Vegetarians and those who are at least interested in sampling vegetarian dishes will have that opportunity this Saturday, Oct. 24, 4 to 7 p.m., on the first ever “Hop Off, Hop On” Northwest Philadelphia Vegetarian Food Tour. Participants will leave on a tour bus at the Historic Germantown Visitor Center, 5501 Germantown Ave., and make several stops at locations in Germantown, Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill to sample plant-based foods and local brews.

Mt. Airy resident Bonita Harmon is one of the two developers of this event, which she hopes will turn into an annual tradition. A former tour guide originally from Salem, New Jersey, Harmon was raised as a vegetarian during her childhood.

“I was raised in the Seventh Day Adventist Church,” Harmon told the Local last week. “I really did not even know what I was eating. It was just food to me. I have been off and on as a vegetarian since then. I did eat some meat as a teenager, but then I stopped eating meat because I came to care about animals. My daughter, Tamara Washington, 37, is a vegan. My grandmother ate almost no meat, and she lived to be 103.”

Harmon, the mother of three children, was married twice, the first time to a man named Philip George Washington. “I used to tell people I was married to George Washington,” she said.

“I cook vegetables a lot, wolf them down,” continued Harmon, who was vice president of the Agora charter school in King of Prussia from 2009 to 2016 and is a member of the Association of Tour Guides. “I love fried peppers. I’ve lived in Mt. Airy since 2020. I had a really bad accident on Lincoln Drive that year and was unable to work. I want to start doing guided tours again … Regarding vegetarianism, there is nothing new about it. It has been around for many centuries, but it requires a lot of time and patience.”

The other developer of the Oct. 24 Vegetarian Food Tour, Vance Lehmkuhl, a Manayunk resident and a vegan for the past 26 years, wrote a column from 2011 to 2016 for the Philadelphia Daily News about veganism. He is currently writing a book about the history of vegetarianism in Philadelphia. In the book, he writes that the vegetarian movement in the United States was born in Philadelphia, that the city was pivotal in the further development of the vegetarian movement and that Benjamin Franklin was a vegetarian for several years.

In 1770, Franklin sent from London a shipment of “Chinese caravances” (soybeans) to famed Philadelphia botanist John Bartram (1699-1777) with instructions for turning them into a Chinese cheese called “tau-fu.” Thus, Franklin introduced the vegetarian staple, tofu, which is commonly found today in many Asian restaurants, to the American colonies. (Tofu is made by coagulating soy milk and pressing the resulting curds into solid blocks.)

“I became a vegetarian in 1985,” Lehmkuhl told the Local, “and then I transitioned into a vegan in 1998. I decided to be true to my values. Just before the final transition, I ate all the cheese I wanted. I could not imagine living without cheese, but then I kicked the habit. I decided to be true to my beliefs. (Vegans do not eat dairy products, but vegetarians do.) On the subject of milk, for example, cows produce milk to feed their babies, not to feed human babies, and we are stealing that milk. I could not be a part of that any more.

“We need to question what we are doing to the animals. My decision was a mixture of mental health and fairness and justice for animals. Having them killed doesn’t do that. I could not lie to myself any more. I had to live with integrity according to the values I professed.”

Lehmkuhl grew up in southwestern Ohio and went to Oberlin College. He and a friend from college, Michael Hollinger, came to Philadelphia in 1985 to write musical theater. One of their plays, “A Wonderful Noise,” which had several performances at Villanova University Theater in 2016, was named Best New American Musical by the New Dramatists Guild. Lehmkuhl also wrote the book, “Revolutionary Peace” (2025, published by the American Vegan Society) as well as “Eating Vegan in Philly.”

“It’s not easy to live according to the values you profess,” Lehmkuhl said, “but we are needlessly killing animals and jumping through hoops to justify other atrocities. Changing your lifestyle to be coherent with your values takes real integrity. One Philadelphia person who did this was Anthony Benezet (after whom Benezet Street in Chestnut Hill was named), who was a fervent vegetarian and who fought bravely against slavery in the 18th century.”

For more information about the “Hop Off Hop On” tour, call 267-632-6848. Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.