September is Eat Local Month on Whidbey Island, which means there will be ample opportunity for residents and tourists alike to enjoy locally grown food.

Along with farm tours, opportunities to pick produce, farmers markets and restaurants serving local produce, two new events — Oktoberfest and CornFest —will be taking place for the first time this month.

Eat Local Month is an initiative of the Whidbey Island Grown Cooperative, an organization that promotes local farms and businesses to both Whidbey residents and tourists. It started out simply as a way to market local food.

“If you’d put the Whidbey Island Grown label on something, it would indicate to customers that it’s locally made,” explained Shannon Bly, coordinator for Whidbey Island Grown.

Over the last couple of years, the organization has expanded to include other ways to support local farmers, including the Food Hub, an online marketplace where people can purchase local goods in one place.

This is the second year Whidbey Island Grown has done Eat Local Month.

“We’re trying to eat food grown and raised on Whidbey Island first,” Bly said.

She said she considers food grown regionally – within 100 to 300 miles – to be local because not everything can be grown on the island. There is only so much space available for farmland.

“We can’t grow enough for everybody,” she said. “So part of what the co-op can offer is a way to connect with other regional food hubs and distributors and help create a regional food system that makes our food system stronger for our eaters, which is everybody.”

Local food gives Whidbey Island residents independence, is good for the economy and preserves farmland from being developed for other purposes.

“There’s just so many ways that it strengthens us as a community,” she said.

Local farms provide food that doesn’t have to be transported to the island on a truck.

“It’s fresh, it’s more flavorful, it tastes good and I always like to say that meat tastes better if the animals were raised with a million dollar view,” Bly said. “I really think that’s true.”

There are many ways that people can support farms and try local food during the month of September.

CornFest is taking place at Whidbey Farm and Market near Oak Harbor starting at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 24 and ending at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 25.

“We’re all about keeping things local here as much as possible,” said Shannon Hamilton, owner of Whidbey Farm and Market which opened in 2020. “We have over 30 vendors that are represented here.”

The market sells food and other locally-made products at its location on Monroe Landing Road. It gives vendors a physical location to sell their goods without having to set up at an outdoor market.

Whidbey Farm and Market is open every day from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. until the end of October. The market will then reopen for the holiday season.

Hamilton has been wanting to start an annual festival and she has a field of sweet corn on the property that she has turned into a corn maze for the past couple of years. When Whidbey Island Grown asked if she had any ideas to celebrate Eat Local Month, she thought it was the perfect opportunity to start a corn festival.

Along with the maze, she will be grilling sweet corn served with a variety of toppings, hamburgers and hot dogs. There will be face painting, live music, a pumpkin patch, a bouncy house and a cornhole tournament on Saturday. People can sign up online or in person to participate.

There is no cost to attend the event. It costs $20 to register for the cornhole tournament, which includes lunch and drinks. Sign up at whidbeyfarmandmarket.com.

On the South End of the island, Oktoberfest is taking place from noon to 7 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 24 and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 25 at Mutiny Bay Blues in Freeland, a certified organic blueberry farm that Brit Fletcher and his family have run for over a decade. The event will raise money for the South Whidbey Schools Foundation, an organization that supplements education for the district that falls outside of the school budget.

“We’re a supporter and kind of that bridge between the community and the public schools,” said Shelly Ackerman, president of the South Whidbey Schools Foundation.

Fletcher said his farm and the foundation have similar goals.

“We started this really to give an opportunity for kids to have a vocational type of labor opportunity versus everyone just thinking they have to have a screen in front of them all the time,” he said. “Which is not a bad thing necessarily but I think it’s good to see other options.”

Ackerman said grant requests from teachers declined during the pandemic as all learning was taking place over Zoom, so she is expecting more requests this year. The foundation likes to fund projects that get kids outside and working with their hands, such as building and then auctioning off sheds, gardening, growing food and running a farm stand.

“Trying to just get kids into the experience of things,” Ackerman said. “We’re always excited to get innovative ideas and requests from the teachers.”

Fletcher was inspired to host an Oktoberfest because a lot of his family have attended the original event in Munich and his wife’s mother is from Germany.

“September is that nice little month where crowds die down a bit from a tourist perspective,” he said. “A good time for locals to get out to have a social event outside.”

This Oktoberfest will have a beer garden, games and food trucks. There will be an open mic for musicians, stand-up comics, poets and anyone else who’d like to perform.

The cold spring resulted in a smaller blueberry crop this year and a later harvest. One variety hasn’t even been picked yet which means there may still be some fresh blueberries available. Other food offered will include Whidbey Island Ice Cream with blueberries, blueberry cider, blueberry juice and even a blueberry liqueur made by Whidbey Island Distillery.

Mutiny Bay Blues is hosting a farm tour as part of Eat Local Month at noon on Sunday, Sept. 4. People will have the opportunity to pick their own blueberries. Fletcher has a farm incubator where he gives a couple of acres to recent graduates of the Organic Farm School. Sleepy Bee Farms grows vegetables and will also be part of the tour.

“Most people have no real sense where their food comes from and this helps them figure that out a little bit, so it’s fun for us to do it,” Fletcher said.

Oktoberfest tickets are $10 and are available at mutinybayblues.com.

For more information on Eat Local Month events and to view a list of restaurants that serve local food, visit whidbeyislandgrown.com/eat-local-month.

Photo provided Brit Fletcher owns Mutiny Bay Blues, an organic blueberry farm, with his family. Mutiny Bay Blues is hosting Oktoberfest on Sept. 24 and 25.

Mutiny Bay Blues is an organic blueberry farm in Freeland. The farm is hosting Oktoberfest on Sept. 24 and 25 as par of Eat Local Month. (Photo provided)