Eat fresh.
Eat Maryland.

Food Gifts with a Maryland Connection

Honey is one of the easier gifts to get right this time of year. It keeps without refrigeration, travels without much fuss, and the bees that made it were almost certainly working Maryland fields and hedgerows. That matters in a way it doesn't with, say, roasted coffee. A Maryland roaster doing good work is a real thing worth supporting, but the beans came from somewhere else. The honey is local in the deeper sense, meaning the pollen, the terroir, the particular wildflowers or clover or tulip poplar of a specific county are in the jar. If you're buying at a farm stand or winter market, ask the beekeeper where their hives are. Some keep bees across multiple locations and the flavor differs. Creamed honey and raw honey both ship and store well, though you'll want to confirm with any individual producer whether they ship at all, since not everyone does.