Bury your head in the garden while Sarah Palin and Rachael Maddow duke it out for your media minutes. Last weekend Farm Aid, an arena-staged fundraiser for small farms, took place on Saturday and on Sunday, a crunchfest in Orange continued a two-day celebration of garlic, homesteading and the arts.
Making farming sexy at the Comcast Center were none other than Neil Young, Willie Nelson and John Cougar Mellencamp, among other headliners and smaller acts. Making farming doable near Quabbin were farmers, artisans, grass-fed beef purveyors, and lots of other local food people, including our friends in the maple syrup world. Music, dancing, eating and spinning wool were all part of the festivities.
On Saturday, Farm Aid flew in on the wings of Whole Foods Market and Horizon Organic Foods and rocked out to a sold-out crowd of around 20,000. I showed up at the Comcast Center around 3 p.m. and was handed a recycled bag filled with recycled stuff including bath salts and a program with a bio of Neil Young that featured no less than six product endorsements (all his own), ending with one for a remake of a 1959 Lincoln Continental Convertible that will someday get 100 miles to the gallon.
This is the big time. Farm Aid has raised $30 million a year since its inception 23 years ago when Neil Young, John Cougar and Willie Nelson teamed up to save family farms. Farm Aid is the Las Vegas of green awareness.
Tucked behind the main stage, next to the parking lot and festooned with bales of hay, was the Homegrown Village. Holding forth here were a booth manned by 4-H kids demonstrated cow milking with a wooden cow (no messy clean-up) and plastic teats; the Walden Woods Project with a journal for visitors to describe their own favorite farm; and a network called the FarmYard which provides online farmer wisdom.
Concertgoers, some earnest, some lost, wandered around picking up literature, giving the cow a try and checking out the talent on The Homegrown Village stage. Event planners paired musicians with farmers just to kick things around. When I showed up, Ryan Voiland and Sarah Ingraham of Red Fire Farm, a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in Granby, were on stage with a guy from Boston who tours with a grease car.
Global warming was addressed with recycling bins for plastic, aluminum, cardboard and paper items, compost and just trash. One woman stood gazing at the wide variety of receptacles and clutching a plastic Smirnoff Ice Pomegranate Vodka cup.
On the main stage, with an audio system powered by solar panels from Pioneer Valley Photovoltaic, the headliners came on around 5 p.m. beginning with the Pretenders. Chrissie Hynde did her part by wearing a black T-shirt that said “Tax Meat” and yelling, “Blow up all the slaughterhouses and McDonald’s!” One of the Dave Matthews Band said “I like food” during their set.
At one point during the concert, a guy from Whole Foods presented Willie Nelson with a giant check in the amount of $150,000. At the end of the evening, Neil kept on rockin’ in the free world, tore the strings off his guitar and walked off stage.
At the Garlic Festival on Sunday, a woman consumed 52 cloves of garlic. During a raised bed gardening demonstration, a Seeds of Solidarity representative admitted that the real point of the event was not garlic. Garlic was just a strategy. “If we advertised it (the Garlic Festival) as a ‘sustainability conference,’ nobody would come,” he said to people crowded around the demonstration garden. “This is nothing but hay, compost, cardboard. It’s an insta-garden and you can do it today.” As I left, the final music act was performing around 3:30 p.m. The lead singer of the band (Blame It on Tina) was finishing up with a sweet solo called “I love my yurt.”
You don’t have a family farm? Time to get one. While Lehman Brothers and AIG are being bailed out, put your money in seeds, build a yurt and call it a day.•
Correction: In our article on the Free Harvest Supper [“Woodstock With Really, Really Good Food,” Sept. 11, 2008], we incorrectly reported that the first Free Harvest Supper was held six years ago and that 80 attended. It was held four years ago, and over 300 attended.
