This Valentine’s Day, show your “local love” -- your love for your sweetie and your whole community -- by purchasing gifts (or gift-making supplies) and meals (or ingredients) at locally owned businesses.

Locally owned businesses offer us much to love.  They strengthen our local economy, culture and well-being. Independent businesses re-circulate four times more money in our community than chain stores.  Moreover, studies show that most new jobs are created by small businesses -- meaning today’s purchases are tomorrow’s jobs.

“Talk about a sweetheart gift! If every family in the country shifted $100 of their Valentine’s Day shopping budget to locally owned, independent businesses over $7.8 billion would be directly returned to local communities,” shared our friends at Independent We Stand.

Find all that you need to show your local love using Monadnock Buy Local’s searchable online directory of locally owned businesses: Find Independents.

Here are seven extra special ways to show your local love this Valentine’s Day:

• Listen locally at the Historical Society of Cheshire County's Italian Love Songs with Salvatore Basile on February 17 from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.  Tickets are $15 each.

• Send a Singing Valentine with the Keene Cheshiremen Chorus: a 4-part a cappella that will sing live (and by surprise) to your sweetie.

• Experience a romantic dinner at The Inn at East Hill Farm on February 14th at 6:00 p.m. Dinner includes appetizers, entrees and desserts for $60 a couple.  Add roses from Coll’s Garden Center and Florist in Jaffrey to complete your evening. This is a BYOB event and reservations are required.

• If you do choose flowers for your Valentine, we encourage you to buy them from a local florist -- but why not offer something more unique, like a bouquet of locally grown greens from the Farmers’ Market of Keene (open on February 10th from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Monadnock Waldorf School).

• Keep the local love blossoming through the growing season.  Purchase a Flower CSA Share from Vera Flora Farm in Gilsum now -- and enjoy a bouquet of flowers each week, for 4 - 10 weeks this summer.
  

So, show lots of local love this Valentine’s Day, and the love will circle back to you, your loved ones and -- best of all -- your entire community.

Looking for even more #LocalLove ideas?

• Terrapin Glassblowing Studio: Flameworked Roses ~ A Seasonal Special
• Monadnock Food Co-op: Local Love Sample Night
• Piedra Fina: Chocolate Lovers Valentine's Dinner