Community Resources
Eat Local
Chester County has an ample supply of farmer’s markets, store-front farms, pick your own orchards, CSAs and food places featuring regional fare spread throughout the area so you can eat locally. Click here to find one near you.
Check Out
Chester County’s museums and public gardens provide plenty of insight on simple, style and spaces. Click here to for some of the places that continue to inspire us.
Preservation at Work
Within Chester County there are many organizations with missions focused on safeguarding our environmental resources. There are also a number of nature preserves worth visiting. Click here for more information on both.
Eco-Friendly PA
Click here for a few resources to help make your home more environmentally friendly and more healthy.
Eat Local
Chester County has an ample supply of farmer’s markets, store-front farms, pick your own orchards, CSAs and food places featuring regional fare spread throughout the area so you can eat locally.
Because there’s nothing better than just-harvested food and drink gathered or prepared by your neighbors, we’ve hand-picked some links to help you locate a food network close by your home.
And, as you know, buying from Chester County businesses, or those nearby, strengthens our local economy. It’s also environmentally responsible, reducing the energy required for transporting food from its origin to where it is consumed.
We’ll be featuring many of the local places you’ll see listed, so be sure to come back often.
Another helpful resource: tips on how to avoid GMOs: This guide includes lists of common name-brand foods to avoid, as well as ones that are GMO-free.
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Summer 2009: Chester County Farmers’ Markets
(NOTE: Site descriptions are taken directly from each Web site.)
The Chester County BUY FRESH BUY LOCAL chapter page is your guide for locating farm fresh foods, value-added products, agroturism experiences, cooperative connections, suppliers, restaurants and everything local in between and throughout Chester County.
LocalAmishFarms.com offers information about locally grown, locally raised, locally made items available for you and your family in the Southeastern PA area. Find free range chickens and eggs, raw milk in glass milk bottles, pesticide free produce, locally grown plants, cut flowers, bedding plants and vegetable starter plants, etc.
On the LocalHarvest website you’ll find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies. (Note: We’ve given you the link that connects you right to Chester County.)
The Headhouse Farmers’ Market features 25+ farmers, ranchers and artisans selling a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, flowers, meats, cheese and other dairy products from the local region. There are also fantastic seasonal baked goods, locally made ice cream and hot fudge, all natural soaps and lotions and many other specialty items all from the local area. (Note: scroll down the page to see the list of Chester County participants.)
Eatwild.com is your source for safe, healthy, natural and nutritious grass-fed beef, lamb, goats, bison, poultry, pork, dairy and other wild edibles. Locate the farm or ranch nearest you on the Eatwild Pennsylvania Map.
Farm to Philly is focused on finding and eating locally grown/produced food in Philadelphia, its surrounding suburbs, and South Jersey.
Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) is a nonprofit organization working to improve the economic and social prosperity of Pennsylvania food and agriculture. (The links page offers information related to various sustainable agriculture-related topics.)
Eat Well’s thousands of listings include family farms, restaurants, farmers’ markets, grocery stores, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, U-pick orchards and more. Users can search by location, keyword, category or prod
uct to find good food, download customized guides, or plan a trip with the innovative mapping tool, Eat Well Everywhere. Eat Well is also home to The Green Fork blog and the free educational booklet Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Food Movement.
Preservation at Work
We know the earth matters.
But what are we doing to show we care?
Within Chester County there are many organizations with missions focused on safeguarding our environmental resources.
Some are dedicated to protecting our streams and rivers, while others specialize in managing ecologically important lands. And, lucky for us, most of the organizations and conservancies offer and encourage environmental education.
There are also a number of nature preserves worth visiting to remind us how important it is to maintain and protect our natural communities, which includes the plants and animals that make the wild their home.
To help you get involved and stay informed, we put together a list of resources so you can take earth matters into your own hands. Because, really, every day is Earth Day.
Environmental Agencies
Brandywine Conservancy
Protects the natural and cultural resources of the Brandywine watershed and other selected areas.
Brandywine Valley Association (BVA)
The first small watershed association in America is dedicated to promoting restoration, preservation and conservation of the natural resources of the Brandywine Valley.
The Chester County Historic Preservation Network (CCHPN)
Dedicated to promoting, protecting, and preserving Chester County’s historic resources and landscapes.
Dedicated to protecting and preserving the quality and quantity of water northern Chester County.
Open Land Conservancy of Chester County
Dedicated to preserving open space in Chester County.
Dedicated to the preservation, conservation and stewardship of natural resources, historic sites, and open spaces, including important agricultural lands and natural areas.
Advocate for the balanced integration of transportation planning with comprehensive land use planning and preservation.
Dedicated to the study of streams and rivers.
A brochure summarizing 11 of the most significant Preservation Partnership Program projects
Check Out
Chester County’s museums and public gardens provide plenty of insight on simple, style and spaces. Just the stuff we love at CCDwell.
Here are some of the places that continue to inspire us:
Longwood Gardens
It started as a working farm and arboretum by the Peirce Quaker family in 1700, then became the home of Pierre du Pont in 1906 so he could preserve the trees and garden to his heart’s delight.
The formal gardens are forever changing with exhibits and insights into creating your own flowering habitat or tree museum. And the Idea Garden amazes us each year with a varied display of color and plant specimens that’ll spark your inner gardener. Guaranteed.
Winterthur Museum and Gardens
Sure there’s some rather fancy decorative arts here that founder Founder Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969) collected, used, and most certainly cherished. The beauty in this collection is in its ability to offer a peek at early-American culture through objects like tools, metalworks, ceramics and paintings. There’s also an unparalleled collection of American antiques. All the exhibits take you back in time tracing the area’s history and people that called the Brandywine Valley home.
And the 60-acre naturalistic garden is filled with a collection of plants from around the world. There are also lots of natives that, should we say it? Yes, they’ll inspire you to plant them in your own backyard.
Mt. Cuba Center, Inc.
This 650-acre non-profit horticultural institution is recognized as the region’s best woodland wildflower gardens. We know that technically it’s not in Chester County, but trust us, the display of native flowers will blow your mind.
Brandywine River Museum
Three generations of Wyeth art is exhibited here, along with world-renowned American illustrators, still life and landscape artists. It’s also home of the Brandywine Conservancy and their wildlife and native plant gardens featuring indigenous and naturalized plants of the Brandywine Valley.
Chester County Historical Society
Research your house, your family or local history. You can also check out local events or take-in the current exhibit.
Eco-Friendly PA
Living green includes eating locally. It also means living responsibly. By that we mean conserving energy, and water, and also recycling and using recyclable products.
There are many ways you can live responsibly (think about the products you use everyday), but rather than list environmentally-friendly practices, we thought we’d provide useful links instead.
Here are some resources for making your home more environmentally friendly, more healthy and for practicing a more sustainable way of life. Some links are local, some are national. We hope all will inspire you to make your community and our earth a better place.
Pennsylvania Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency
