ORANGE — The 27th annual North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival this weekend will pit two childhood friends against each other in a cooking contest highlighting the event’s namesake ingredient.
Chefs Elijah Lagreze and Nyanyika Banda will go head to head in the Stinkin’ Chef Competition, using “garlic bucks” to shop from vendors on the festival field before improvising creations before an audience.
“We’ll try it out, see how it works,” Lagreze said. “We’ve cooked together, just for fun.”
The contest is an added feature of the festival, which will be held rain or shine from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 27, and Sunday, Sept. 28, at Forster Farm, located at 60 Chestnut Hill Road.
Lagreze said he looks forward to running around the festival looking for ingredients and trading banter, while also sharing a double-burner stovetop with his friend.
“This is all just for fun,” he said.
Lagreze and Banda graduated from Amherst-Pelham Regional High School in 1999 and took different paths into the culinary world. Lagreze moved to Australia, where he owned a tequila bar before returning to the United States with his partner in 2016 to be closer to family. He now owns Boulder Top Farm in Montague, where he grows mushrooms and fruits, and Vibesman’s Jerk Shack, a pop-up Caribbean food tent he will operate at the North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival.
Banda is a chef, writer and culinary historian who trained and cooked across the Midwest and on both coasts before returning to New England. She is the author of “Marvel’s Black Panther: The Official Wakanda Cookbook.” Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful.
There will also be at least 100 booths and exhibitors featuring local artwork, healing arts and garlic-infused cuisine.
The idea for the North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival arose from a conversation between Orange residents Ricky Baruc and Jim Fountain in 1998. Baruc mentioned there were not many places to sell the garlic he grew on his farm and Fountain, a woodworker, said he had the same problem with his art. This led to another conversation with a group of five neighbors, each of whom contributed $20 to try to make a go of it.
The first festival was held in 1999 at Seeds of Solidarity Farm, but that venue proved to be too small, so Dorothy Forster offered the land her father, Clifford Forster Sr., operated as a dairy farm from 1926 to 1941.
The festival will once again feature the popular raw garlic-eating contest as well as the “Portal to the Future,” which promotes the benefits of renewable energy and being self-sufficient. One of the scheduled presentations is “Battling the Climate Crisis Through Community and Connection – a Mixer!” with students Seneca Smith, Andrew Rowan, Stella Langlands and Iris Richards. Discussion will focus on finding solutions for the local communities’ climate challenges.
Smith said the presentation will consist of introductions and break-off groups, and will end with participants each contributing one line of poetry to a letter to be sent to state senators and representatives in the North Quabbin region.
Smith, who won a Peacemaker Award from the Traprock Center for Peace & Justice in May, mentioned she will also run her Senny’s Sweets booth at the festival.
PV Squared, a local worker-owned cooperative installer of solar panels, will provide clean, on-site solar energy for the main performance stage, which will be powered entirely by PV Squared’s mobile solar trailer.
“PV Squared is honored to help the Garlic & Arts Festival walk its talk on sustainability,” Brittany Hathaway, marketing and outreach specialist, and a worker-owner at PV Squared, said in a statement. “Our solar trailer embodies our cooperative’s mission to energize a brighter future for people and planet, while supporting the creativity and resilience of our local communities.”
The $10 admission is good for the whole weekend. Children ages 12 and under will be admitted for free. Students, senior citizens or holders of EBT, WIC or ConnectorCare cards get in for $5. There is no on-site ATM, and guests are encouraged to bring a bottle for free water or buy a refillable one along with an artist-designed festival T-shirt.
The festival is volunteer-organized and run. Proceeds keep the event sustainable and affordable, and support the festival’s community grants to local art, agriculture, health, justice and energy projects. At least $70,000 has been contributed to local organizations as well as socially responsible loan funds.
More information is available at garlicandarts.org.
No pets, besides service animals, are allowed on site or in the parking lots. There is on-site parking for accessibility and carpools of three or more. Others will use a nearby shuttle lot.