Originally posted in the Monadnock Shopper News

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:

• 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 11th 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 Peterborough to complete your evening. This is a BYOB event and reservations are required.

• Enjoy a Taste of Peterborough: Valentine's Dance and Dessert Tasting on February 13th from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at the Peterborough Community Center.  Tickets are $25 each and on sale at the Toadstool Bookshop and Steele’s Stationers in Peterborough. For more information, visit The Hope for Gus Foundation on Facebook.

• Listen locally on February 14th at 3:00 p.m. when The Monadnock Center for History and Culture in Peterborough presents “The Faces of Love” a Valentine’s concert with pianist Virginia Eskin, mezzo-soprano Jazimina MacNeil, and guitarist Jose Lezcano.

• Get outside with your Valentine at Windblown Cross Country Skiing and Snowshoeing in New Ipswich.  They offer 40 km of trails, a café and warming hut to keep you moving.

• 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 13th from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Colony Mill Marketplace) or a Flower CSA Share from Vera Flora Farm in Gilsum?

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?

• Make your own Valentine's Day Card at the Hannah Grimes Marketplace with artist Alicia Drakiotes during the Keene, NH Ice & Snow Festival on Saturday, February 6th, 1:30-3PM.