Italian Lake Photo By Karen Commings
Spring into change
W
e lcome to the first issue of Harrisburg Magazine with me (Deborah Lynch) at the helm. I started here as editor in mid-February, and have been working with anticipation for this April issue that features special sections on Restaurants, and Health and Wellness, as well as articles on trends moving forward. Given the timing in early spring and the focus on healthy eating, we will profile the farms that offer Community Supported Agriculture in the Harrisburg region. CSAs connect producers and consumers through shares that members buy in advance in return for harvest throughout the growing season. Offering CSAs allows many smaller farms to connect directly with customers. My involvement with CSAs is long — and cold. More than 25 years ago, I lived in Burlington, VT, with my husband and two young children. Burlington is home to one of the first CSA ventures at an area known as the Intervale along the Winooski River. It is a reclaimed dumping ground for tires, furniture, and other garbage that was turned into sustainable farming land by Will Rapp, the founder of Gardener’s Supply Company. Members of the Intervale CSA were asked to participate at the farm in some way. I’ll never forget the bitter cold November day when I took my two toddlers into a field of rigid rows to dig into the rock hard ground to harvest carrots. Carrots never tasted so good. Upon moving to the Harrisburg area 22 years ago, I was thrilled to discover CSAs here, too. In the beginning, my then-preteens bemoaned the mounds of kale that came in our shares. To put this into perspective, I need to preface this story with another story about my battle to serve my family healthy food. I always bought high fiber bread to use in my kids’ school lunches, and they complained, but I didn’t care. One time, my husband was coming into the kitchen and could hear the kids saying to one another, “Mom buys this high fiber bread, 6 HARRISBURG MAGAZINE APRIL 2021
but we don’t get any fiber because we don’t eat it.” Yeah, I occasionally started buying white bread after that. Fortunately, my CSA included a newsletter in each share with recipes and tips, and we gradually learned to enjoy kale in forms we would never have imagined. My adult children now voluntarily buy kale and consume it regularly. I guess that speaks to the wisdom that people need to be allowed to develop their own tastes, maybe with a little help from mom. In the past 20 years, these local farms have had their shares of ups and downs. Interest peaked in the late 2000s, but Covid helped to bring people back to cooking, and cooking local. Many local farms that offer CSA memberships also get their produce and goods out in other ways too — local farmers’ markets, groceries that stock local goods, and restaurants. We’ll also feature one of the local shops that showcases local farmers and food purveyors with its selection of healthy local products. While Radish & Rye Food Hub at 1308 3rd St. in Harrisburg has been in existence since 2015 in the Broad Street Market, and open at the new location for curbside pickup, it finally opened the gleaming new location in early March. When not up for cooking, whether takeout or dine-in, the Harrisburg region also offers a variety of great dining choices. In this issue, our staff samples from Korealicious and a new ghost kitchen opening in Harrisburg, Unreal Kitchen. Just as the pandemic changed the way many people eat — more cooking, more takeout, and less indoor dining — it affected people in nearly all aspects of life across the state, country, and world. To chronicle our pandemic experience across Pennsylvania, first lady Frances Wolf headed the One Lens project in which people from across the state
