Well, we did it! A Four day Farmers Market at a festival with 40,000 people!
The freak storm the day before the festival took two of our pop-up tents and twisted them like Tinker Toys and damaged 3 more. We got soaked at the beginning and end of the festival, and didn’t sell nearly enough of our wonderful food because we ended up in a quiet cul-de-sac but still, most of us said we would go back next year.

On day two I started to write down names of states as people walked up: Oregon, Maine, Ohio, New Jersey, Tennessee, Colorado….that whole day there was only 1 couple from Michigan, and they had just gotten back from East Africa! They were coming home to be married and then returning after the festival. Working with kids in a refugee camp.

The festival itself was truly amazing. The way the visual arts were woven into and around the music, one could walk from a huge red-curtained venue ringed with food vendor booths, mega pop stars (John Mayer, and is that….her?) and thousands of cheering fans, to an eerily quiet woods with wonderful hammocks to swing in, bathed in soft swirling lights, and then back to a rave dome packed with frenetic dancers and a never-ending thrumbeat. It just went on and on.

The people who did find us, who made the U-Turn away from the main path out of the campground back to us, appreciated finding such great fresh organically grown food. There were many many great conversations around food, just like at our regular market. Only difference was sometimes you would be talking to a person dressed in a turquoise sequined rabbit suit, or a fairy with wings.