World Championship Burrito Eating Contest

If there is one unifying theme in New Mexico, besides the breathtaking landscapes, it's the peppers. Thousands of acres are devoted to pepper growing. And to celebrate that, the New Mexico State Fair hosted the first ever, World Championship Burrito Eating Contest. Fifteen contestants competed for the grand prize of $3,000. There were no "reversals of fortunes" (what they politely call it when you gag and upchuck), but doing so would disqualify the contestant. The burritos, which were prepared by the sponsor, a local restaurant, were 1/4 pound burritos and you won or lost by the number eaten in a 10 minute period. There was a large crowd, an impressive production with lots of lights, music and fanfare. The third prize winner was from Wisconsin, but the winner of the $3,000 was a local guy, who ate 32 1/2 burritos!

I was running short of time when I left Bent's Old Fort and had to miss driving through Rocky Ford, Colorado, home to the famous Rocky Ford melons. I would have actually made it had my normally trustworthy Garmin navigator not led me wrong. She kept giving me wrong directions. A trip that amounted to 14 miles off the main road, to get to Rocky Ford, turned into a 38 mile trip in the wrong direction. I turned off

 

Ms. Garmin after a giving her a sharp tongue lashing and threatened her with going back into the box unless she did better on the rest of the trip. 

I admit I was tempted to steal some melons along the way. Fields, some of them 80 or 100 acres, had melons laying everywhere, rotting. The melon harvest season has passed, produce companies are wanting squash and pumpkins now, not melons. And there were lots laying in the fields, going to waste. I did stop at a little roadside stand and buy 3 not great Rocky Fords that nearly spoiled before I got home but at least we had a taste of that rightly famous melon. Last time I went through that area 10 years or so back, I took great delight in eating Rocky Fords, in Rocky Ford, CO. 

One of the things I looked 

forward to along the Santa Fe Trail, was the roadside pepper roasters. The roaster, seen here, is typical. It's a wire cage with propane pipes underneath. Hank Hill, (from King of the Hill) would certainly approve, since he's the promoter of "propane and propane accessories". 

You could bring your own peppers to the roasters and have them roasted, or buy them from the roasters in little baggies. The big advantage of these roasters over roasting them yourself on the grill, is, a guy stands there slowly turning the wire cage and as the peppers roast, the peelings fall off through the wire into a catcher below. So what you are buying are bags of roasted peppers, with the hard work of peeling the skins, already done.

I also found this booth at in the Santa Fe Farmer's market, selling some pepper varieties I'd wasn't familiar with (Padrone and Shishito). The seller was demonstrating how to cook them, and handing out samples. One taste and I was hooked. I bought a bag of both varieties. The cooking consisted of a hot skillet with about a teaspoon of olive oil. A good handful of peppers were dropped into the hot skillet, tossed around for about 60 seconds so they began to burn on one or two sides, then they were dumped out onto a plate and dusted with coarse sea salt. Because the peppers are quite young and not mature, the seeds are tiny and there is almost no heat. What you get is a slightly charred, smoking tasting pepper that is still crisp. They are addictive whether you like heat, or not!

The roadside flowers this time of year are primarily yellow and purple. Rabbitbrush is in full bloom with waist high bushes of bright yellow. I'm not sure whether the name comes from the fact there's a rabbit under every bush, or from the berries, which look a lot like rabbit droppings when they fall to the ground. 

I found this interesting white blossomed plant along the highway but have no idea what it is. Anyone recognize it? If so, leave a comment. I collected some seed. It grows in dry roadside settings, takes winter freezes and appears to be an annual. The flowers are substantial, even though they look somewhat fragile. I'm going to freeze the seed, then plant them in a marked area in the garden to see if I can get them to grow next year.

Bent's Old Fort

I arrived at Bent's Old Fort, a National Historic landmark on the Santa Fe Trail. Traders set out in Missouri, stopping at Dodge City and the few other trail towns. Bent's Fort was a major stopover, because it had supplies, both to trade, and to help the traders make it the rest of the way to Santa Fe.

The old storehouse is said to be accurate to what was sold there in the 1820s and '30s. Some of the items may surprise you. Crackers were shipped from Philadelphia; macaroni came in large wooden cases, also from that city. Pepper sauce, lemon syrup (used in medicines and to prevent scurvy), crates of candy, both peppermint and horehound, I assume. Shanghi tea was shipped from China. Cloth, scissors, coffee, guns, gun powder and lots more, came down the Trail.

