Geneva Green Market: Geneva, Illinois - A Local Food Green Farmers Market

What do you get when you combine the fabulous style and artisan flare of Moveable Feast with a glorious summertime evening surrounded by the sights, songs and fragrances of the Heritage Prairie Farm gardens? A supper club experience you won’t want to miss!

The menu:

• Peppery arugula & potato soup with soft pretzel “croutons
• Shredded beet spread served with homemade crackers
• Grilled sausages, roasted onions, & fennel with cranberry jalepeno jam
• Tangy autumn greens with roasted squash, honeyed walnuts, dried cherries & blue cheese in a cider dressing
• Roasted apple sauce
• Hearty dark breads & Bron’s Bees honey butter
• Cranberry pumpkin bread pudding with carmel sauce & whipped cream garnished with carmel corn

When: Thursday October 16
Where: Heritage Prairie Farm
2N308 Brundige Road, Elburn, IL 60119
Time: 6:30 PM reception, dinner at 7:00 PM
BYOB:  Fresh apple cider will be served. Feel free to bring your favorite beverage to enjoy.
Price: $60 per ticket or $55 per ticket when paying for 4 or more tickets

A credit card number holds your reservation. Payment due at time of dinner. Tax and gratuity not included. Arrangements will be made for inclement weather. Limited seating is available so make your reservation today by calling (630) 443-8253.

Come shop for your Thanksgiving dinner ingredients, pick up pre-ordered grass fed turkeys from Caveny Farms and crafts that make great Christmas gifts. There will be locally grown, organic food and craft vendors.

Enjoy a locavore brunch before or after you shop!

Sunday, November 23, 2008
Hosted by Inglenook Pantry
11 N 5th Street
Geneva, IL 60134

Thanksgiving Market: 10:00 a.m. thru 3:00 p.m.

Locavore Brunch: 10:30 a.m. thru 2:00 p.m. $12.95; $5.95 for kids 6 and under

Note: We are also still looking for craft vendors. If you would like to participate in this market contact Karen at (630) 208-9321.

Rediscover Thrift That Made America at Garfield Farm Museum’s Harvest Days

Making do and prospering are traditional values that are reflected at Garfield Farm Museum’s Harvest Days on Sunday October 5 from 11:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.  As the economic lifestyle of America is changing, now is the time to teach children the traditional values of thrift and saving for tomorrow. Harvest Days at Garfield Farm Museum demonstrates the basic concepts of conserving one’s resources to prepare for the future.

Harvest Days features historic household and farm skill demonstrations reflecting the economic reality of 1840s Illinois. Hard work and success went hand in hand and the flailing and winnowing of wheat is just such an example. This demonstration is just one part of the entire process of making a living on an 1840s Illinois farm. Wheat was the main cash crop and to prepare it for market, the kernels had to be knocked from the stalks, separated from the leaves or chaff before it could be bagged and sent to the grist mill or to the Chicago Port. Visitors to Harvest Days can try their hand at striking a stack of wheat with a flail, an attached stick and club, and discover how much work it took to produce enough flour for just one loaf of bread.

Pigs were raised for Read More…

Many farms offer produce subscriptions, where buyers receive a weekly or monthly basket of produce, flowers, fruits, eggs, milk, meats, or any sort of different farm products.

A CSA, (for Community Supported Agriculture) is a way for the food buying public to create a relationship with a farm and to receive a weekly basket of produce. By making a financial commitment to a farm, people become “members” (”shareholders” or “subscribers”) of the CSA. Most CSA farmers prefer that members pay for the season up-front, but some farmers will accept weekly or monthly payments. Some CSAs also require that members work a small number of hours on the farm during the growing season. A CSA season typically runs from late spring through early fall. The number of CSAs in the United States was estimated at 50 in 1990, and has since grown to over 2000.

Here in Geneva Illinois, and the Fox Valley, we have many choices with CSAs. Some continue into the fall.

