Foodstuff & Farm Fest delivers countless numbers to ECHO | News, Sporting activities, Positions

Hank Frechtling mulches up some sugar cane stalks with help from fellow volunteer Barry Gentile through ECHO’s 31st once-a-year Food & Farm Festival on Saturday.

By CHUCK BALLARO

One of the area’s biggest culinary and educational experiences returned to ECHO very last week as the world farm hosted the 31st yearly Foods & Farm Competition.

The pageant was the major just one nonetheless, with 5 days of fingers-on classes, seminars, cooking demonstrations, tropical lunches, pleasurable for the young ones and samples of some the meals built with what is grown at the farm.

Danielle Flood, ECHO’s communications director, claimed it was excellent to include things like a lot more times of palms-on pursuits to give persons a likelihood to get far more out of the festival.

“Visitors were in a position to acquire guidelines for their have backyard. They got to try out a tropical-tasting lunch, which bought out nearly each individual working day,” Flood said. “We also hosted a beekeeping workshop, food items preservation workshop and how to create a kid-welcoming food stuff forest.”

Saturday was the busiest working day, by considerably, with lots of cooking demonstrations, beginning with the standard espresso tasting with Bones Coffee of Cape Coral, which introduced in both equally sizzling and chilly brews.

Colton Siemers, 9, and his brother, Landon, 12, make a craft for the duration of ECHO’s 31st annual Food items & Farm Competition on Saturday.

CHUCK BALLARO

“We brought in a couple of chilly brews and incredibly hot espresso from Ethiopia and darkish roast,” “Coffees are unique in each place. Sumatra is a dark, flavorful espresso, Ethiopian is pretty mellow,” stated Frank Barbato, retail specialist with Bones. It’s like wine and grapes, it is where by it will come from.”

From there, it was on to test anything tasty, from the handmade peanut butter to the juice from sugar cane, which Barry Gentile squeezed out of the stalk and longtime volunteer Hank Frechtling mulched employing a bicycle to build power to run the mulcher.

“As quickly as I retired in 2013, I began as a volunteer. I appreciate what ECHO does. The men and women are Christians who make the environment a far better put as God supposed,” Frechtling reported. “I like how they provide solutions to the fewer fortunate in developing nations around the world in the Tropics to have less starvation.”

Website visitors also learned different types of gardening approaches, this sort of as city gardening. It was the occupation of intern Tammi Brittain to provide instruction.

“We teach men and women to improve factors on minor or no soil or land. We use containers for gardening, specifically reusing matters like old tires or kiddie swimming pools,” Brittain reported. “They also use outdated carpets as wicking beds and other assets.”

Tai Carrot Salad with Curried Cashews in the course of ECHO’s 31st once-a-year Foodstuff & Farm Competition on Saturday.

CHUCK BALLARO

Website visitors had been learning a whole lot. Laura Siemers introduced her two sons, Landon, 12, and Colton, 9. Landon arrived on a industry vacation when he was young and fell in love with it. She mentioned she acquired a large amount about normal crops that serve medicinal applications.

“We’ve arrive every single yr for the festival. My boys are scouts and they said we can study some issues so Landon can get a badge,” Laura claimed. “He uncovered about a further way to filter h2o moreover the way they train the Boy Scouts.”

“It’s quite excellent. It is a challenging alternative to make your mind up what I realized the most. I learned about different varieties of fertilizer and h2o filters. There was a ton to learn,” Colton reported.

ECHO is at 17391 Durrance Street. For far more facts, pay a visit to echonet.org.

ECHO intern Sammi Brittain, in the eco-friendly shirt, speaks with, from remaining, Haven, Brad and Stephanie West in the Urban Yard through ECHO’s 31st yearly Foods & Farm Pageant on Saturday.

CHUCK BALLARO

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