North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival
Where Orange is the New Green

Event Name: Eleventh Annual North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival
Event Date: Saturday and Sunday, October 3 and 4, 2009
Event Time: 10 a.m. to 5 PM both days. Shine or Rain
Location: Forster’s Farm, 60 Chestnut Hill Rd. Orange, MA 01364
Directions and Info: www.garlicandarts.org
Media Inquiries Contact: deb@seedsofsolidarity.org (978) 544-9023
Admission: Adults $5 per day, $8 for weekend pass. Kids 12 and under free.

Bring the whole family to the phenomenal North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival. The ‘Festival that Stinks’ is a fabulous, affordable, inspiring celebration of the harvest season. Enjoy the bounty of over 100 vendors: amazing artists, farmers and community organizations; strengthen communities by purchasing locally grown and crafted. Gain skills for interdependence: learn to grow garlic, press cider, mill lumber, make paper, do tai chi, go solar. Nourish yourself through chef demos, fantastic food and demos at the wondrous wood fired bread oven. Transform trash into compost (last year only three bags of garbage for 12,000 people)! Celebrate with friends old and new: incredible performers, wonderful workshops and garlic games galore. Will last years raw garlic eating contest record of 52 cloves be broken? Kids [of all ages] are free-range at the festival! In between garlic and egg tosses and tug of garlic, they’ll make garlic paper, coil clay, craft with wood, and visit our new tent featuring the work of young artists. One youth artist is the youngest of three generations of women artists, all exhibiting at the festival.

Two solar stages entertain all weekend: The music stage line-up is fantastic: Ray Hendricks, Planet Zydeco, Unit 7, Leah Randazzo Quartet, Naiakete Band, Mawwal, Tony Vacca and Friends, and Viva Quetzal. The fabulous family stage features the Inside Out Dance Co, Peter Siegel and Jay Mankita, Airborne Joel, Tim Van Egmond, puppet shows, musical miming, and dance performances galore.

Travel the garlic globe with celebrated local chefs including Chez Albert’s Paul Hathaway, Baku’s Pat Ononibaku, El Greco Café’s Kosta Pitaridis, plus fresh and local food artists Andy Sussman, The Kitchen Garden, and Stockbridge Herbs. Energize your life through a weekend of workshops such as solar electricity for home and business, heating with wood, and permaculture gardening, plus great vendors in our new Local Living area. Heal and relax with a Tai Chi or yoga workshop. There’s something for everyone you love, so bring your friends and the entire family.

On October 3 and 4, follow your nose to beautiful, historic Forster’s Farm, 60 Chestnut Hill Road, Orange, MA. Visit www.garlicandarts.org for directions, pet policy, and lists of vendors, and full schedule of entertainment and activities, demos and workshops. Inflation buster admission at $5.00 per day for adults, weekend pass $8.00, kids 12 and under free. Bike, hike, carpool for a raffle entry. Save time and fuel: ride the free shuttle from nearby parking lots off Route 2, exit 14. Wheelchair accessible parking and restroom facility provided. Multiply the fun: enjoy CISA’s Eat the View, Conway’s Festival of the Hills, and the Eagle Eye Institute Hikeathon at Tully Lake on this same glorious October weekend.

The North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival is organized by a volunteer committee of neighbors and Seeds of Solidarity Education Center, a non-profit organization. Supporters include the Forster/Stewart Family, local businesses, and 200 community volunteers! The success of this non-profit, all volunteer event now enables the festival to support other community-based art and agriculture projects.