Carbondale, Illinois’ claim-to-fame is being the birthplace of Memorial Day, the first of which was observed on April 29, 1866.

On that inaugural Memorial Day, 219 Civil War veterans marched through Carbondale in memory of the fallen soldiers and ended at Woodlawn Cemetery, where Union hero Gen. John A. Logan delivered a speech. It was recognized as the first organized, community-wide Memorial Day observance.

It’s a mid-summer blowout party that lasts for 10 days. McHenry’s annual Fiesta Days is one of the oldest and largest summer festivals in the Chicago area.

Held in Petersen and Veterans parks and throughout downtown McHenry, this celebration includes carnival rides, sports tournaments, canoe races, a 5K run, an ice cream social, bingo, puppeteers, jugglers, magicians, comedians and live music by popular tribute bands. An arts and crafts show, motorcycle show and sidewalk sale also take place throughout the week.

The Riverview Theatre Company will also offer performances of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew.”

This year, a parade honors McHenry County’s 175th birthday.

Carbondale is often called the capital of Southern Illinois, and it’s not hard to see why. Located an hour and a half (about 90 miles) southeast of St. Louis on the northern edge of the Shawnee National Forest, Carbondale has a population of about 26,000 and is the location of the main campus of Southern Illinois University.

Being a college town means Carbondale has lots of perks for residents and visitors alike. Cultural attractions, recreation opportunities and ample shopping venues make life in Carbondale exciting. The city’s history dates back to 1852, and Carbondale’s nostalgic Town Square and West Walnut Street Historic District are popular with tourists. The latter is a series of 54 private residences that were collectively named a National Historic District in 1975.

Downtown Carbondale has seen many visual and economic improvements in recent years, thanks to the efforts of the Carbondale Main Street Association. Downtown is a fun destination with special events, fairs and parades throughout the year.

Carbondale has won oodles of accolades over the past few decades, including the Best Small City in Illinois in 1990 and 1997 and the Governor’s Hometown Award in 2002, 2005 and 2009. It was also selected by Outdoor Life magazine as one of the Top 200 Towns for Sportsmen in 2009.

Carbondale Area Orchards and Wineries
More than a century ago, immigrants migrated to the Carbondale area to start orchards because the climate and terrain were favorable for growing fruit. Today, Carbondale has several apple and peach orchards that continue to thrive, two of which are stops along the Shawnee Hills Orchard Trail.

Rendleman Orchards in Alto Pass grows peaches, nectarines and apples and is open to the public July through December. Established in 1873, Rendleman Orchards is an Illinois Centennial Farm that has a charming farm market where visitors can sample tree-ripened fruits and homemade jams, jellies, salsas, ciders and syrups.

At Flamm Orchards in Cobden, treat yourself to a made-from-scratch dessert. The orchard has a Fruit & Cream Stand where visitors can enjoy in-season strawberry shortcake, peach cobbler and apple dumplings a la mode surrounded by hummingbirds. Flamm Orchards is open May through mid-December.

Not long after orchards began popping up across Southern Illinois, grape growers also began putting down roots in the region. As a result, several wineries have emerged, and visitors can explore them along the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail, one of the region’s top tourism attractions. The trail includes 12 wineries and continues to expand. It was established in 1995 by the Carbondale Convention & Tourism Bureau and the owners of Southern Illinois’ first three wineries: Alto Vineyards in Alto Pass, Pomona Winery in Pomona and Owl Creek Vineyard in Cobden.

Carbondale Entertainment Venues
Carbondale may be a small town, but it offers big-city entertainment. The Southern Illinois University Arena is an 8,000-seat venue that regularly hosts some of the biggest names in music. In its 40-plus years of existence, it has hosted concerts by Elvis, B.B. King, Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Kenny Rogers and many others. The arena was renovated in 2010 with new seating, additional restrooms, improved handicap accessibility, a new scoreboard and improved concessions.

During the summer months, Southern Illinois University’s Department of Theater presents the highly anticipated McLeod Summer Playhouse at McLeod Theater. The 2012 season will include crowd-pleasers such as “Steel Magnolias,” “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” “Chicago” and “Cinderella.”

For community theater at its best, look no further than The Stage Company, which has been entertaining Carbondale for 30 years. Performances are held at the Varsity Center for the Arts, and the 30th anniversary 2011-2012 season included “Nickel and Dimed,” “Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol” and “Inherit the Wind.” Opening July 12, 2012, The Stage Company will present “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

If you have kids in your traveling party, make sure to visit The Science Center of Southern Illinois. Designed for children ages 3 to 13, the museum features interactive, hands-on exhibits that let kids explore the world around them. The Science Center is located inside University Mall and is open Wednesday through Sunday. Check out the science-related toys, games, magic tricks and projects in the gift store.

