I just got an email from iConserve Pennsylvania, a sustainability education project of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and in that email I was reminded of PA’s Buy Fresh, Buy Local website. The site is brought to you and me by the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, and it provides listings of farmers [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Uncategorized’
October 26, 2009
Another one for the PA rail fans
I spent Columbus Day weekend scootering around the mountainy bits of central PA, and made a fabulous railfanning discovery. This, friends and train nerds, is the Cassandra Overlook.
I had been hanging about in Gallitzin and then in Cresson, on the west slope of the Allegheny Front, watching some trains chug up and down the hill [...]
October 25, 2009
It’s Raptor Time
Each fall, there’s an extravaganza of birds-of-prey flapping past the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. Situated atop Blue Mountain, the eastern edge of the Appalachian ridges and valleys, Hawk Mountain’s location is right under one of the major North American flyways for migrating raptors, including hawks, eagles, and falcons of all stripes.
According to the Sanctuary, about 20,000 [...]
October 24, 2009
BREAKING PA POTATO CHIP NEWS
Snyder’s is acquiring Utz. Both family-owned companies based in Hanover, Pennsylvania, this is sure to be the only topic of conversation there for a bit. Fortunately Snyder’s has promised – so far – to not mess with the unique salty Utz flavors. I for one hope they keep the fabulous Red Hot flavor on board. [...]
October 9, 2009
“Recession-Resistant Getaway”: biking the Great Allegheny Passage
There’s a fun article in USA Today today about Adventure Cycling’s pacakge tour of the Great Allegheny Passage rail trail. The route travels between Pittsburgh and Cumberland, Maryland where it meets the C & O Canal trail – a trail system that lets hikers and bikers travel from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC just about entirely [...]
August 10, 2009
One of PA’s crazier incongruities
Right next to the flight path of Philadelphia’s airport – and in view of the skyscrapers of Center City – sits the state’s last biggest freshwater tidal marsh and the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. If you live in the general vicinity of Philadelphia and haven’t visited yet, put it on your social calendar! And [...]
August 4, 2009
Pennsylvania: the Vodka Capital of Pennsylvania
Last year around this time, Pittsburgh-area distillers Barry Young and Prentice Orr busted out their Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka to uniformly positive reviews. The key to Young and Orr’s delicious results are the local potatoes they use to create Boyd & Blair. They’ve been shipping out cases for a year now, and can be [...]
August 3, 2009
JEO’s PA Google Challenge #1: no matter where you are, PA is right there.
Pennsylvaniaphiles, please pardon again our pause. It’s not that my love of the greatest state ever has waned, it’s just that I’ve been wildly busy. I was talking today to our loyal PA blogger JEO today, and he issued the following challenge: he gives me a page/entry Google coordinate, and I load “Pennsylvania” into Google [...]
April 29, 2009
State of Adventure
Careful readers of this column, or just those with too much time on their hands, will have noticed that I am a keen outdoorsman. I count many outdoor activities as hobbies, and I am glad to be able to indulge them in Pennsylvania. Here and elsewhere I have schussed down steep ski slopes, [...]
March 4, 2009
Needed: official PA State Horse
Like any other state, Pennsylvania maintains a list of officially designated representative birds, dogs, animals generally, plants, flowers, beverages, and so forth. But we don’t have a state horse! I just realized that several states have official state horses, not to mention those which have named horses as official state animals. They include…
Alabama: The state [...]
