COLUMBUS, Ohio – The 2nd annual Taste of Franklin County – held at the Waterman Farm on the Ohio State University campus Sept. 10 – was a smashing success, according to the event chair.

“Every person who made a reservation attended,” said Connie Cahill, a Franklin County Farm Bureau member. “There were people from all over Franklin County, and we even had a couple from Minnesota. We had the collegiate chapter of farm bureau on the grounds to help with serving food, clean-up, acting as guides. “It was great to have the future faces of Ohio agriculture assisting us.”

Event tickets sold for $50 per farm bureau member and $75 per non-member, and included a Waterman Farm Tour, Farm to Table multi-course dinner, a $5 voucher for the Mini Farmers Market, and an event fFavor.

The Waterman Farm tour included a Jersey dairy, an apiary, an apple orchard, a pawpaw orchard, the state-of-the-art Controlled Environment Agriculture Research Complex (CEARC), and a wagon tour of crop research plots. OSU Master Gardener volunteers provided tours of several different food and ornamental garden projects located on the farm.

The farm-to-table event featured an outdoor dinner with the produce provided by the master gardens at Waterman Farm under the direction of Franklin County Extension Agent Mike Hogan/OSU Extension, and prepared by the OSU Hospitality Instructional Kitchen students, under the direction of Chef David Wolf. The meat was prepared by Dr. Lyda Garcia and her students at the OSU Meat Science Department.

Beer and wine from a Greater Columbus winery and craft brewery were also served during dinner.

The Mini Farmers Market gave event participants the opportunity to purchase local foods from six area business vendors.

Soon after last year’s Taste of Franklin County at Circle S Farms in Grove City, Cahill and her committee began preparations for this year’s event. While searching for a 2023 site, the committee was suddenly inspired to approach OSU Extension and ask if they’d be interested in partnering with the farm bureau. Hogan agreed.

“Mike Hogan is just the salt of the earth,” Cahill said. “He said this would be so much fun and started with ideas.” Cahill and the committee then leveraged other relationships to put together the tour, dinner and slate of activities.

They wanted to get the students involved in some way, so she contacted Wolf, OSU’s culinary instructor. “I approached him and said, ‘do you suppose that you and your students could come up with the recipes using as much produce as we possibly can on the farm?’ And he said he would love to be involved.”

Cahill said, “Then we contacted Dr. Garcia, she provided the protein for us last year. So, she jumped on board again this year. And with Mike Hogan, we had the availability of the Master Gardeners there to help us with a variety of different things.”

This year’s event hosted 175 people, up from the 75 participants in 2022, and generated approximately $8,500 in proceeds which go toward the bureau’s county scholarship fund. “I think maybe 15 young people received scholarships from us this year,” Cahill said. “And with that money, we’re going to be able to give even more next year. So that’s really, really exciting all of these young people looking at agriculture and food as their heir professions.”

A Taste of Franklin County was sponsored by Franklin County Farm Bureau with support from OSU’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences; Hummel Farms; Farm Credit Mid-America; The Kroger Company; Connie and Denny Cahill; Phoenix Marketing; Miceli Dairy; Plum Run Winery; and Grove City Brewing Company.