Carbondale Outdoor Attractions
Grab your shades and a towel and head for Poplar Camp Beach on Carbondale’s Cedar Lake. The city-owned public beach and boat dock is known for its family atmosphere and gorgeous scenery. Fishermen regularly reel in crappie and bass, and the sandy waterfront leads to a swim and play area. Lifeguards are on duty during beach hours, and restrooms, picnic tables and concessions are on site.

If you love nature, don’t miss the Marberry Arboretum, located on 25 acres two miles south of Carbondale. The arboretum is a living museum with more than 600 species and 20,000 plants. Meander along scenic walkways, fish in the arboretum’s pond, or enjoy a picnic amidst the natural scenery. The arboretum also has some historic sites, including two unmarked Civil War graves and stones from a Shawnee Indian counsel fire.

Campers flock to Devil’s Backbone Park in Grand Tower during the summer months. The park has a peaceful campground overlooking the Mississippi River and an unusual rock formation called Devil’s Bake Oven. Legends say the caves within Devil’s Bake Oven harbored river pirates until U.S. troops drove them away in 1803. The park is also said to have been the site of an Indian massacre in the early 1800s. Some of the locals believe it is haunted.

Attention golfers! Carbondale is smack dab in the middle of the Southern Illinois Golf Trail. Hickory Ridge Golf Center in Carbondale is one of five courses along the trail, which was established by the Carbondale Convention and Tourism Bureau. The 18-hole Hickory Ridge course is open to the public and challenges all skill levels. Another challenging course along the trail is Kokopelli Golf Club in nearby Marion.

Off-the-Beaten-Path Shopping
Love to shop? Spend a day browsing the specialty and antique stores that line Carbondale’s Illinois Avenue and Main Street neighborhoods. You’ll find everything from the quirky to the quaint, including 6Pence gift shop, 710 Bookstore and Dayshift Boutique, to name a few. Be sure to stop in Mary Lou’s Grill – a local landmark – for biscuits and gravy.

Looking for chain stores? University Mall has more than 50 popular stores, including Macy’s and JC Penney.

For more information, visit the Carbondale Convention & Tourism Bureau website. Also check out our list of Carbondale restaurants, as well as a little bit of history on how the city became the birthplace of Memorial Day.

For 25 years, when Carbondale, Illinois, residents crave Asian cuisine, they head to Hunan Restaurant.

“We are one of the best restaurants in the area, and the hard work of all our employees has contributed to our success since 1987,” says Chan San, owner of Hunan Restaurant.

Hunan isn’t your typical Chinese restaurant. Its menu is made up of artfully prepared entrees from various regions of China – hot and spicy Hunan and Szechwan food, hearty and filling Peking fare, sweet delicacies from Shanghai and lighter options from Canton.

“One of our most popular dishes is our Honey Walnut Shrimp, which is prepared Cantonese-style,” says San, a native of Laos. “Our Hot Pepper Triple Combination from Hunan is also very popular. It is a combination of beef, shrimp and chicken stir-fried with green onions and spicy jalapeno peppers.”

For a taste of Szechwan, try the Chicken in Black Bean Sauce – strips of chicken stir-fried with jalapenos in a delicious spicy black bean sauce. Then there’s the sweeter Golden Sesame Chicken from Mandarin, which is deep-fried until golden, stir-fried with vegetables, tossed in sauce and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Entrees at Hunan range from $11 to $20, and the enchanting Asian decor is always a topic of conversation.

“We have customers come in from big cities, and they say they can’t believe Carbondale has a restaurant like Hunan,” San says.

Another secret to Hunan’s success is being involved with the community. San serves on the Carbondale Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors and traveled to China and Taiwan in 2009 with the Southern Illinois University chancellor to help recruit students.

“It’s always good to give back to the community – we try to keep up with the news and what is going on,” San says. “The best part of my job is talking to people. We have lots of return customers since we have been open 25 years. And they are more than customers – they have become our friends.”

Where to Find
Hunan Restaurant is located at 710 E. Main St. in Carbondale. For hours of operation, visit www.hunaninc.com or call (618) 529-1108.

Cottage gardens started in Medieval England when poor cottagers grew their own food, medicine, fabric dyes and scents right out the back door. During the Victorian period, artists and poets romanticized cottage gardens to escape the harshness of the Industrial Revolution.

