Celebrate the turnip, Vermont’s state vegetable, with friends

WARDSBORO- On Saturday, October 26, from 10 am to 3 pm, people will come from all over to celebrate Vermont’s state vegetable at the Gilfeather Turnip Festival.
Tents big and small set up on Main Street will be filled with craft and farmers’ market vendors and the turnip cart will be filled with multiple bushels of freshly dug turnips. Turnips are sold by the pound, along with Gilfeather seed packets.
The festival, now in its 17th year, raises funds for the Friends of the Wardsboro Library to support the Gloria Danforth Memorial Building. It is their largest community fundraising event. This free event takes place rain, snow  or shine. A donation is suggested for parking.
A featured part of the festival is the annual turnip contest, free for all to enter. Contestants may register Gilfeather turnips in one or more categories from 10 am to 12 pm upstairs in the Town Hall. Contest categories include:largest grown in Wardsboro; largest grown outside Wardsboro; best turnip name; and best strange and funny turnip. The largest turnip, measured by total weight with greens, will be awarded grand champion of the festival. Winners are announced and ribbons awarded immediately after the judging. All children age 12 and younger who enter a turnip will receive an honorable-mention award ribbon.
The Turnip Soup Cart outside town hall serves homemade turnip doughnuts and coffee beginning at 10 am, followed by Gilfeather turnip soup for takeout beginning at 11 am.
Inside town hall, The Turnip Café opens for turnip lunch samplings at 11 am.  Local cooks peel, slice, and shred the tubers to make the creamy Gilfeather turnip soup, served until the food runs out.
Wardsboro’s own strolling troubadour, Jimmy Knapp, loves to serenade visitors throughout the festival with his original Gilfeather turnip ballads and many more of his original guitar compositions. Marvin Bentley will perform outside the entrance to the town office on Main Street.
The Wardsboro School Club is sponsoring face painting and games throughout the day to entertain the younger set.
At 2 pm., the drawing for the Friends of the Wardsboro Library’s annual “Best Raffle Ever” takes place at town hall.
-This year’s prize is a one-of-a-kind, hand-quilted, Vermont-themed wall hanging, custom made and generously donated by Wardsboro resident Christy Foote-Smith.
The Gilfeather turnip, designated the Vermont state vegetable in 2016, has the added distinction of being the only turnip included in Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste, a catalog comprising only the best-tasting endangered foods.
Wardsboro farmer John Gilfeather  could never have imagined that one day his town and the state of Vermont would celebrate and honor this humble tuber that he first propagated in the early 1900s.
For more information call (802) 896-3416 or visit www.friendsofwardsborolibrary.org.