Loving Local

Design by Leon Peters

To my fellow bloggers (and would-be bloggers):

You are cordially invited to a pot-luck feast! Please participate in an upcoming farm-fresh blogathon.

Loving Local: Celebrating the Flavors of Massachusetts will take place from Sunday, August 22, through Saturday, August 28—in other words, during Massachusetts Farmers Market Week.

The blogathon will be hosted by In Our Grandmothers’ Kitchens, with a little help from the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources and Mass Farmers Markets.

We hope non-bloggers will participate as well, of course! If you are interested in food (well, who isn’t?), please consider liking our Facebook page. We’ll keep you abreast of upcoming posts in the blogathon so you can read and comment.

And when it begins you’ll have lots of yummy posts to savor!

Funds raised during the blogathon (bloggers who participate will be encouraged to place a donation link in their posts) will go to Mass Farmers Markets, a non-profit charitable organization that helps farmers markets throughout the Commonwealth.

Please think about writing a post that week if you live or work in Massachusetts. Or if you used to live or work in Massachusetts. Or if you once spent a weekend on Cape Cod. Or if you have a particular fondness for New England clam chowder, Hadley asparagus, or Boston baked beans.

Posts should focus to some extent on locally grown food in Massachusetts. You don’t have to be a food writer to participate, however.

Gardeners can write about herb or vegetable growing. Architects can write about the design of barns or farm stands. Watchers of the statehouse or even the federal Capitol can discuss the politics of agriculture and/or local food. And so forth.

Posts can be recipes, critiques, short stories, reminiscences … whatever you feel like writing. Let the flavors of the Bay State inspire you.

Here’s how you can get involved: Sometime during the week of August 22-28, put your post on the internet.

Please make sure your post mentions the blogathon, includes a link to In Our Grandmothers’ Kitchens, and encourages readers to donate to Mass Farmers Markets. The organization’s donation link is http://www.massfarmersmarkets.org/FMFM_Main.aspx.

(If you have another local-food cause you’d like to encourage folks to support, that’s fine by us!)

Of course, we’d love to have bloggers show off our gorgeous logo, designed by the talented Leon Peters. You may also display a PDF poster in 8-1/2-by-11-inch format.

Here's a more compact version in case you'd like that:


If you’d like to participate, please leave a comment here or on our Facebook page to tell us what you’d like to write about. When the big week arrives and you’ve put up your post, you may either leave another comment or email lovinglocalATearthlink.net to announce it.

All posts will be identified with a link on this blog as well as on a special site set up just for that purpose, the Loving Local Blog.

And please help spread the word about this event! We hope our table during Farmers Market Week will be bursting with flavorful, colorful surprises.

Yours in good food,
Tinky

P.S. In keeping with the Farmers Market Week theme, here are a couple of photos from this past Saturday’s doings at the state’s newest and probably smallest farmers market, that in Charlemont, Massachusetts.

Below you can see Sheila Velazquez of Pen and Plow Farm in Hawley show off her veggies—and Barbara Goodchild of Barberic Farm in Shelburne display some fleece from her sheep.

There was only one other booth last weekend–a bake sale for the local school–but food was fresh and spirits were high.