A Day At The Garlic Fair

I had a real nice time this last Saturday playing with some friends at the Gateway Greening
garden headquarters. They had their Garlic Day and Harvest Fair and wanted some Old-Time music for the occasion. We got together a pickup group for the occasion: Bill Stewart and myself on fiddle, Bob Clark and Uncle Dan’l Higgins on banjo, and Alice S. on guitar. The tunes were pretty good, the weather was beautiful and the setting couldn’t have been better.

These are such great folks to play with! When Bill and I get a head of steam up, it’s off to the races, buddy! But Bob, Dan and Alice were pretty good natured about it, even if we did strain their strumming arms a little keeping up with the tempos.

They had us play in a covered pavilion in the middle of their couple of acre big community garden. We were surrounded by raised beds of flowers, broccoli, okra, lettuce, cabbage, Italian sage, and lots of other crops. Greens, blues, purples. Really something to see and smell.

And the mix of folks sitting around listening and enjoying was good, too. I have to admit I felt good to have people of all colors, ages and economic rungs; inner city (where the garden is located) and suburban folks too, all sitting together listening to these old tunes. Maybe we’ll get over this ridiculous polarization that our government seems to foster yet with enough good music and good food to help us get through it.

The gardeners also had a table set up so folks could bottle their own herbed/flavored vinegars, which was great fun. I stuffed some garlic cloves, chili peppers, basil and thyme into a jar and covered it with red wine vinegar. Now, I gather I wait for about a month while the alchemy takes place and start using the vinegar to cook with. My mouth is watering already!

Things finished off with a pot luck barbecue and a pie contest. Unfortunately, I was so intent on playing “Squirrel Hunters” for Alice that I missed out on getting a piece of the prize-winning sweet potato pie. The pulled pork and all of the fresh home-made salads were enough to content me, though.

The day was capped for me (as it often is) by an older woman coming over as we were packing up our instruments to go. She said she had moved to St. Louis years ago from rural Alabama, but that our music took her right back there to where she’d grown up. She hadn’t heard that music in years and so much enjoyed it.

Pretty good day, if I must say so myself.