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Do you love a convivial holiday party with great food and drink? Thought so. On Friday, December 4 from 5 - 8 PM Life Fitness Management (LFM) in LaVale will hold its classic seasonal event. Part social gathering, part promotional function, the festivities will feature the best in local food. FireFly Farms will be there sampling its internationally acclaimed goat cheeses accompanied by DeBerry Farm's late-season produce and specialty condiments. Both producers hail from Garrett County. Sam White of Cedar Rock Farm in Mt. Savage will be offering his tender grass-fed beef and gift certificates.For the sweet tooth, you'll find the area's best maple syrup (S&S Maple Camp), honey (Harry Mallow), apple butter (Higson) and baked goods (Inn at Walnut Bottom). These along with apparel and fitness items from LFM's pro shop and locally crafted jewelry, pottery, glassworks and more will be available for purchase. If you like, a basket maker can make your selections gift-ready as you soak in the atmosphere and enjoy food samples and other complimentary delectables, including microbrews and the wines of Deep Creek Cellars.
Consider this a personal appeal as well as a public coming out of sorts.
The past four months I have been quietly leading an effort to promote local food as a social, economic, environmental, and, not least, gastronomic cause. All the rage across America and beyond, the local food movement has yet to take root here in Western Maryland and the surrounding region. But it is vital that it does because the production and consumption of fresh, wholesome, and affordable local food is more than a fad. It is a means of supporting a better life for everyone. Even at the top levels of government local food is recognized as the last best hope for rural America.
The challenges here are great, but already much progress has been made in the past few months. An informal group of forward-looking producers and advisors has been formed under the unassuming, generic, and temporary name of the Local Food Alliance. This group holds that, as a community, we must:
- begin at the grass-roots level in order to secure the cooperation of indedendent farmers who have heard it all before;
- advance scalable projects that first build on existing infrastructure and then develop new capacity;
- improve the regional production, processing, distribution, marketing, and retailing of food;
- educate the public, young and old, individually and as members of our institutions on the manifold benefits of local food;
- persuade the young to take over the hard but valuable and rewarding work from the old;
- do all these things in lockstep to balance and sustain increasing supply and demand; and,
- act now before too many more agricultural assets are lost for good.
In time our Local Food Alliance hopes to formally organize as a nonprofit/for-profit hybrid; in part to create community-supported enterprises. That way local residents will have the opportunity to participate one way or another in advancing the cause. In the meantime the Alliance plans to keep you informed of the latest news in local food and welcomes your feedback*.
Life Fitness Management is located at 1226 National Highway, LaVale, MD (on the left in the Grand China Buffet building, formerly Country Market).
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