Serving Up the Shore Raises $3,800 for Local Environmental Education

Chincoteague Bay Field Station (CBFS) hosted it's first-ever farm-to-table dinner, Serving Up the Shore on Friday, September 11, raising nearly $4,000 for local students to participate in environmental education programs. The event was the epitome of a community effort – Serving Up the Shore brought local chefs, farmers, producers, and community members together for a night of fine dining and fun.

The line up of chefs included Gail Beard of The Farmer's Daughter, Rosie Moot of Pico Taqueria, Matt Fenton of Chincoteague Bay Field Station, and Lisa LaMontagne of The Inn at Onancock. “The taste is so much more intense than mass produced corn or mass produced tomatoes,” says Moot, referring to the variety of locally sourced ingredients used in four-course meal. Her main dish, an Eastern Shore Paella featured local clams from Ballard Fish & Oyster Company, harvested in Assateague Channel, as well as black sea bass from local aquafarm, Bradford Bay Farms, and local sweet potatoes from Quail Cove Farms. Lisa took on two dessert options, one which used Chatham Vineyard's Cabernet Franc in a blackberry-wine sauce which topped lemon pound cake and vanilla bean ice cream from Chesapeake Bay Farms. “It's just wonderful that we have that here available to us at such a high quality, such a diversity of product,” says LaMontagne. 

Chincoteague Bay Field Station is pleased to offer free programming for local elementary schools this fall and will continue to support programs such as Shore People Advancing Readiness for Knowledge (SPARK), an intergenerational nature-based program for local families in Accomack County. CBFS plans to make Serving Up the Shore an annual event. They will offer their annual Field Station Friends Weekend October 16-18, 2015 for those interested in learning more about their environmental education programs. For more information visit their website: www.cbfieldstation.org 

Special thanks to WMDT for coming out and covering the event. Check out the story here!