by Ari Roth
Natural food fans will get a chance to savor the summer bounty this weekend, with the arrival of Historic Germantown’s Homegrown Food Festival. The historic Wyck House will play host to tastings, vendors, lectures and music for the whole afternoon.
The actual house, now 324 years old, is an attraction in itself, a well-preserved relic of old Philadelphia that is still in use today as a historic spot, a farmer’s market, and even America’s longest running rose garden. The festival, as Bob McKee of the Wyck House told us, “is part of the Behind the Fence Festival series that Wyck offers to the community, free of charge. The behind the fence festivals invite the community to experience the best of Wyck’s programming in history, horticulture, and farming.”
The event centers around the Southlawn Marketplace, where attendees can browse locally grown fruits and vegetables, including Wyck Home Farm’s own harvest, roses (and rose ice tea!), and seeds. Alongside the Wyck House’s farm-fresh fare, The Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild will be on hand with honeyed treats, and other farming organizations such as the Philadelphia Orchard Project, Urban Aquaponics Farming, Door to Door Organics, and more will be present with a range of fresh food to choose from, all grown from the local soil.
In between your market browsing, check out some of the lectures hosted in the rose garden tent. At 12:30 PM, Susan Plaisted will speak on ways of preserving homegrown food using traditional methods. At 1:30, food blogger Marisa McClellan will give a talk, followed by Suzanne Matlock’s 2:30 tutorial on cooking with honey. The afternoon will also feature a live performance by local reggae act The Fulljoy Band, complete with a hula hooping session on the grounds near the band.
It will all go down this Saturday, August 9th, from noon until 4 PM. The Wyck House is located at 6026 Germantown Avenue, and activities will be held throughout the grounds. This festival is free to enter, and certainly welcome to families, so make plans now to check it out!
