NH Eat Local Week

News and information about NH Eat Local Week is popping up all over the web! Follow these links to learn more about what Granite Staters are doing to support local agriculture:

• Slow Food Seacoast held a NH Eat Local Week themed potluck on August 3 and the group brainstormed and shared ways they were planning to participate. Read their ideas and share some of your own at Slow Food Seacoast’s website.
• Yankee Food spent some time updating the Lakes Region Food Sources section of the website in honor of NH Eat Local Week, helping other Lakes Region area folks to celebrate and eat local food.
• Follow UNH’s Office of Sustainability blog this week while the folks who work there share local lunches and blog about it.
• VisitNH.gov lists NH Eat Local Week as a top event this week, and includes state-wide information for farmers’ markets, harvest-your-own farms, and a farm stand directory, and a link to the expansive “Experience Rural New Hampshire” guide.
• The New Hampshire Dairy Farmers website is promoting NH Eat Local Week on its home page. You can find information about the newly forming New Hampshire Cheesemakers Guild and a great list of NH made dairy products that are widely available throughout the state!
• The Upper Valley Localvores are participating in a 100-mile challenge for NH Eat Local Week! Learn more and join in at their website.
• Vital Communties is promoting NH Eat Local Week in the Upper Valley. They have the Valley Food and Farm Guide to help you find sources of local food, as well as a calendar of events that include farm tours, workshops, and dinners!
• Rachel Forrest of the Portsmouth Herald is writing about her own NH Eat Local Week challenge and area participation online at SeacoastOnline.com/food
• Plymouth State University has daily lunch specials in the Mountain View Snack Bar from August 4th thru August 8th featuring entire meals from New Hampshire grown and raised food products. Read about the daily offerings.
• Democracy for New Hampshire reports from the farmers’ markets in Claremont and Newport
• Belknap County Economic Development Council lists area farmers’ markets for NH Eat Local Week

Bloggers around the state:

• Following Our Bliss - Lakes Region
• Life on Bean Road - Lakes Region
• Community School Garden CSA - Lakes Region
• Homebodies Unite! - Nashua
• Mmm … Monadnock! - Monadnock region

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Yet another idea for participating in NH Eat Local Week!

The Exeter Farmers’ Market is celebrating NH Eat Local Week with a raffle of local foods donated by market vendors. Farmers’ Market vendors have donated pies, spice blends, garlic, potatoes, maple syrup, gift certificates for locally prepared foods, and two dozen ears of corn for prize baskets to be raffled off Thursday July 31.

Raffle tickets will be sold for $1 apiece or 4 for $5 at the Exeter Farmers’ Market in Swasey Parkway from 2:15 – 6 PM on Thursday, July 31. Winners will be able to pick up their prize baskets during NH Eat Local Week on August 7 at the Exeter Farmers’ Market.

Share your ideas and plans for participation in the comments -

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Here’s a really great idea for participating in NH Eat Local Week as an office by the University Office of Sustainability at UNH!

I decided to pose a challenge to my office: Make a dish using local foods during the NH Eat Local Week and bring it into the office to share. … tell everyone what it was like – from finding the foods to preparing the recipe to sharing it with the rest of us.  I’m happy to say that UOS was up for the challenge. “Bring in your local dish” dates were assigned and everyone is plotting what to bring.

Read more about the University Office of Sustainability’s NH Eat Local week, including a chronicle of their participation throughout the week, at Discover(ing) Sustainability >

Leave a comment to share if your place of work has decided to participate in NH Eat Local Week - and remember that participation takes many forms!

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A story about the increasing market for locally grown foods is on the cover of Manchester’s The Hippo, and includes this bit about NH Eat Local Week:

… “New Hampshire Eat Local Week,” which will be held Aug. 3 to Aug. 9. During that time the 3,400 farms in New Hampshire will be promoted to residents and the thousands of vacationers who visit.

“We hope to reach people who are curious, but weren’t inspired by other eat-local challenges. We are challenging people to start shopping at a new farmers’ market, bring a friend or host a locally grown dinner,” Patterson said.

There’s been a Web site set up, www.nheatlocalweek.org, where you can sign up for the challenge …

Read the full article by journalist Susan Ware Flower >

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New Hampshire’s Agricultural Commissioner Lorraine Merrill used her weekly column in the Market Bulletin to talk about NH Eat Local Week:
Weekly Market Bulletin - Wednesday, July 23, 2008

From Your Commissioner…

NH Eat Local Week Catches on with NH Eaters

New Hampshire Eat Local Week is off to a great start. We received Governor Lynch’s proclamation of August 3-9 as ‘New Hampshire Eat Local Week’ just in time to print it in last week’s Market Bulletin. Print and broadcast media are spreading the word, and groups all around the state are excited about participating in Eat Local Week challenges and activities.

Dedicating a week to the celebration of “all of the local food that is grown and raised in New Hampshire” is the brainchild of Sara Zoe Patterson. The Rye resident is coordinator of Seacoast Eat Local, an organization with the mission of connecting consumers with sources of locally grown and produced foods. “What better way to discover more about our state, support our farming community members, encourage food self-reliance, and make a positive impact on our environment than a week of local eating!” she explains on the new website www.nheatlocalweek.org.

