Join us at Ripe! Food & Garden Festival

September is without a doubt the busiest month for local food lovers. We’re celebrating the harvest this time of year and weekends are filled with fairs and festivals of all kinds. For the past six months, Douglas Katz (chef/owner of Fire Food & Drink) and I have served as co-chairs in the planning of the inaugural Ripe! Food & Garden Festival coming up September 23-26 at the Cleveland Botanical Garden. We’re looking forward to a fantastic weekend of local food and farming fun. We hope you'll join us! Below we've listed a number of ways you can get involved in Ripe! To learn more about Ripe! visit cbgarden.org.   -Kari

VOLUNTEER at the FarmShare Booth: FarmShare will be collaborating with Slow Food Northern Ohio and Local Food Cleveland to host a booth at Ripe! for the entire weekend – Friday, Sept. 24 through Sunday, Sept. 26 where we'll offer Ripe! attendees a taste of our local food community. In addition to tastings of locally grown and produced foods, other local food organizations will be invited to join us throughout the weekend and supply literature about their initiatives. If you're interested in serving as a volunteer at the booth, please let us know. Anorganizational meeting will take place on Saturday, September 18 to finalize plans.

DINE at the Harvest Moon Dinner, September 23, 6-10pm: An extraordinary dinner will take place on the eve of the Ripe! event. The Harvest Moon Dinner will feature all-local cuisine by Chefs Tony Smoody of Bon Appetit, Douglas Katz of Fire Food & Drink, and Ben Bebenroth of Spice of Life Catering Co. Cocktails begin at 6pm followed by a 5-course locally grown dinner featuring foods from farms you may recognize from your FarmShare tote bags including fruit from Woolf Farms, cheeses from Lucky Penny Farm & Creamery as well as grass fed beef from Miller Livestock and vegetables grown by the Cleveland Botanical Garden’s Green Corps Urban Farms. Tickets for the Harvest Moon Dinner are on sale now at the Cleveland Botanical Garden website.

ATTEND the Ripe! Festival: Ripe! Food & Garden Festival is an exciting, new event whose time has come. Ripe! celebrates the edible gardening revolution and our region’s thriving commitment to local food. At the time when nature’s bounty is at its peak, this joyous festival offers you one-stop access to our most prominent local food purveyors and proponents, along with the farmers and gardeners who are bringing fresh food to our own backyards. We will show you what, when and how to grow and eat, and how you and your families can enjoy yourselves enormously in the process. Advance, discounted tickets are on sale now online at cbgarden.org, at the Cleveland Botanical Garden box office, and at all Heinen’s Fine Foods locations.

SUBMIT A HEALTHY RECIPE in the Aetna Healthy Food Fight: We know that we have some fabulous FarmShare cooks among us. Why not show off your talents by submitting a recipe? Aetna’s regional cook-off will be held at Ripe! 10 regional cook-off winners will fly to Los Angeles for the national cook-off judged by Bobby Flay. For more information visit HealthyFoodFight.com.