The Garden of Eve - End of the Week

On Friday morning, we started to prepare for the Garlic Festival that would be held at the farm over the weekend.  Everyone worked frantically to prepare everything for the big weekend.  I started the morning in the Garden Center, helping them to put out plants and re-arrange a bit to make sure that everything looked as good as possible.  Then, I got on the riding mower and mowed so that Eve could lay out where the booths for the vendors would be set up.  After lunch, Sean and I set up the tents and tables that the farm would have for their own booths.  Later in the afternoon, Chris, Sean, Ted and I all scooped garlic flavored ice cream. Yes, you heard correctly - GARLIC flavored ice cream.  One was plain garlic and one was garlic with chocolate chips. They came from a local shop called Snow Cone that makes really tasty ice cream, but I don't think I would ever willingly order garlic ice cream. At first taste, it was very creamy, but the aftertaste was not so nice.  The ice cream was frozen solid and all of us had sore hands after scooping for what seemed like hours.  Late in the afternoon, we all helped to load the trucks for the Saturday CSA dropoffs. Despite the Garlic Festival, Jon had the CSA drops and Chris had the Westhampton greenmarket to attend to on Saturday.  I think we were all pretty wiped out by the end of the day Friday.

Saturday was a gorgeous day: sunny and warm, just perfect for an outdoor festival.  I was shocked by how many people showed up.  The town of Riverhead actually sent a cop to direct traffic as it got quite crazy.  There were a wide variety of booths: organic candles and soaps, flavored/infused olive oils, clothes, jewelry, and all kinds of food. The farm's booth displayed ten different kinds of garlic (who knew there were so many?) and Ted was amazingly patient with the customers and their questions.  In addition, there was a "train" and a "bounce house" that we all took a turn jumping in at the end of the day.

Sunday morning, after breakfast, I did a last cleanup of the kitchen and "The Chateau" where I had been staying and then walked over to Briermere, which is about a half-mile up the road.  Briermere is justly famous for its pies and around Thanksgiving, the line of cars to pick up pies stretches down the road.  I wanted to leave a blueberry cream pie for the apprentices as they were all so welcoming and inclusive, I wanted to do something nice for them. And, of course, I couldn't go home without a pie from Briermere!  So, I got an apple pie to take home and was wondering how in the heck I was going to pack up my bike with my bags and other stuff and now a pie to balance on top of everything else somehow without crushing it! 

I stopped back by the farm to say goodbye to everyone and I was really sad to go.  It had been a wonderful adventure and I enjoyed every minute of it.