Farm-to-Festival at the Ossipee Valley Music Fest

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You may have noticed that I was (surprise!) quiet for the past week and a half. My wife Jaime and I were at the Ossipee Valley Music Festival, where we serve as food vendors for both their string camp and the festival itself.

In all, last week was one that filled me with a great deal of gratitude. Jaime and I have been working in this capacity at the event for the past handful of years as a means of providing a farm-to-table option for festival-goers. Our booth, which has been unnamed for the past handful of years, is called The Farmer’s Belly. With another year of experience under our belts, we were able to source an even higher percentage of our food from local farms. We were heartened to see a lot of returning attendees and to meet a bunch of new folks.

On Thursday, with the help of over a dozen friends and local businesses (listed below), we were able to give a meal away for free to anyone who came to our stand. We did so as a means of rewarding those who already invest in local food and agriculture, as well as spreading the word of its merits to a larger community. Thanks to the generous support of everyone who chipped in, we were able to give away hundreds of meals. People were psyched.

Also fun was the opportunity to offer ployes on our menu. I became familiar with the Acadian buckwheat pancake when working at the 2010 Winter Biathlon in Fort Kent. We featured them (and the Bouchard Family, who farms the buckwheat and sells Ployes mix) on a 2011 episode of Food Coma TV:

I believe we turned a bunch of festival-goers into ployes converts by the time the festival was over.

Many thanks to these folks for helping to make the food giveaway possible:

Hugo’s Restaurant and Eventide Oyster Co.
The Holy Donut
Nosh Kitchen Bar
One Fifty Ate Cafe
Knack Factory
Rep. Craig Hickman
Krista’s Restaurant
Duckfat
Tony Halsey
Wriggins Hilltop Farm 
Grandy Oats
Robyn Kanner
Tandem Coffee Roasters
Bunker Brewing Company
Rising Tide Brewing Company 
The Gorham Grind

And to these farms and vendors, from which we sourced our ingredients:

 

The past week has been exhausting, but one of the most rewarding in recent memory. We are already excited for next year.

 

Alex Steed

About Alex Steed

Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was an insufferable teenager. He has run for the Statehouse and produced a successful web series. He now runs a content firm called Knack Factory with two guys who are a lot more talented than himself.