The Upper Valley Localvores also lent support to establishing a week devoted to eating more locally. Localvore (or locavore) was recently chosen as the Oxford American Dictionary ‘Word of the Year.’ Localvores are people who are committed to eating foods from their local foodshed, sometimes defined as within a 100-mile radius of their homes, sometimes more in terms of a region. The Seacoast and Upper Valley groups have been communicating with their extensive networks—other local food advocacy groups, Slow Food chapters, chefs, and more—to build support and enthusiasm for the state’s first official Eat Local Week.

The website has links to several of these organizations around the state, including Plymouth and Keene.
The really great thing about NH Eat Local Week is this grassroots origin, propelled by consumer (or eater) demand. These are fans of locally grown and produced foods, citizens who value good, fresh, quality foods and products produced by their neighbors and local businesses. These organizations foster and celebrate relationships between local farmers and the people who are their customers, directly or indirectly. Seacoast Eat Local sponsored an eat-local challenge last September, which culminated with a pot luck supper and barn dance at Berry Hill Farm in Stratham, owned by Agricultural Advisory Board member Caroline Robinson.

The week of August 3-9 was chosen for NH Eat Local Week because it is also National Farmers Market Week, creating opportunities to highlight farmers markets as places to find local foods and connect consumers with local farmers and growers. NH Eat Local Week encourages people who are just discovering or getting interested in obtaining more of their diet locally to explore local foods and sources. For more advanced local-eaters, it’s a chance to engage in a little friendly competition to ratchet up their local food quotient. The NH Eat Local Week Challenge Card suggests three levels of participation: Sprout, Seedling, or Perennial.
This will be a week of truly local-based, grassroots events. Everyone is welcome to create ways to participate and celebrate our local foods and farms—and to extend the spirit and activities beyond this one week. Groups are planning pot-luck events, and some restaurants will feature local foods.

Popular books by Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan have inspired many people to venture into finding more of their food locally. People are even learning to prepare and preserve more of their own foods, rediscovering traditional seasonal flavors and specialties—and the benefits of families coming together for meals. We’re seeing bigger crowds at farmers markets, and increased traffic at farmstands around the state.

Lorraine Merrill, Commissioner

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State of New Hampshire

By His Excellency

John H. Lynch, Governor

A Proclamation

NEW HAMPSHIRE EAT LOCAL WEEK

AUGUST 3 - 9, 2008

WHEREAS, New Hampshire farmers can provide an extraordinary variety of locally grown, healthy, and delicious foods directly to the public; and

WHEREAS, New Hampshire residents are learning how to live in a more sustainable way for our environment, our economy, and our communities; and

WHEREAS, The people of New Hampshire value knowing where our food comes from and how it is grown or produced, including supporting the humane treatment of animals and environmentally responsible agriculture; and

WHEREAS, The State of New Hampshire encourages the growth of local businesses and a local workforce, and wants local farms to continue to be part of our landscape; and

WHEREAS, Increased support for New Hampshire grown food and agriculture brings added income to the State; and

WHEREAS, Knowing from where our food comes and the farmer who grew it adds to our eating pleasure and contributes to better personal health; and

WHEREAS, Eating more New Hampshire grown foods helps preserve the New Hampshire way of life that we cherish;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOHN H. LYNCH, GOVERNOR of the State of New Hampshire, do hereby proclaim August 3 - 9, 2008 as NEW HAMPSHIRE EAT LOCAL WEEK and encourage all citizens and businesses to participate and support locally grown foods.

Given at the Executive Chamber in Concord, this 11th day of July, in the year of our lord two thousand and eight, and the independence of the United States of America, two hundred and thirty-three.

John H. Lynch

Governor

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Download, print, and distribute or hang flyers using this file: nheatlocalweekflyer.pdf

Use this web banner to promote NH Eat Local Week on your website:

Printable version of the NH Eat Local Week Challenge cards: nheatlocalchallengecards.pdf
(two per page, fits on the back of the flyer if desired)

Need different sizes or different styles? We’ll be happy to try to make that happen. Email sarazoe @ seacoasteatlocal.org

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Eating locally: NH seeks consumer-farm link

By PAULA TRACY
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
7/14/08

CONCORD – Riding a wave of concern over tainted vegetables, rising transportation costs and a surge to go green, the state Agriculture Department is using the opportunity to sink new roots in local farms.

Rolling out a “New Hampshire Eat Local Week,” Aug. 3-9, the state is marketing farmers’ markets and promoting farm tours to connect consumers and vacationers to New Hampshire’s 3,400 farms and the food Granite Staters eat.

This summer, for the first time, the state is trying a new sort of challenge to get residents to eat local. Merrill said next month’s New Hampshire Eat Local Week will coincide with Farmers Market Week.

A new Web site, www.nheatlocalweek.org, details the effort to get people to try a new vegetable, take a friend to a farm stand, find a restaurant that serves locally grown food, discover a new farm and other ideas to help expand the state’s almost $1 billion farm industry.

read the full article at the Union Leader website >

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We’re creating NH Eat Local Week to celebrate all of the local food that is grown and raised in NH. Our farmers have a lot to offer, and what better way to discover more about our state, support our farming community members, encourage food self-reliance, and make a positive impact on our environment than a week of local eating!

NH Eat Local Week will be from August 3-9, 2008 and everyone is welcome to join in!

Ideas for participating in NH Eat Local Week >

Tell us about your plans for NH Eat Local Week >

Live Free and Eat Well!

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