Heritage Harvest Festival, Charlottesville, VA, Sept 2017
 

This year I'm remembering to post about this earlier!

This year's festival will be Saturday, September 9 -- [url]http://www.heritageharvestfestival.com/events/[/url] -- with paid workshops + some tours + tastings on Friday, September 8.

For Saturday's tasting, we'll have our usual 75-100 different tomatoes, plus peppers, melons, herbs, etc. I'll post a list later this summer of some interesting varieties that we'll be bringing. To be able to have our tomatoes in good shape for the festival, we plant out our trials patch later, so until we make the final map for the tomato trials patch, I'm not quite sure what we'll be planting!

I'll be giving my usual talk on fall/winter gardening, looks like this year they've got me scheduled to do it on Friday.

Noted! Thanks.

Thanks for the update Ken. I could not attend last year's fest, but I have already put in time off for this year!

My extended family is planning our annual "gathering" around the festival, as it is good for young kids thanks to the animals and activities, and those interested more in history than gardening have options too. My grandmother, who is pushing 90, will even be there. I have her set up with some earthboxes on her deck, so she can still grow tomatoes even though she needs a wheelchair. Her plants include red pisa date and dwarf cherokee green, both of which I grew last year after trying at the 2015 festival, and were fantastic. I must have picked 300 tomatoes from one red pisa date plant.

I also have a dozen Doe Hill plants rapidly growing, purchased from SESE this year, fingers crossed for productivity. Sweet and hot pepper varieties at the tasting should sell some seeds too. ;-)

This festival is definitely worth checking out! No better way to find new tomato varieties than by trying a bunch side-by-side.

Hi Ken - I was so pleased to be invited to speak again, but had to decline - Sue and I are badly needing a vacation....so we've cleared our autumn - a National Park or two beckons. Have a great festival - it is always a highlight of my year!

fonseca -- neat! If we haven't already met, hope we get a chance to say hi to each other, I'm usually hanging around the SESE tent during the festival. (Me= tall, scruffy, greying hair.)

Craig -- glad you can grab a vacation! I'm always grateful that Ira's into going to as many talks and fairs and festivals as she does, so that I can just limit myself to the few every year that I do get to and so get to enjoy them for their own sake.

Here's the list of the tomatoes we should be bringing from our own farm -- this'll probably get supplemented by tomatoes from a few other farms:

[SIZE=2]Abraham Lincoln
Amish Paste
Amy’s Sugar Gem
Arkansas Traveler

Barnes Mountain Pink
Big Kentucky Roma
Big Rainbow
Black Cherry
Bonte Tignet
Brandywine

Cherokee Purple
Costoluto Fiorentino

Don’s Double Delight
Dwarf Emerald Giant
Dwarf Mr. Grand

Eva Purple Ball
Everglades

Garden Peach
Geranium Kiss
German Johnson
Glacier
Goldman’s Italian-American
Granny Cantrell’s
Green Giant
Green Grape
Green Zebra

Homestead 24

Illini Star
Isis Candy
Ivan

Japanese Black Trifele

Kellogg’s Breakfast
Kristina Vatchera

Lillian's Red
Lillian's Yellow Pear
Little Lucky

Matt’s Wild Cherry
Mortgage Lifter Radiator Charlie's
Mortgage Lifter VFN

Neptune

Old Virginia
Omar's Lebanese
Orange Centiflor
OTV Brandywine
Oxheart

Pear-Shaped Cherry
Peg’s Round Orange
Peron
Persimmon
Purple Dog Creek

Red Cherry
Red Cluster Pear Hypertress
Red Pisa Date
Riesentraube
Roma VF Virginia Select
Rosella Purple
Rutgers “Original Strain”
Rutgers 250

San Marzano
Striped Roman

Tiger Tom
Tropic VFN
Turkish Ayla
Turner

Williams Striped

Yellow Centiflor
Yellow Pear
[/SIZE][SIZE=1]
[/SIZE]

Weather's looking nice for Friday and Saturday! Sunny, high of 75 for Friday, high of 74 for Saturday.

Cool weather's been slowing down our tomatoes again, so some of the varieties (esp. the bigger beefsteaks) we won't have many fruits for, so if you're coming, get to the tomato tasting earlier in the morning to be able to try everything!

Plugs for some tomato folks to see = Rodger Winn's hosting the Seed Swap on Saturday morning, and in the afternoon, Bill Best of Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center in Berea, Kentucky (hosts the seed swap there in October) is giving a talk on Appalachian heirlooms.

Festival went pretty well! Nice and sunny, and a lot of enthusiastic folks. Haven't heard attendance numbers yet, but it was definitely smaller than last year -- the Monticello folks tried a different thing this year -- not having any special fees for some of the talks, while having the general admission cost more. So less folks, but the ones there seemed happy and enthusiastic, and we kept pretty busy at the Tomato Tasting and the SESE booth.

Good seeing you again Ken. I agree, the festival went well and the weather was fantastic! Rodger and the other seed swappers seemed pretty busy all day. I attended Bill's seminar. He focused on greasy beans and their history, which was interesting.

Looking forward to growing the "Mouse" mellon and attending the festival next year. Best to Ira; hope she's feeling better.

Ira's been fine, she's still not sure what that was -- dehydration? tiredness? -- she took it more easy the rest of the day, and she's been at her usual busy pace since then. (Today she's in the crew headed up to Pennsylvania for Mother Earth News Fair this weekend!)

Link to this year's, Fri Sept 21 + Sat Sept 22 -- [URL]http://www.heritageharvestfestival.com/[/URL]

The tomato tasting'll be on Saturday -- since this year's festival is a bit later, we've got a lot of interesting pepper varieties planted to bring along to supplement the tomatoes in case our tomatoes aren't as prolific by then.

Rodger Winn's hosting the seed swap as usual -- Ira says that besides the usual Saturday seed swap, there'll also be a swap for a few hours on Friday.

Craig LeHoullier's talking this year. The Saturday talks aren't on the website yet, but guessing that's when he'll be speaking!

I'll be doing my usual fall/winter gardening talk, it's on Friday again this year.

Coming up this week!

Craig's talk will be on Sat from 3-4 PM.

Rodger's hosting seed swaps on Fri (10 AM-noon) and Sat (10 AM-5 PM).

My fall/winter gardening talk is on Fri (noon-1 PM).

Lots of other talks that look interesting! Friday will be my day to get to talks and be more social, then I'll be at the SESE booth all day on Saturday if anyone wants to say hi.

If I get the time, will try to post a list of tomatoes we'll have, but if I don't, it'll generally look like the ones we had at our tomato tasting open house last month -- see posting there!

Looking forward to leaving the endless rain of Florence, Ken and heading for Cville on Friday! Looking forward to reconnecting with you at the event.

Just an awesome time at this event! Great seeing you Ken...and others from Tville and elsewhere!