Seven Oaks Market

01/31/2026

Just sayin...

Hope everyone's having a ball in the snow!

12/12/2025

Have you ever been to a magical German Christmas market? Glowing vendor booths filled with unique, artisanal products that make perfect Christmas gifts, along with warm drinks and food, music, and a little Christmas nip in the air. It will really put you in the Christmas spirit. I lived in Germany for a couple of years as a child, and I really miss this part of the Christmas experience.

Well, Johnson City is having possibly the closest thing we've ever had here, and it's this Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm at the Johnson City pavilion (where the Johnson City Farmers Market is held in warmer months). It won't be quite the same as the German ideal, but there will certainly be many vendors with handcrafted products that are not your same-old-same-old. Gifts that make it clear that the giver cares.

Make sure to come down and see us on Saturday. Who knows? This first Christmas market may be the start of a wonderful tradition in Johnson City, and you will be able to say, "I was there when it all started!"

12/09/2025

I wonder what I'll get from Santa if I leave some of these for him instead of cookies... I bet the reindeer won't get any!

Toasted marshmallows, melty chocolate, crisp Graham cracker, PLUS little flecks of peppermint candy - all freeze-dried for a crunchy taste of Christmas joy.

12/05/2025

There are two freeze-dried Christmas tree-shaped cakes in this bag - they fit together sort of like puzzle pieces, so it can be hard to tell what they are.

These cakes were very popular last Christmas. They're good enough in the original form, and tend to be hard to find the closer we get to the 25th. But as tasty as the original cakes are, they're even more compelling in the freeze-dried form. The white chocolate coating stays silky-smooth, and the white inner filling also remains soft and gooey, while the cake portion develops a very satisfying crunch. It's like a 3-ring Christmas circus for your mouth!

12/05/2025

Know someone obsessed with freeze-dried candy? How do you think they'd react to these ornaments we made to celebrate their obsession?

If you want to see them first-hand, we'll have some with us at the "Y'allidays" Christmas market at the Johnson City pavilion on Saturday, Dec. 13.

There's a back-story to these ornaments:

When I was between 12 and 14, my family lived in Germany. It was the first time I had my own spending money and the freedom to ride my bike down the street to the little grocery store in the middle of our little town. And that was where I discovered Haribo Gummy Bears (unknown to Americans at the time). The coming-of-age experience combined with a delicious "secret" discovery embedded gummy bears into my psyche in a strong way. So, decades later, when I found some gummy bear Christmas ornaments in a German Christmas shop, of course I had to have them. Who knows? Maybe these ornaments will appeal to someone's inner child in a similar way.

12/04/2025

Stocking stuffer?

12/03/2025

And here's the result of "Yacon Week", last week. A week of work for just over a gallon of yacon syrup. It might seem like a meager result, but for someone with blood sugar issues and a sweet tooth, this could literally be a life saver!

12/02/2025

It's been a VERY busy week! Sandwiched between a visit to see Brit at USC, and a family Thanksgiving getaway, last week was YACON WEEK!

Yacon is an Andean root vegetable with a sweet juice that can be boiled down to produce a syrup nearly identical to molasses, but with loads of prebiotic inulin and fructooligosaccharides, and a glycemic index of just 1. The plant grows all year with relatively little attention needed, but once the first frost hits, the roots have to be dug (and the sunflower-like plants cut up for composting). The tubers are laid out in the sun for a few days to "cure" (makes them slightly sweeter). The photo here is this year's harvest - 150 lbs. Once they're cured, they have to be peeled (sadly, the skin tastes bitter), which takes every bit of 3-4 days. Then the peeled tubers are pureed and squeezed through a nut milk bag to extract the juice. Finally, the juice is boiled down to 68 brix to make a delicious shelf-stable syrup.

The whole process is back-breaking and tedious. But it's also still fascinating to me, even in my fourth year with this plant, and it's something almost nobody has ever heard of, which to me at least, holds its own strange appeal.

Looking forward now to some down time.

Once I get caught up on everything that didn't get done last week!

11/27/2025

Today (and all days) we are grateful to God for His creation and Providence, and to all of our customers and friends for making our business so fulfilling. Thank you!

11/23/2025

11/18/2025

Shout out to Laura Dugan, our daughter! Laura's holding a freeze-dried camping meal we made from a recipe that she conceived and cooked. Laura is a brilliant biomedical engineer, a highly-accomplished musician, and a remarkably talented artist, but who knew she's also a gifted chef?

The photo was taken at Lake Louise during a family vacation last summer.