Small Farms Food Festival........Or Not

Since we have lived here, I have wanted to go to the Small Farms Food Festival at Shelburne Orchards. It boasts of all sorts of wonderful kids activities and a chance to sample food from several small local farms. In their defense, I will say it was a great chance to sample food from several local farms, some of which I had never heard of before. Among those our favorites were Stony Pond Farm, Taylor Farm, Vermont Pickle, Bread and Butter Farm, and Folk Foods. There were some that were not among our favorites, but I won't go there.

Now with that out of the way, while I loved sampling the food from local farms, I will probably never go to the Small Farms Food Festival every again. You see, I have this thing for having to pay $5 to get into an event and not actually getting anything for free and having to deal with the large crowd. Now some could argue that the music was free, but that just isn't going to do it for me, when they are charging $2 for the tractor ride around the orchard and their supposed "hay maze" is a short tunnel that the kids have already done a pretty good job of destroying. Did I mention we were there within the first hour of them being open? Being a big festival family (apple festivals, kids festivals, brewers festivals, garlic festivals, you name it), I understand how this whole thing should work. Either you charge to get in and have some (not all, I understand people need to come out on top at these things) things for free, or you don't charge to get in and charge for everything. Honestly, I really don't care as long as you don't charge me to get in and then charge for everything you have to offer.

OK, I am done with my little rant for the day and am going to enjoy some more of the fresh bread that we picked up. Although, if I wait a little bit, there will be warm fresh bread. I have noticed that when we go to these things, my husband comes home and tries to outdo any bread maker I have just bought bread from. Did I mention he has not baked bread since May when his parents came to visit? (From the editor: it's been too hot to run the oven in the house!)