Aug
10
New Winery in Spring Mills
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Scott and Mary Ann Bubb are set to open their Seven Mountains Wine Cellars on Wednesday. This Spring Mills, PA, winery will be Centre county’s second, joining Mount Nittany Winery.
I’m hoping to make it out there in the next week or so, but might not get there until September, after the Grange Fair.
More information is available in the Centre Daily Times and on the winery’s website.
Aug
10
Farm Tour Photos
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The weekend was full of busyness, and I’m behind on my writing, so the posts about the Farm Tour are not yet complete. In the meantime, enjoy these photos on Flickr.
In brief, we toured Sandy Ridge Farm, Demeter’s Garden, and Common Ground Farm, all in Spring Mills, PA. We ended the day at Full Circle Farms, where we stayed long enough to buy some lemonade and snacks from the Cooperative Preschool’s lemonade stand and to say hello to Sabina, Mattie, and Bear.
Aug
6
Hands-On at the Farm Tour
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Ed Mahon offered this preview of the Farm Tour in yesterday’s Centre Daily Times.
Aug
3
2009 Central PA Farm Tour Guide
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2009 Central PA Farm Tour Guide (pdf), courtesy of Voices of Central PA.
Jul
18
2009 Local Foods Week and Farm Tour
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Central Pennsylvania’s 4th annual Local Foods Week and Farm Tour are coming up the first week of August. This year’s Local Foods Week runs from Saturday August 1st through Saturday August 8th. The Farm Tour is Saturday, August 8th from 12:30pm through 5:00pm.
I’m planning to visit a few sites. I’ve been out to Full Circle Farms about once a week this season and will probably stop in during the tour. I’m also planning to visit a few other local places I haven’t yet visited, but I haven’t had a chance to look at the map closely enough to figure out which ones.
Apr
3
A Possible New Restaurant
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Developer Izzy Sky says he is looking for a locally owned restaurant with ties to the community to place on land adjacent to his new Best Western hotel on Shiloh Road.
It is nice to see such strong support for locally owned businesses. I hope Mr. Sky finds a suitable local tenant for his restaurant space, and that whomever that is brings another unique dining experience to our area.
Mar
29
Brunch, and a Closing
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We made it back to the Cafe on the Park again this morning. We arrived at around 10:15 a.m., right before a large group of people walked in. We found a table for two in the back and waited. We don’t normally make it out that early on a Sunday, but we’ve both been up early each day this weekend.
I again ordered the quiche, having the bacon and Swiss cheese quiche. I was lucky to get the last slice. If they had run out, my backup plan was to try their baked oatmeal special. (It is oatmeal with eggs and brown sugar, baked in the oven like a custard and served hot with a small pitcher of fresh cream.)
I don’t have much to offer in terms of new insights into dinning at the Cafe. It is just a simple, family-run eatery that does brunch really well. If I could, I’d encourage everyone to try it at least once, and if you like it make a regular thing of it. Local restaurants are having a tough time of it lately, with the contracting economy and people choosing to cut dining out from their budgets to try to make ends meet.
In fact, I understand the economy has claimed another local casualty in the High Street Pub. I’m not sure when it closed its doors, but it appears dark and I’ve heard from several people that they’re closed. (I have not, however, been able to confirm this with anyone connected to the Pub.)
Aug
25
2008 Centre County Farm Tour
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[Note: This entry is delayed by roughly two weeks, but only because of a scheduling mishap. I'm still working out how to use WordPress for delayed posting. This entry (and the Mt. Nittany Winery review) were lost in the shuffle.]
We began our Farm Tour in Millheim at the Farmer’s Market for our weekly produce shopping. We had not intended to begin the tour so early — before ten o’clock in the morning — but the festivities were clearly underway. Parking was at a premium at the American Legion so we parked along the entrance road. Only a few of the usual vendors were there, with most of the stall space taken up by information tables on local farming and sustainable agriculture. There were also several guitarists playing folk songs. Overall, it was much more crowded than usual. I don’t deal well with large groups of noisy people, so we opted to buy a few items and head home. We had tickets for chicken dinners at the Pleasant Gap American Legion.
I don’t know if this is a Pennsylvania thing, and we didn’t see any of it in Michigan, but pretty much every fire department, church, and youth group will have at least one chicken barbecue fundraiser in the summer. If you wanted to, you could eat chicken every Saturday from May to October. The chicken is often hit or miss, but if the group doing the fundraiser knows what they are doing, it’ll be amazing. Unfortunately, everyone in the area knows which groups do the best chicken, so when those groups have their sale you have to get there early.
After a chicken dinner that couldn’t be beat, we headed off for the farm tour. We began by traveling back over Centre Hall Mountain to Full Circle Farms. We were met by Daisy the sheep, a farm pet who was showing Marie, an exchange student from France, around the farm. Located in Spring Mills, and owned and operated by Sabine and Thomas Carey, this organic farm also has its own Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm Share program. We hope to participate in this next year, and it was nice to see where they grow their food. We were able to see most of their operation, including free-range chickens, ducks, and turkeys. Among the turkeys were several of the somewhat rare Red Bourbon turkeys they raise. Unfortunately (or fortunately for the birds), these are all raised as breeding stock to be sold to other farms and are not available for sale to the general public. (The quest to taste a Red Bourdon continues!)
We then went back to our car and headed to Mount Nittany Vineyard & Winery, which was to be the last stop on our abbreviated tour and is detailed in the next entry.
Aug
25
Mount Nittany Inn to Reopen
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I am very much looking forward to the return of the Mount Nittany Inn this October. It has been six years since I’ve been there, and five since the first fire destroyed the property. It wasn’t at all clear they’d return, but they have. Centre County is about to get one of its better restaurants back and I couldn’t be happier!
Aug
11
Centre Hall Mountain Closed
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Pennsylvania’s State Route 144 over Centre Hall Mountain closed this morning and will remain so for the remainder of the week. It is unclear whether it will be reopened on Saturday in time for the Millheim Farmers’ Market, or if it won’t be reopened until Monday for Centre County Grange Fair traffic. It will be reclosed after the conclusion of the Grange Fair and will remain so for most of the month of September.
We’re going to need an alternate route to Millheim this weekend, and probably until the end of September. Fortunately, travelling from Bellefonte to Millheim via Madisonburg Mountain takes only slightly more time than travelling over Centre Hall Mountain does. You may need to make similar arrangements. The official detour involves 45 and 220, which may work better for you, but for me it makes a 30-minute trip into at least 45 minutes.
