Guest post from our intrepid friend Cheenius:

Cheenius meandered over to the county office building to check out “Food Heritage:  A Central Virginia Gathering.”  Hosted by the Virginia Food Heritage Project, this was not another symposium about why local food is great (although Cheenius enjoys those as well).  Rather, they attempted a true dialogue with farmers, gardeners, and really everyone in the 5 county area to get to the roots of our food heritage, and figure out what that could mean for our future.  How did they do it?  They had 5 stations with volunteers ready to take down the information from long-time native Virginians who can remember what breed of cattle their grandmother raised, to ideas about job creation for the future, to figuring out the location of long-lost orchards.  This will be an ever-evolving project, so it will be interesting to watch it take shape.  Turns out that Charlottesville is the locavore capitol of the world according to Forbes Magazine, so if any town is going to start this kind of dialogue, it makes sense that it’d be us!

Old cookbooks and random implements:

A sausage mill:

Cheenius, glad you had fun, and thanks for sharing your experience with us!