In America, they were originally grown as farmyard gardens and were jumbles of flowers, herbs and vines grown close together to maximize the area close to the house. The plants were those that could be grown from seed or starter shoots and easily shared with neighbors. Today we call them “pass-along plants.”

What is a modern cottage garden, and what are the plants grown there? Compact, colorful, fragrant, informal and utilitarian are all adjectives used to describe cottage gardens. Think rose-covered arbors, cascading window boxes, riots of color and texture, a slightly unkempt, blowzy look of variety, and you will have the mental picture of a cottage garden.

Cottage gardens are not individual specimen plants surrounded by a sea of mulch. Instead of fussy hybrid tea roses, you will find climbing roses. Instead of symmetrical, carefully delineated sidewalks, you will find foliage spilling over the edges onto pathways.

Cottage gardens are individualistic because the first rule is to grow plants you love. The second is to choose plants that are easy to grow in your conditions. Here are a few suggestions of plants that do well in Illinois.
You will need some climbers, which means they will need something to grow up. Traditional cottage gardens were fenced in to keep the family’s food animals out. Today an arbor, trellis or partial fence is all that is needed for vines. Clematis, morning glory, bittersweet and climbing roses are a few suggestions.
Next you will need some tall structural plants. How about hollyhocks, Joe-Pye weed, Buddleia (butterfly bush), the taller rudbeckias and even sunflowers?

The middle layer needs some mid-sized plants such as cosmos, zinnia, cleome, columbine, rudbeckia, echinacea, liatris, sweet rocket and goldenrod. There are many more annuals and perennials from which to choose.

Finally, you will need some low growers. Consider tulips and daffodils, lilies, Iberis (candy tuft), dianthus, marigolds, petunias, pansies, mums and asters. You can even mix in some herbs, such as chives, parsley, thyme, sage, marjoram and oregano.

If you choose the plants you love for your cottage garden, you will enjoy it immensely. Once the garden is mature, you can start sharing your seeds and volunteer plants with fellow gardeners.

Lee Roy Rendleman’s nickname as a kid was Leepy. When he was 8 or 10 years old, he remembers his dad and grandpa working on a threshing machine and steam engine. When the engine shut down, Rendleman would hop across a couple of mud holes to get supplies.

“First thing I knew, they were calling me leaper, then leap frog and finally ‘leepy.’ It stuck. I’ve been called that ever since,” says Rendleman, 84.

The nickname has given Rendleman direction. After farming for 50 years – raising corn, soybeans and wheat on his Southern Illinois farm – he had to quit when a drought in 1983 took all of his crops. He took it in stride, working out with the banks what he owed, selling some of his farmland, and leaping to a new career as county commissioner and raising produce from his garden to sell at local farmers’ markets.

At a young age, his mother taught him how to can produce from the family garden.

“Canning was a way of life on the farm growing up,” Rendleman says. “We canned enough to keep the family fed through the winter.”

So it was only natural for Rendleman to carry on the tradition. He and his wife, Marla, would can produce from their garden, often having an extra 1,000 jars to give away to friends and family. Their specialty was their pickles, canned from cucumbers raised in their garden. They also grew peppers and tomatoes for salsa.

“One of the boys says to me one day, ‘You know, I believe you could sell this stuff,’ ” Rendleman says. “That rang a bell with me. I went from there.”

The idea grew into Leepy’s Country Gourmet Foods, a business located next to the Trail of Tears State Forest in Jonesboro, located in Union County, Illinois (along the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail). He offers a wide variety of canned products including several varieties of pickles, relishes, salsa, pickled vegetables, sauerkraut, applesauce, apple butter, jellies and jams. He raises some of the produce and purchases the rest from area farmers’ markets in Carbondale, Cape Girardeau, Mo., and occasionally St. Louis.

“Our best seller is the medium salsa,” Rendleman says. “We often have to go to two farmers’ markets a week to get all our produce.”

Rendleman converted one of his farm sheds into a kitchen. His grandson, Zachary, 25, joined the business after returning from multiple tours of duty in Iraq for the U.S. Air Force.

“He came back and decided to help Pa Pa while he went to school,” Rendleman says. “I’m so glad.”

Where To Buy
Leepy’s products are sold through regional dealers, farmers’ markets, some of the Southern Illinois wineries and direct from his farm in Jonesboro. He also sells through his website, www.leepysgourmetfoods.com, or by phone at (866) 680-0958.

