Wednesday, November 16, 2011

The Evolution of Miles Outside

Who would have thought three years ago after our birth of our first son, Miles, that we would be setting a path for our future? We would be envisioning something we needed, perhaps something other families needed, and driving this vision and this dream to a reality!

Just three years ago we were on our way to our first camping trip. We were driving six hours north of where we lived to go camping so that my husband and his family could sign up for an Ironman race. Sounds a little crazy, yes, but I guess that’s a great adjective to describe us—crazy (in a good way) haha! We knew that we were going to backpack part of the Appalachian Trail with Miles when he was 9-months-old. So we started thinking about all of the things we were going to need on the trip. All the things backpackers think of, but now plus a baby backpacker! We knew that we would be feeding him solids, but we knew we couldn’t bring glass jars on the trip. And since I planned on making all of his baby food at home, we didn’t bring that because it would need to be refrigerated and it would be in a glass jar.

Right then, I had the “ah ha!” moment. Dehydrated baby food! I mean it went hand-and-hand. What do backpackers eat? Dehydrated food. So what should a baby backpacker eat? Dehydrated baby food of course!

So I researched everything (as all mothers do!) I made sure there wasn’t anyone else doing dehydrated baby food, even though I knew there wasn’t. I made sure that you could feed babies dehydrated baby food. So I started dehydrating my homemade baby food in my own kitchen. I would feed it to Miles, and three other of my girlfriends’ babies that were the same age. I got positive and negative feedback with the different textures and the tastes of what each baby liked and disliked. After I got my first few recipes, we debuted at our local farmers market. And funny thing is it was almost a year to the day that we thought of the idea! We got great feedback and it was picked up by a couple of stores locally.

The minute we came up with the idea, I knew it was something special! Something different, something revolutionary! But as we grow into our parenting role, we realize (or at least I have realized) it is not the parents that change the life of our little ones… they are the ones who change our lives completely! 

On this blog, you can follow our day-to-day journey as a company, and as a family, as we grow and try to reach as many little tummies as we can!


Enjoy Outside!
Courtney Washmuth
Live, Love, Eat and Grow