National Heirloom Exposition

Sensing a Blip opportunity, I dragged convinced OilMan that it would be fun to go to the National Heirloom Exhibition, part of the Harvest Fair at the Sonoma County Fairground. Pronouncing objections to the bitter end--"too many people, no place to park" he finally capitulated when we walked in the gate to an old fashioned county fair--minus the junk food, carnival rides and animals.

Outside, here were gourmet food booths, farmers' market vendors, and a man carving a gigantic pumpkin. There were movies, lectures, and busloads of kids. There were lots of gardeners--ladies of uncertain age in sensible shoes, trousers and capacious sun hats and men with beards, braids down their backs and dreadlocks. There were tourists, young people, old people and one man dressed like Santa Claus. There were water conservation booths, heirloom seed booths, sustainable agriculture booths and permaculture booths. There was even a man playing a honky tonk piano.

Inside the exhibition hall we found ourselves confronted with an enormous pyramid of weird shaped gourds, squashes and pumpkins. (I got my blip, but perhaps I should have worn something more, er, harvest colored?) The man who assembled it, who is from Illinois, said his goal was "to showcase the diversity of the pumpkin family." He grows 400 varieties. I couldn't help wondering, did he bring all the "building blocks" for his pyramid with him from Illinois?

Behind the pyramid were impressive displays of heirloom tomatoes ranging from "cocktail size" ones the color of cherries, to huge yellow and pink striped "pineapple" tomatoes--the size of a large man's fist. There were cherry tomatoes, plum tomatoes, green tomatoes, purple ones zebras, and "Mr Stripeys". They were laid out single file, stacked on shelves and tumbling from tables.

There was an equal variety of chiles--padrons (known as "Russian Roulette" peppers because , while most are mild, one in ten packs a punch strong enough to bring tears to your eyes), pasillas, jalapeños, serranos and habañeros. They are green red and yellow, long and thin, short and stout, large, medium and small. They range from 1,000 to 2.2 million on the Scoville scale, the unit of measurement for the impact of chiles on our palates.

There were women displaying, carding and spinning wool, kids waiting in line for a taste of watermelon, and men down on their knees measuring the girth of the giant pumpkins (the winner weighed 1423 pounds). I could have spent the entire day there, since I never got to the mushrooms, melons or any off the "educational" displays, but OilMan had other things on his list, so we I reluctantly took our leave.

I think I might have to go back tomorrow…without OilMan.