When the temperatures hit summer highs, make sure you’re taking proper precautions to avoid heat exhaustion and heat stroke when working outside.

1. Avoid extended exposure to direct sunlight between the peak hours of 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. As much as possible, limit your outdoor work to morning and evening hours.
2. Take frequent breaks in the shade or in an air-conditioned facility.
3. Drink plenty of fluids regardless of your activity level. Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink.
4. Avoid liquids that contain alcohol or large amounts of sugar. These cause you to lose more body fluid.
5. Don’t ignore excessive heat warnings.
6. Protect yourself from the sun by wearing a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses and sunscreen.

This town has a history with pretzels. So many pretzels, in fact, that it took on the name Pretzel City, USA, when the resident Billerbeck Bakery – established in 1869 – flooded the local marketplace with an overabundance of crispy baked pretzels.

Since then, Freeport has embraced its namesake and each year celebrates the baked, knot-like dough with the Pretzel City Festival.

This year, the event kicks off June 30 in Krape Park with the 10th annual Pretzel City 5K at 8 a.m. The rest of the day includes food, entertainment, craft vendors, a petting zoo, a dunk tank, pony rides, a cardboard boat regatta, the pretzel recipe contest, birdhouse building and an evening movie.

For more information, call (877) 600-0346 ext. 901.

Linda Drendel, dairy farmer and farm mom of Hampshire, Illinois, gave the field moms a tour of her farm in 2011. The Drendel family milks 150 Holstein dairy cows, cares for 150 calves and heifers, and grows corn, soybeans, hay and wheat.

Q: Do growth hormones affect the quality of milk?
A: BST is a hormone found naturally in cows that stimulates milk production; rBST is an U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)-approved, manufactured form that enhances milk production in a cow. Studies show that milk from cows treated with the supplement is the same wholesome product that we have enjoyed for generations. This has been affirmed and re-affirmed by the FDA along with other leading health organizations. During the farm visit from the field moms, our veterinarian assured the moms that there is no health risk to them or their families by drinking milk that is not labeled as rBST free. Dale and I raised our family drinking milk from our farm, knowing that all milk is wholesome, safe and nutritious.

Q: How do you care for baby calves?
A: Cow care and calf comfort are very important to us on our farm. We provide safe and clean conditions for both the mother and her calf during and after the birthing process. Calves receive individual attention away from their mother soon after their birth to ensure their safety and to keep them warm and dry. We bottle-feed the calf the mother’s first milk, colostrum, within the first several hours after its birth and give the calf vaccines to promote its natural immunity. Our calves, free to frolic in their pens, have water and feed in front of them, and I watch them carefully to make sure they are well and content.

Q: Do you use antibiotics? Is that safe for my family?
A: Sometimes it is necessary for us to treat cows with antibiotics when they are sick, just as we need medication when we are sick. The milk from a cow being treated for illness is separated from the milk supply until that cow’s milk is clear of antibiotics and ready to re-enter the bulk tank. Milk is strictly tested for antibiotics on the farm and at the processing plant. During the field moms’ farm visit, our veterinarian assured the moms that any milk that tests positive for antibiotics cannot be sold to the public. All milk is free of antibiotics. Milk and dairy foods are among the most highly regulated foods in this country.

Q: Is cow tipping for real or a myth?
A: A myth! Cows do not sleep standing up, and who could sneak up on a 1,500-pound cow and tip her over?

Do you have a question for a farmer? Contact a farmer with your questions here.

Looking for a place to chow down in Carbondale, Illinois? From pizza and burgers to Chinese, Italian and Thai, you’re sure to find a local restaurant that tempts your taste buds in this charismatic college town.

Mary Lou’s Grill: A diner known for its biscuits and gravy
Quatro’s Deep Pan Pizza: The place to go for deep-dish pizza in Southern Illinois
Newell House: Steaks, pasta and seafood served in a former hotel
Hunan Restaurant: Serving authentic Chinese cuisine in Carbondale for 25 years
Thai Taste: Find pineapple fried rice, glass noodles and other Thai food here
Spinoni’s Pizza and Pasta House: Classic pasta dishes
Tres Hombres: Get your salsa and margarita fix here
Italian Village: Another place for pasta and pizza that’s been around since 1960
Fat Patties: Tasty burgers, but even better fries, in a Chicago-style atmosphere
Fujiyama’s Japanese Restaurant: One of the few places to find sushi in Carbondale

What’s your favorite restaurant in Carbondale? Let us know in the comments.