Homegrown Happy Valley

Get your canvas bags ready: it’s time to kick off Homegrown Happy Valley’s first annual Eat Local Challenge! Beginning with the opening of our summer farmer’s markets and concluding at the end of Labor Day weekend, we hope to inspire you to eat locally this season.

What is local? Local is usually a 150-mile distance from where you live, but you can define it as an area near you (such as your county or state).

In 2005 four women in San Francisco challenged friends, family and neighbors to eat food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius of their city.  Since then other local food movements have cropped up (excuse the pun) all over the country.  In the process of changing the way we eat, those women gave us a new word: locavore.

Also known as localvores, the label defines people who eat most of their food from farmer’s markets, local producers, or their own backyards. In 2007 The New Oxford American Dictionary chose locavore as its word of the year. And Mac recently launched a Locavore iPhone application; the feature will tell you what’s in season in your state and help you find nearby farmer’s markets.

Spring cleaning? If you’re a parent that probably means boxing up those fleece, footy pajamas and picking up some cotton bedtime threads for your kids. Here’s a chance to turn a routine purging exercise into a community deed times two.

Step one: Buy a pair of the PJs pictured below, which  are either locally made or sold at a locally-owned shop. Sorry kid, no, Spider Man or Tinker Bell here, but your mom will be much happier looking at something else for a change.

Tait Farmer Erin McKinney: Get the feeling she whistles while she works? (photo courtesy of Kelly Chubb '2007 PSU Advertising Alum)

Tait Farm’s spring season officially begins this week. Tait is one of many area farms with a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that allows consumers to buy fresh, locally grown food directly from the field. Tait offers two membership shares: full year (January-December) and half year (May 19-November 24). Through the winter and early spring, full-year members have been visiting the farm for bi-weekly distributions–lots of organic carrots and potatoes–assembled in crates at Tait’s shop. But starting Tuesday, old and new members converge in the barn behind the shop for the first of the weekly pick-ups. We caught up with farmers Erin McKinney and Steve Spanelli while they were washing lettuce and preparing for the kickoff.

Add Fraser Street Deli (which names all of its sandwiches after local celebs, including former PSU basketball great Amaechi) to the growing list of restaurants touting local ingredients. Pepper ham, salami, capicola and provolone on a freshly baked panini may be the ultimate in carnivore, localvore indulgence.

Asparagus is filling up baskets, spring onions are popping, and strawberries and rhubarb are on their way. (I can taste the rhubarb crisp already.) To celebrate the most delicious time of the year, Homegrown Happy Valley will be kicking off its inaugural Eat Local Challenge on Friday, May 29.

Coinciding with the first State College Farmer’s Market of 2009, the Eat Local Challenge hopes to inspire you to eat locally this season.

My new favorite earrings! A fabulous Etsy find from Contempo Jewelry Designs.

I love shopping for handcrafted items with a fresh squeezed lemonade in one hand and a falafel sandwich in the other. But I can’t always wait for Arts Festival and the other summer fairs to get my fill: I want my art now!

That’s why I love Etsy.  The site bills itself as “the place to buy and sell all things handmade” and it doesn’t disappoint.

Mother’s Day is just a few days away (Sunday, May 10th, for those of us who need a friendly nudge). But thanks to these local businesses, even last minute shoppers can find great gifts for the moms on their list. Who says it’s too late to become mom’s favorite?

Foodie Mom

• Kitchen Kaboodle – She may bake you more cookies if you bribe her with kitchen gadgets.
• Tait Farm Foods – Find something for her every craving: scone and pancake mixes, dips, sauces, preserves and more. (A favorite: Harrison’s Fig and Olive Relish…it’s delicious!)

Organized Mom

The days I’m reminded why I love State College usually start with my son and I riding our bike to school and work. We have been commuting by bike during the warmer months for a few years now and graduated from trailer to trail-a-bike. We might start out the morning frenzied, searching for socks and running late, but by the time we get to his school, we are (usually) cool, calm, and collected. On our way, we’ve listened to the birds chirping, waved to the garbage truck, and spelled out and counted the political lawn signs.