in future batches of Spike's Chicken Salad. Here's a list of some of the local farms that produce our fresh ingredients: 

Frog Bottom, Georgiatown Farm, Heath Farm, Origins Farm
Pine Fork Farm, Pleitez Produce, Rockahock Farm LLC,
Rockcastle Farm, Rocking F, Sunny Vale Farm, LLC, 
Tomten Farm, Tuckahoe Lamb & Cattle Co., Village Garden, Wandering Cow Farm, Whispering Winds Farm



Please look for DogTown Lounge frozen pet foods at the Little House Green Grocery, where you'll also find more healthy products from these, and many other growers, producers and artisans in Virginia.

As for our foster girl Vela - well, she deserves a whole page of her own. She's presented something of a challenge, with quite a stubborn resistance whenever things don't quite go her way. Slow progress is going on all the time, but she's keeping us all on our toes. With the warmer weather, we've discovered something she really enjoys a LOT - a wading pool! 


She clearly knows all about the joys of splashing in shallow water, and gets very excited each time it's refilled, racing around in happy loops and circles, before landing with a splash to stand panting with a big smile. Fletcher prefers to avoid water completely.

Vela, pronounced Vayla, is a word of many meanings, but as a Sikh name for a baby girl, it means "time." It's clear that Vela will need plenty of time, so it's a fitting name for her.