Baker Creek

This past weekend, Stella and I went on an adventure. Just the two of us. Up into Missouri to attend the Baker Creek Spring Planting Festival.

Baker Creek is a seed company out of Mansfield, Missouri that was started by Jere Gettle at the age of 17. They have one of the largest collections of heirloom seeds from the 19th century. You can read more about them here.

This was my first visit to their farm and I was not expecting such a crowd. Last year over 7,500 garden enthusiasts, organic foodies, hippie back to the landers, homeschoolers and the likes passed through the gates. When we arrived the grounds were already crawling with people. There were so many amazing vendors and presenters that I didn’t even get to see.

The kids tent was a hit with Stella. She loved the cool sand pile and enjoyed playing the free games. After you collected so many tickets you got to turn them in for an organic soda. But only one! I love that everything was as natural as it could be. She opted for some pink streaks in her hair for fun.

It was a little less crowded in their pioneer village. They have a vegetarian restaurant onsite that was donation only. The line was much too long for us to stand in, but the few food trucks at the festival were serving farm to table real food, goats milk ice cream, smoothies, and such. It was amazing to be able to eat and not have to worry about what is in it and where did it come from.

I would have loved to have perused the seed store but it was nearly impossible to get in the door. Everyone else must have had the same idea. So we wondered around, did as much shopping as we could carry, and made plans for next year. Those plans include a wagon, or two. Also a tent since this thing goes for two days.

Some of the amazing things I was able to carry back to my car included:

Some gorgeous hand thrown plates from Cyborg Clayworks. Wooden weapons from SturdiGuns.com.

 

A huge handwoven basket that saved my hide and held so much stuff. Can’t remember the name of the artists though. Some herbs, a few very interesting varieties of tomato and pepper I hadn’t heard of, two honeyberry bushes and a new hop plant. I fell immediately in love with this handmade broom from Laffing Horse Designs. So much so that I ordered a bunch of them to carry in our store.

 

The Baker Creek Spring Planting Festival was very inspiring. It was great to see that so many people care about where their food comes from, even down to the source of the seed. The vendors were top notch, and I would rather spend my money on handmade things any day.

Being gone for only two days, you would have thought my garden would have behaved itself. Of course not. But just coming from a garden fest, I was excited to jump back in.

I started the day off by transplanting some tiny tomato plants out of the nursery bed into a bigger plot. Warren eventually joined me and I would say we put in a good three hours in planting, cultivation, and building our hugelkultur beds. It was a nice ending to the day to sit down in the garden with a glass of wine and watch the sprinkler make idle arcs over all my hard work.

It all pays off in the end.