May 5th, 2018
In keeping with established tradition, the 2018 Maine Fiddlehead Festival returns to Farmington the first Saturday in May – this year, May 5 – from 10 a.m. to – 3:00 p.m. on Academy Street, Farmington.
The festival celebrates not only that forager’s delicacy, the emerging coils of the immature ostrich fern, but all local food and the farmers, foragers, and food-lovers of our community.
Held on the grounds of UMF’s Emery Community Arts Center for the past several years, the festival continues to draw more visitors from a wider geographic radius each year. This makes it popular with local vendors of crops and food-related products, and food trucks enjoy brisk early-season business. The family-friendly event is free.
In addition to the first outdoor Farmington Farmers’ Market of the season, other attractions of the event include live animals for children to interact with, Tent Talks on homesteading topics, live music, and gourmet fiddlehead cooking demonstrations. Craft vendors and non-profit organization information tables reflect local food and food-related issues.The Franklin County Fiddlers are a perennial signature act, in a music line-up that includes both annual favorites and newcomers.
This year’s Tent Talks will be on making birch syrup, raising rabbits in a free environment, the benefits of a plant-based diet, hemp farming, foraging wild edible mushrooms, and how to harvest and safely prepare wild fiddleheads.
The 2018 Fiddlehead Festival coincides with the end of Farmington’s Growing Roots Week, a weeklong series of events staged by various non-profit organizations involved in food security issues in the greater Franklin County area. The festival will be held rain or shine, as the Arts Center features flexible indoor/outdoor accommodations.
Organizers of the annual Fiddlehead Festival include the University of Maine Farmington’s Sustainable Campus Coalition, community food activists and farmers. For more information visit www.mainefiddleheadfestival.com or the facebook page Maine Fiddlehead Festival (be sure to find 2018page) @FarmingtonMaineFiddleheadFestival; or call 860-919-4653.
Press release by April Mulherin, UMF Associate Director of Media Relations
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