’Tis the season to gather with friends and family to celebrate with food, drinks, and seasonal festivities. For more than 40 years now, Tait Farm Foods has been a destination for locals and visitors alike to connect with the earth through food and creating a sense of community.
Located at 179 Tait Road in Centre Hall, 7 miles east of State College, Tait Farm’s Harvest Shop is open year-round offering more than 60 specialty products, including fruit spreads, vinaigrettes, shrubs, chutneys, and other local foods.
Growing 7 acres of certified organic vegetables and fruits, Tait’s Community Harvest (CSA) program allows members to pay for a seasonal, weekly share, enough to feed two vegetable lovers or a small family. Members are invited to come weekly to the farm from June through November or bi-weekly from December through May to pick up their shares.
Tait Farm’s seasonal greenhouse is a gardener’s paradise, offering a selection of seeds, seedlings, native plants, pots, and organic gardening supplies. The knowledgeable staff is always available to answer questions and to provide helpful advice for home gardeners of all skill levels.
Other Tait family enterprises include Tait Farm Trees and Tait Farm Bassets (hounds). With more than 25 acres, it has become a local tradition to cut your own fir or pine Christmas trees. Reserve and tag your tree ahead of time or create lifelong memories with your family, wandering through the farm for that perfect tree. Bred for their lovable temperament, Tait Farm Bassets are fully registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC), making them ideal family pets.
“Tait Farm Foods has evolved over the years and we continue to listen to what our customers want when we come up with new recipes and fruit jams that help to inspire you to create your own delicious memories with family and friends,” says owner Kim Tait. “We welcome customers to stop in our retail store to sample our products [and] provide you with simple recipe cards to make holiday entertaining fun and stress-free.”
Impress your guests with a beautiful cheese and charcuterie display that can be assembled in minutes on wooden, slate, or marble cutting boards. These can feature an assortment of cured meats, cheeses, olives, crackers, grapes, spiced nuts, and, of course, Tait’s assortment of fruit spreads, chutneys, holiday conserve, fig and olive relish, and tomato bruschetta.
Pair cheeses such as brie, Gouda, or cheddar with Tait’s cranberry orange conserve, fig and honey conserve, apple chutney, spiced pear chutney, or sour cherry jam for crowd-pleasing appetizers that will surely be a hit at every holiday party.
On Saturday, Dec. 14, Tait Farm Foods is hosting a free demonstration event featuring chocolate and baked goods at the Harvest Shop from 2-4 p.m. featuring Tait’s products available to purchase. Visitors are welcome to take home the beautiful picture-recipe cards to recreate these tasty morsels in their own kitchens.
No holiday party is complete without some refreshing libations. Tait Farm’s shrubs add a note of holiday flavors such as cinnamon, cranberry, or orange. Shrub is a fruity, acidic, concentrated syrup made by preserving berries and other fruits in vinegar. It can be used to flavor carbonated water, iced tea, lemonades, cocktails, or mocktails. Some ideas include a spiced cranberry sangria, yule mule, bourbon peach sweet tea, ginger lime spritzer, hot-spiced apple rum, and cranberry cosmopolitan. Recipes are available on the website at taitfarmfoods.com.
The holiday season is all about sharing gifts, memories, and meals around the table with the people you care about the most. What better way to share great taste with everyone on your holiday list than a gourmet gift from Tait Farm Foods? Gift sets and collections are available at Tait’s Harvest Shop, open Monday through Friday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m., as well as through its website.
In addition to its own food products, Tait also carries other regional artisan foods and crafts, as well as seasonally-inspired décor and gifts for the kitchen, home, and garden.
For more information about Tait Farm Foods, visit taitfarmfoods.com.
Get $1 off a jar of Holiday Conserve at the Harvest Shop by mentioning this Town&Gown article, or online by entering the discount code TOWNGOWN. Offer is good through December 31.
Vilma Shu is an editorial consultant for Town&Gown.
