Pennsylvania College of Technology baking and culinary students take the stage at the 2025 Pennsylvania Farm Show. The college will again entertain and inform at the 2026 Farm Show, slated Jan. 10-17, both on the PA Preferred Culinary Connection Stage and with hands-on activities in the Giant Expo Hall. (Credit: Kat Kuo for the PA Preferred Culinary Connection)
Pennsylvania College of Technology will again showcase its hands-on applied technology education for the thousands who attend the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
The 2026 show, themed “Growing a Nation,” is slated Jan. 10-17, 2026, at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg.
Penn College will deliver a variety of interactive activities at its booth in the Giant Expo Hall and provide cooking demonstrations and backstage support for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s PA Preferred Culinary Connection stage in the Main Hall.
Daily activities in the Penn College booth:
- Saturday, Jan. 10: Create a cyanotype “sun print” with graphic design and photography faculty.
- Sunday, Jan. 11: Experience the emergency management profession in an interactive demonstration by emergency management and homeland security faculty.
- Monday, Jan. 12: Try out a surgeon’s tools using the physician assistant program’s laparoscopic surgery simulator.
- Tuesday, Jan. 13: Win prizes in a horticultural Q&A with landscape/plant technology faculty.
- Wednesday, Jan. 14: Make electrical circuits with diesel equipment technology faculty.
- Thursday, Jan. 15: Celebrate the Farm Show’s “Honoring Our Heroes Day” with the college’s Veteran & Military Services staff.
- Friday, Jan. 16: The physician assistant studies program again provides its hands-on laparoscopic surgery simulator
- Saturday, Jan. 17: Make buttons and create using 3D pens with The Dr. Welch Workshop: A Makerspace at Penn College.
At the Culinary Connection Stage, where chefs showcase dishes made with Pennsylvania ingredients, baking and culinary students will spend two action-packed days giving on-stage assistance and preparing sample-sized portions of the chefs’ recipes for Farm Show attendees.
The college’s on-stage activities begin Saturday, Jan. 10, with an 11 a.m. demonstration of corned beef and cabbage by Chef Mike S. Dinan, executive chef of the college’s Le Jeune Chef Restaurant. The restaurant is a live-learning lab for Penn College hospitality students.
On Sunday, Jan. 11, Chef Michael J. Ditchfield, retired instructor of culinary arts, will demonstrate “Keystone Stone Soup” at 11 a.m.
Baking and culinary students will work alongside Penn College alumni chefs Colby Janowitz, owner of Mycelia (demonstrating braised short ribs and savory rice porridge on Saturday at noon) and Adam Diltz, a James Beard Award nominee and owner of Elwood in Philadelphia (demonstrating turnip salad on Sunday at 4 p.m.). (Read a Spring 2023 Penn College Magazine story on Diltz.)
They’ll also support “Top Chef” television series contestant and James Beard Award semifinalist Bryan Voltaggio, and former White House chef and cookbook author John Moeller, among several others.
They’ll wrap up their Farm Show experience with the School Cooking Challenge on Sunday at 5 p.m. The event pits the student culinarians against each other as they compete live on stage to create the best dish using a “mystery basket” of Pennsylvania ingredients.
The Pennsylvania Farm Show is the largest indoor agricultural expo in the nation, featuring more than 5,000 animals, 12,000-plus competitive entries from more than 4,600 competitors, over 250 commercial exhibits and hundreds of educational and entertaining events.
The show is open 8 a.m.-9 p.m. daily, except Sunday, Jan. 11, when it closes at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Jan. 17, when it closes at 5 p.m. Admission is free. On-site parking is $15 per vehicle.
For information about Penn College, a national leader in applied technology education, visit www.pct.edu, email admissions@pct.edu or call toll-free 800-367-9222.