Fiddlehead Festival in Farmington Saturday
FARMINGTON — Just in time for the first Fiddlehead Festival: A Celebration of Local Foods and Delicacies, the small, tightly coiled ferns showed up Friday, at least in some sunny sites in Farmington.
The festival celebrates spring with an emphasis on local foods and includes a variety of speakers, workshops and activities.
It takes place from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 28, in the Emery Community Arts Center on the University of Maine at Farmington campus and other area locations. It is free and open to the public.
Events begin with an address by Mark Lapping, director of the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine, titled, “Understanding Maine's Food System,†and continues with workshops, panel discussions and field trips to the new Farmington Grange kitchen, Sandy River Farms and a fiddlehead habitat along the Sandy River.
Last year when environmentalist and author Bill McKibben gave the UMF commencement address, he painted a dire picture of planet warming but also offered ideas on things to do about it, said Valerie Huebner, UMF sustainability coordinator.
McKibben advised living more locally, biking instead of driving, growing your own food or buying from a neighbor, she said.
The UMF Sustainable Campus Coalition, which promotes sustainable practices on campus and in the community, began talking about it. Grace Eason, associate professor of science at UMF, also started talking about local foods and food securities as part of environmental studies, Huebner said.
From there the Coalition began working with community groups, realizing there are economic and health components involved in local food consumption along with the "moral change of being kinder to the planet."
The result is this first festival sponsored and organized by the UMF Coalition along with the Farmington Downtown Association, Western Mountains Alliance, UMF Partnership for Civic Advancement, Food for Maine's Future and Franklin Savings Bank.
They hope the event will blossom into a larger festival, attracting people to Farmington early in the spring, she said.
The Homestead Bakery and Restaurant and Soup For You will offer special lunch meals featuring local foods, Huebner said.
The day ends with a community discussion on how to support a Franklin County food system held from 4:30 to 6 p.m. at the Homestead.
Gathering and eating fiddleheads is a Yankee tradition, and an important and traditional one with all Maine Native American tribes, said Dave Fuller from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and a workshop leader.
Fuller will offer facts on fiddleheads, harvesting and food safety Saturday morning and then later take interested participants on a field trip sharing the heritage, tradition and sustainability of the ostrich fern fiddlehead. Those are the ones we eat, he said.
Found along streams and floodplains, there's an abundance in Maine, especially along the larger rivers.
The ostrich fern is identified by a deep, U-shaped groove inside the stem, which is not hairy, and they emerge from the soil covered with a brown parchment. They are only 2 to 4 inches above ground so it's “stoop labor,†he said. The stems along with the head are good.
Fiddleheads should be washed before cooking and because of repeated cases of food poisoning, "we advise boiling them for 10 minutes," he said.
For more information on the festival, visit
http://sustainablecampus.umf.maine.edu
My wife is sauteing a pan full right now with salt pork, garlic powder, and minced onions (takes about ten minutes), and I still put butter and vinegar or Italian dressing on them, when I put them in a bowl. Wish I could tell you we are also having brook trout, too; but damn, not yet...have to go with barbeque chicken tonight 
