By Carol Lynn Jackson for
Life In Our Foothills Magazine

When we shop locally during the holidays, we strengthen the economic power of our own communities. We are nurturing businesses that often times are using local resources to the heights of sustainability, employing local workers at decent wages and depending less on a global economy of imports. Give the gift of nurturing local businesses as you use some of these gift ideas that nurture loved ones through food and environmental health.

A regional cookbook
Find a local bookstore that sells regional cookbooks. You should be able to find cookbooks that focus on the seasonal foods of your region written by those who live and cook in the region. Try the Gardener’s Cottage in Saluda or Village Books and the Bookshelf or Vine’s N Stuff in Tryon.

A regional vegetable gardening book
Generic gardening books are helpful, but if you want to know when the earliest date you can plant your spring garden is, a regional book is more helpful. Currently in stock at The Salamander in Saluda is Attracting Native Pollinators. Any of these bookstores can take your special order and have your selection ready for you quite quickly.

Seeds
Buy an armload of organic and heirloom seeds to fill up a stocking. Try the Farm Store at the Mill Spring Ag Center where they carry Sow True Seeds based in Asheville. They are organic, heirloom and open-pollinated. There is a current seed sale at the Mill Spring Farm Store for planning ahead.

Honey
Give a jar of local honey and honey-based health and body products or locally made goat milk products, also available at the Mill Spring Farm Store.

Wine
Put a pretty bow on a bottle of wine from a local winery. You don’t necessarily have to run to the winery to buy it if you don’t have the time, but they are all worth the trip! Many wine stores have a regional section. Check in with Janet at Carolina Foothills Chamber of Commerce for chamber businesses that sell local wines, or Suzanne Strickland of Stone Soup Restaurant, or Our Carolina Foothills Travel and Tourism. There you can grab a local wine-trail map and stuff it in the wine bags that you give as gifts.

Local, regional, and American-made toys
The Salamander in Saluda has searched the country far and wide for handcrafted safe handling American made toys. Cynthia researched 400 toy companies in America and found that fewer than 20 of them sold American-made toys. Half of those offered only one or two items. Check out the Salamander’s unique lines of toys made in America from recycled plastic milk jugs, BPA and PBC free, in food-safe colors and dishwasher safe too! The Mill Spring Farm store has locally made corn-hole games from re-purposed pallets.

Coffee
Give someone a bag of fair trade coffee, a small bag of organic sugar, and a fun mug purchased from a local potter. Open Road Coffeehouse in Columbus or at Tryon International Equestrian Center, or Meanwhile, In Saluda offer local food markets for coffees, handcraft beers, wines, local foods, and so much more.

CSA membership
If you’ve got the money to spend, this would make any local food advocate happy. A membership to a Community Supported Agriculture program will give that special someone on your gift list weeks and months of farm fresh gifts. For a four-week or nine-week local organic CSA gift certificate good January through March of 2016, contact info@mannacabanna.com in Saluda.

Odds and Ends
Handmade quilts, handmade re-usable shopping bags, local authors in fiction and non-fiction, poetry and history, beauty and healthcare supplies, hand-crafted bowls and pottery, and local foods with added-value are all across the unique small businesses of our foothills.