Tips from the Herb Festival

A collage created with past Herb Festival programs -

A vignette at one of the stands -

The weekend before Easter our Herb Club participated in the annual PA Herb Festival held at the city fairgrounds.  We set up a small table with info. about our club and volunteered in one-hour increments to answer questions about the club and herbs in general.  I took the first hour on Saturday morning and really enjoyed chatting and interacting with people.  My second hour was spent taking tickets and stamping hands at the door.  That was a treat as well - people were enthusiastic and friendly, and the hour flew by.  My volunteer status earned free admission to the show, so I spent the remainder of the morning wandering around the hall.

I took a few photos and some notes for ideas that I'll share below:

* At our Herb Club's table, one of our members displayed a pint jar of honey in which she had submerged sage leaves.  This, of course, will flavor the honey and give it a different taste twist.  I was imagining that lavendar honey made this way would be lovely.  Actually, the sky's the limit - experiment!

Instant, convenient lettuce garden -

* The stand next to our's (an organization encouraging those in the city to grow their own fresh food) had a fun (and very popular) idea to grow lettuces and spinach for those with little space - in a bag of potting soil.  Poke holes in the bottom, cut open the top and sow seeds directly into the bag for an instant, convenient garden!

* Across the way was a local garden club who shared lots of ideas using recyclables in the garden.  One easy and clever one was to stuff scraps of yarn pieces into a suet cage for the birds to make their nests. They also had a sample of a firestarter to use for your campfires.  Simply stuff a toilet paper tube with dryer lint!

* One of the vendors was selling all kinds of herbal baked delights.  From rose geranium cookies to lavendar shortbread to anise biscotti to rosemary cookies, there was a whole host of interesting ideas to get me inspired to create such goodies in my own kitchen. 

Herbal Easter eggs -

* At another herb club's stand was a basket of beautiful herb-decorated Easter eggs.  The eggs were hard-boiled ahead of time.  Place a piece of fresh herb against the egg, hold tightly and secure the egg into a piece of nylon stocking.  Twist end very tighly, secure with a twist-tie and allow to soak in a pot of water in which you've boiled lots of red onion skins.  Remove, allow to dry and paint with a coat of watered-down glue.  Most of the eggs had been recently made, but the volunteer shared that one of them had been made 20 years ago!

Tomorrow . . . a delicious herbal recipe -