Heritage Harvest Festival

We've been spending a lot of our recent weekends in Charlottesville, much to our total enjoyment. We've really fallen in love with the area for myriad reasons, many of which were reinforced during our visit to the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello.

With the mountains as our gorgeous backdrop, we arrived full of kid-like glee, eager for the tastings, lectures, and local farm goodness that awaited us. Montalto was apparently just recently purchased by the Monticello estate, and it really was an extraordinary setting for the festival. Seriously gorgeous.

The midway filled with vendors and all sorts of fun stuff. I wish I had gotten a picture of the tomato tastings being held. No kidding, I think they were doing a tasting of what seemed like 25 different tomato varieties. Super neat!From the other end of the midway--see those mountains?!
We were really interested in the free lectures held that day. Our first choice lecture was Heirloom Garlic and Onions: How to Grow These Culinary Essentials; however, it was uncomfortably PACKED, so we checked out our second choice, which ended up being a total highlight of the day. Figs and Other Fruit, presented by Michael McConkey of Edible Landscaping: We also made seed balls! A local young farmers group was encouraging folks to make their own free seed balls--a little bit of compost, soil, water, and seeds rolled into a damp ball and left out to dry in the sun. Supposedly you just throw these cured seed balls out into a vacant lot (or some other area desperate for a bit of pretty eco-fying) and voila! Pretty things will grow! It's guerilla gardening, y'all!

Other fun vendors that totally caught our eye:

Worm Crusaders--worm compost! I am so completely fascinated by this... Something to consider for next season? Maybe!Buy Fresh, Buy Local! Find your Virginia chapter here.

JAM according to daniel. We bought a jar of the yellow peach and lavender jam.
We attended a second lecture as well, this one on green pest control. I think the biggest lesson I learned from this lecture is to heavily consider planting those plants that attract the "good" bugs so that they can munch their merry way through the "bad" ones. (Now if I could only find the good bugs that would enjoy a fine feast of flea beetles, we might have a few eggplants next year!)

We also spent some time chatting with a few master gardeners about bee keeping, which, as you may know, I'm feeling rather interested in these days. I left that conversation feeling little overwhelmed and wondering if perhaps I might want to a)finish grad school, and b)not live in a suburb before I consider taking up this awesome hobby. Another pretty rad booth was CLUCK--Charlottesville League of Urban Chicken Keepers. And, yes, this is also a fomenting fascination of mine, but I think the previously mentioned prerequisites are in order before I can even get serious about it.

Basically, I left the Heritage Harvest Festival with dreams of chickens, bees, and fruit trees. One day...one day. :)

It was a long day for Nick, as you can clearly see:

As the festivities wore down, we laid on the hillside taking in the breathtaking view, dreaming about next year's growing season!