By: Aria Cummings
On Oct. 24, 2015, The Evergreen Organic Farm celebrated its 35th annual Harvest Festival, with about over 1,000 people in attendance. There were many activities that students, staff, faculty, and the general public were invited to get involved in such as pumpkin carving, making fresh pressed apple cider using apples from the Burndt Apple Orchard (which was very delicious and was the first time I’ve ever had unpasteurized apple cider), oyster shucking, the one who shucked 3 oysters cleanly won a golden shell, spending time in the Jasmine Dragon Tea Lounge, and taking a tour of the farm itself.
Various demonstrations also took place such as The Art of Blacksmithing, which included making various types of farm tools, home brewing beer, how to make herbal honey mead, canning the harvest, edible forests, grassroots organizing and archetypes, beekeeping, sheep keeping, building a bathhouse, mushroom log inoculation, introduction to Hugelkultur, which is a composting process that uses raised planting beds on top of decaying wood debris and other compostable biomass plant materials, medicinal vinegars, and many others.
A few local musicians performed on the music stage including Nat Lefkoff, Sawtooth, Swoon, and Matt Fearon and Friends. Overall, this was a very fun experience and I can’t wait to see what will happen next year at Harvest Fest 2016.
