Single, Fresh, Wet, and Wild

Saturday was the first annual Sierra Nevada Single, Fresh, Wet, and Wild festival. We went with Karen and Glen. Rick, Karen, and I walked, and Glen rode his bike over once he finished golfing. It was a fantastic event!

But before I get into the full details, lemme catch up on farm news. I mean, this IS a farm blog after all... We're eating lovely cabbages.

And getting a lot of broccoli. This is the start of the main crop; we already harvested the center heads of the earliest ones, which were the Packmans on row 5 that were planted on 6-20 (!). These pictured are the Apollos that we had such good luck with last year.

And remember that bug we were going to identify? Rick found a site and tracked it down: they are nymph forms of Harlequin beetles (a type of "stink bug"). They are indeed sucking the life out of our broccoli leaves, so I'm going to hunt them down and slay them. Last Thursday was Rock Band night, but it was also Firestone Walker night at the Handle Bar, so we started off there!

I started with the FW  Double Jack IPA and Rick had the FW Wookey Jack. Next I had a Drakes Aroma Coma. Both were delicious, and the big IPA got me heading down the road to tipsy!

 Friday I got busy and planted  two big beds of garlic in Sector 4 (by the house). I got 4 rows in each bed, with just under 30 in each row for approx 100 per bed. I got the irrigation set up on Sunday.

Ok back to the festival! We walked over, and got in line. The tractor in the back is pulling a shuttle car. They set it up with parking at the fairgrounds and shuttles to bring you over. But lots of folks walked or rode bikes.

On the way in we saw this exhibitor.

Once we got in, we got a program and a cute little glass. I had my pencil at the ready to make notes.

It took place mostly inside the huge tent. We made little "base camps" so we could foray out and grab beers around the sector, then return and find everyone. We changed base camp several times to work the whole floor.

Outside they had food tents (in the background) and lots of seating. You could have all you wanted to eat and drink, and there were never any lines! Much better than our first Octoberfest. These stations were sausage (with rolls, sauerkraut, mustard, and coleslaw), taco bar, and pretzles with beer cheese. The last station also had a big bowl of sliced watermelon radishes, which were great for palate cleansing.

Beer tasting is serious business!

They had a display of beer camp partners breweries.

And the pedal powered bar.

Ken Grossman was signing autographs.

Here were all the beers, with my notes...