Erehwon Farms:
Seven weeks of wonderful fall produce such as winter squash, pie pumpkins, carrots, radishes, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, spinach, Swiss chard, lettuce, parsnips, tatsoi, Read More…

Edible Chicago is a publication dedicated to providing its readers with “a direct connection to the local producers who can provide a bounty of fresh ingredients for consumption.”  Their mission is to educate people about local food and the benefits that local food brings to their communities.  Edible Chicago “values local, seasonal, authentic foods and culinary traditions.” The magazine helps bring the farmer and community together to utilize natural, healthy resources to enhance the quality of food consumed every day.

The Geneva Green Market is a local distributor of edible Chicago in the Fox Valley area.  Copies are available at the market, Thursdays 7:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., 75 N River Lane in Geneva.  For more information about Edible Chicago, please visit their website, www.ediblechicago.com.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, has become the defacto vocabulary for green building discussions and the LEED green building rating systems provide a straightforward methodology for verifying the level of green of a building. This session is intended for those who want to take a crash course in the most easily achieved LEED points based on historic data at USGBC. This session will help in various project situations — for the owner who wants to quickly become a bit grounded in LEED for a first project meeting with an architect or contractor, or for a designer or contractor who is part of a LEED project, but has little background.

Speaker: John Albrecht, Nelson

Pre-registration is required.

When: Thursday, September 18, 2008 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM

Where:
Interiors for Business
409 N. River Street
Batavia, Illinois 60510
773-265-5911
USGBC - Chicago Chapter

Contact Katie Kaluzny for more information
773-265-5911
email Katie here

Humidity isn’t the only thing that August has to offer in Kane and Dupage County. Come and check out a new variety of fresh produce available at the market! Here’s a short list of the fruits and vegetable available in August from Dekalb County, Dupage County, Kane County and Kendall County farms:

Vegetables:

• Cauliflower
• Corn
• Cucumbers
• Green beans
• Onions
• Squashes
• Zucchini

Fruits:

• Apples
• Berries
• Melons
• Tomatoes

In celebration of Geneva’s annual Festival of the Vine, the Geneva Green Market will hold a “Local Food Gift Basket” give-a-way containing the best of Local Wine, Local Food and Cheese!

Come sign-up at the Geneva Green Market, one entry per Thursday, with a drawing on September 11, 2008.

Festival of the Vine
September 12 - 14, 2008

The autumn harvest is celebrated with food and wine tasting, flower markets, antique carriage rides and family games. Reap the best of Geneva cuisine from a smorgasbord of specialties from Italy, Mexico and France. Whether it’s fine dining or a deli you crave, you’ll find it all under a huge outdoor tent in downtown Geneva.

Other events include crowd-pleasing music & live entertainment, our renowned Fine Arts & Crafts Show.

The Chicago Tribune August 6, 2008 Good Eating section featured an article entitled Roadside Americana: The farm stand has a place in our hearts- and we’re happy to report, on MapQuest too by Emily Nunn:

And with the help of readers, who sent us their favorites by e-mail and post (see list), we headed straight to two contrasting but charming examples of what “farm stand” (and even “family farm”) can mean today.

Now, we have hope for an America that cares more about farming to feed its people than farming to feed its cars.At the suggestion of Mary Ann Schwarzbach of Geneva, we drove 35 miles from the heart of Chicago past the modern menagerie of big brand-name stores, through affluent lanes of Lincolnshire to a different land altogether, to Prairie View, where we paid a surprise visit to Mary Sue Didier and her son, John, at Didier Farms.

They are part of a family that has hung on through two World Wars, the Great Depression, the land squeeze of suburban sprawl and the precipitous rise of global agribusiness giants like Cargill (whose profits from commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were 86 percent higher than the same period in 2007). Which is something special, because since the 1940s, the number of farms has dropped to 2 million from 6 million Read More…

Fresh at this Weeks Market:

• Beans
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Chinese Cabbage
• Fennel Bulbs
• Kale
• Summer Squash
• Sweet Corn
• Swiss Chard

Chef’s Demo:

Chef Jeremy Lycan, of Niche Restaurant, in Geneva, IL

Kids Corner:

Talking about plastic bags and how we can bring our own to the market. Decorating our own bags!