Canning at Emily’s!

Last Wednesday, Emily (100 Mile Thanksgiving-coordinator-extraordinaire!) invited us over to learn how to can applesauce and apple butter. Check out our photos all the way from chopping to canned!  

Heritage Harvest Festival

This Saturday, we visited the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello. First, we checked out the Virginia Food Heritage Project tent, where some of our colleagues working at the Institute for Environmental Negotiation were collecting stories about heritage foods in central Virginia. After that, we visited every tent that had free tastings! Heirloom tomatoes and peppers, [...]

Polyface Farm

Saturday we went out to Swoope, VA to visit Joel Salatin‘s Polyface Farm and pick up our turkeys for Thanksgiving (this Thursday!). Yes, the level of excitement in the group was akin to Bieber Fever. Formal tours can be arranged, but we decided to show ourselves around, discovering on our own all of the inventions [...]

Canning at the Haven

After weeks of sitting on the sidelines of the local food system, a big group of us rolled up our sleeves, tied back our hair, and learned first-hand how to preserve food by canning. Our host was The Haven, a safe place for the homeless and poor in Central Virginia to spend the day. The [...]

True & Essential Meats, Harrisonburg VA

A few weeks ago a small group of us spent a sunny afternoon at True & Essential Meats in Harrisonburg. A slaughterhouse. (A small, local one.) On a kill day. Really. Owner Joe Cloud spent two very generous hours showing us his operation, answering umpteenthousand questions, and teaching us about what goes into putting food on [...]

Graves Mountain Harvest Festival

Saturday was a beautiful autumn day in Central Virginia. What better way to enjoy these last warm, sunny days than in the foothills of Shenandoah National Park at an apple harvest festival? Graves Mountain Lodge in Syria, VA, was our host for the day. This apple harvest is a true local gem because it takes [...]

Food Collaborative Public Forum

The Food Collaborative is sponsoring a a public forum on October 7th from 4-6pm. Panelists include: Marian Burros, a  writer with the New York Times; Tom Philpott a food editor from Grist.org and James McWilliams, author of Just Food. The forum will be moderated by Benjamin Cohen a UVa Food Collaborative coordinator. The event will be held in [...]

Corn Shuck Fest

Friday night marked the First Annual Corn Shuck Fest at the UVA Community Garden. Congratulations to all of the volunteers who worked to put on such a fantastic event! The evening was marked by beautiful fall weather, acoustic bluegrass, and of course, the bounty of the harvest (supplemented by some delicious pot luck items!). Aside [...]

Heritage Harvest Festival

A group of us went to Monticello this past weekend to check out the annual Heritage Harvest Festival. The weather was perfect and we had a great group of students head up to Thomas Jefferson’s little mountain. The festival is intended to educate and celebrate this region’s local food heritage. We attended a cheese-making demonstration, toured [...]

2010 100-Mile Thanksgiving

Welcome back for what we hope will be a very memorable 100-mile Thanksgiving! We are in the process of developing a schedule of events leading up to our locally-sourced feast on November 18, including harvest festivals, food tastings, farm tours, and learning valuable skills like canning. Our goal is to learn as much about our [...]