Meet Me at the National Heirloom Exposition!

I am a huge fan of Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, so it’s a real honor for me to be speaking at their event this year at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, California!

For the last four years, Baker Creek has staged the “World’s Pure Food Fair” as a not-for-profit event that celebrates gardening, homesteading, small-scale farming, sustainable living, and of course, whole, local, pure food. Preserving heritage seed stock is the focus of the fair, and you’ll find food porn for days in the exhibit halls and all over the fairgrounds. The Heirloom Expo is truly a foodie paradise!

I’ll be speaking on Tuesday, September 8, 2015, at 11:30 am in the E.C. Kraft Building with the topic “From Leaves and Flowers to Stems and Seeds: Exploring All the Delicious Possibilities of Your Vegetables.” Tuesday will be my only day at the fair, so I hope you can join me! I’ll be signing copies of my book, The CSA Cookbook, after the presentation.

You can read my coverage of last year’s event here, and this year promises to be no less incredible. A few tips from experience:

• Download the speaker schedule and make a game plan if there are several sessions you want to attend. There are speakers every day, at all hours of the day, presenting on a range of topics from edible gardening and backyard beekeeping to culinary history and agritourism.
• Bring your appetite! The Heirloom Expo puts all other county fair food to shame. I’m talkin’ grass-fed beef dogs with raw sauerkraut, Vietnamese bánh mí with pastured eggs, organic ginger-mint lemonade, wild fermented fruit soda, kimchi and pickles and honey and pies and you will be stuffed before you even get to them all!
• Make a shopping list. If you’ve been looking for a home composting system, biochar sources, drip irrigation kits, poultry feeds, fermentation crocks, exotic spice blends, rare seeds, or even a pizza oven, chances are you’ll find it in the vendor hall — along with handmade jewelry, beauty products, baskets, ceramics, and stationery.
• This is a family-friendly event, so make a day of it and enjoy the live entertainment, petting zoo, and farm demonstrations. If you stay till the end on the last day, you can even bring home a pumpkin (or two or three) from the famous pumpkin tower in the exhibit hall, or any of the pumpkins scattered around the fairgrounds.

See you at the Heirloom Expo!