June 26th, 2009
I wrote about this a while back (geez, I’m doing a lot of updates this week), but you have a few more weeks to buy a raffle ticket to win a Smart Car. I was reminded by this when I saw Tuesday’s GO section.
A winner will be drawn July 4 for Blackhawk Learning Connection’s first raffle.
Blackhawk is a nonprofit licensed child-care facility that provides subsidized care for children 6 weeks to 10 years old. Since founding in Rockford in 1969, it has provided care for more than 2,500 children.
The Smart Fortwo features fuel economy of 33 mpg city/41 mpg highway, a five-speed automatic transmission, a panoramic roof, front and side airbags (among other safety features) and a flat-folding passenger seat. See photos at blackhawklearning.com and smartusa.com.
Raffle tickets at blackhawklearning.com or 815-962-8853 are $20 each, four for $60 or eight for $100. They are $20 each at Alpine Bank locations, Logli, Meg’s Daily Grind, Fox 39 and WZOK. Most ticket sales end July 3.
The winner will be drawn July 4 at the Rockford Speedway. Racing that night starts at 7:07 p.m. (gates open at 5), a 10,000-watt fireworks show is planned, and you can buy raffle tickets from 5 to 8 p.m., when the drawing takes place. Entry to the speedway is $10 to $12 for adults, $5 to $6 for ages 6 to 11, free for 5 and younger.
You also can see the car and buy tickets at the speedway Saturday and July 3.
Call 815-962-8853.
June 26th, 2009
If you missed the Openfields Dinner at the Celtic Thistle on Sunday night, you missed a lovely evening. It was filled with the most mouthwatering steaks I’ve seen in years, thanks to Tom Eickman of Eickman’s Processing in Seward. And the dessert was to die for, with strawberries picked lovingly from Harrison Market Garden by Jill and Bill Beyer. Succulent jewels ladled over a puff of meringue.
If you weren’t in attendance, don’t fret, as there will be more opportunities. The next Openfields dinner featuring local foods will be on July 18 at Pine Row Farm in Roscoe, with catering by Kiki B’s and A Movable Feast. Other local foods dinners will be held on July 23 at Octane and August 6 at Brio, plus more opportunities to finish out the summer and head into fall. All of these dinners are being planned to take advantage of the bounty of what is in season.
An Openfields dinner is as much about enjoying the company of kindred spirits as it is about the mouthwatering local food. It is an opportunity to meet new people, and exchange ideas and philosophies, as well as recipes. It is an ancient ritual repeated in a modern world. Bread and wine shared amongst a diverse and growing clan.
Now that we’ve considered the wine, on to the weather! Rain, rain, rain, and more rain. There are springs seeping upward through the earth in my fields. More springs than anyone can remember, and it is a good thing that hope springs eternal, as well. We keep planting, while some things grow and thrive and others rot in the rich dark soil that had been so productive in previous years. Ah, the life of a farmer!
The beauty of local food is that it is the tie that binds. It binds the farmer to the community, and it binds the community back to the earth. Those ties have been severed for decades and we have the ability to respond…responsibility… to recreate those frayed threads. To create anew a system that will sustain and nourish not just our bodies, but, our minds and our souls.
Raise your glass to a new paradigm, and join us as we celebrate a new understanding. To make reservations to join us at future Openfields dinners, visit web.extension.uiuc.edu/winnebago or phone the University of Illinois Extension Winnebago County office at (815) 986-4357. Andrea Hazzard is the Farmer at Hazzard Free Farm, partner in First Hand Harvest CSA and the Local Food Systems Coordinator for Winnebago County