There weren't gardens at the Fort as best as I can tell. The Indians used native plants and grew gourds, corn, beans and squash, and may have traded it at the Fort. But by and large, the traders who traveled up and down the Trail, relied completely upon the goods they carried.

Bread was shipped from Philadelphia, although I can't imagine what state it would have been in. Accounts in the Diary of Susan McGoffin, one of the few women to have traveled the Trail (and one of the best accounts of life on the Trail), the bread was usually buggy or full of worms and very stale. Considering it took 3 months to travel from Missouri to Santa Fe, and the bread was made in Philadelphia, you can imagine what it was like. You had to pour water or juices of some kind just to soften it enough to chew.

Just outside the Fort are marshes and in those grew (and still grow) cattails, rushes and swamp milkweed. The cattails are edible in several stages. My friend, Billy Joe Tatum, makes biscuits out of cattail pollen when it's in bloom in the spring. Even earlier, just as the young cattail leaves are poking up through the water, you can pull up the tender shoots beneath the water and wash them; cooked, they are very tasty. I steam or boil those and add a bit of some butter. They taste an awful lot like roasting ears.

The Santa Fe Trail was about buffalo and commerce. The Fort would not have existed without trade for buffalo hides, which were shipped back East. They were tanned for leather, the fur used for hats and clothing, and would bring a good price in the East. The photo here is a buffalo hide press. The hides were folded 4 times and put in the press, stacking more and more hides on top. The press was screwed down tight and ropes wrapped around the hides to make a square bundle. Those were loaded with a small wooden crane, into the wagons to send back to Missouri and beyond.

So I'm still here on the Santa Fe Trail, taking lots of photos and updating my little Herbal Medicines of the Santa Fe Trail book, which is sold at the Fort, as well as on my website. Happy Trails!

Santa Fe Trail

Westward ho! I'm heading out West this week, checking out other people's gardens as I go. I drove down the Santa Fe Trail several years ago when I gave a lecture to the Santa Fe Trail Symposium, in McPherson, KS. I drove about half of the trail and the result of that trip was my little book, Herbal Medicines of the Santa Fe Trail. On that trip I photographed a lot of plants, and acquired a serious addiction to fire roasted peppers. (More on that later).

The Santa Fe Trail was totally about commerce, trade and making money. It was the Wal-Mart and Hunts Trucking of its time. The U.S. had just taken the land that is now southern California, all of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and a piece of Kansas and Oklahoma, away from Mexico. That done, traders set out into "our" new land. Never mind that the Native people were quite happy here, both the Plains Indians, and their cousins, the people of Mexico.

That's a representational statue in Kansas City, of Massasoit, a Wampanoag Indian, who likely wouldn't have given the Pilgrims that first mouthful of food had he known what was in store for his people. But he did share food with the visitors and they reproduced and kept moving Westward. The Santa Fe Trail existed between 1822 and 1846 and carried freight between Independence, Missouri and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The Trail began near St. Joseph, Missouri, down through Independence and on through Dodge City, then the Trail splits into the Cimmaron Cutoff, through the corner of Oklahoma, and the Mountain Route, that headed farther west to Bent's Fort in southern Colorado, near the present town of La Junta, where I stopped for the day. Tomorrow I visit Bent's Fort, which has a gift shop that sells my books.

Tonight, though, I visited one of my favorite (ok, I've just visited it once before, years ago, but it instantly became a favorite) restaurants - the Hoggs' Breath Saloon. The sign says Boss Hogg, simply because Clint Eastwood, it turned out, owns the trademark rights to Hog's Breath and in order to not be sued, the Hoggs Breath folks, changed their name since I was here last. What do you eat in the Hoggs Breath Saloon? Steaks, of course, it's cattle country. What did I eat? The salad bar, an order of Snake Eggs (jalapeno peppers stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon) with a plate full of Mountain Oysters. If you have to ask what that is, you don't want to know.

Lots of the trading that took place had a strong impact on those who lived at either end of the Trail. Lea & Perrins Worchestershire Sauce, went southwest. Cayenne pepper made its entry into medicine in the East during that time, traveling back up the Trail. The addition of cayenne pepper helped the body absorb other medicines faster, just as it is sometimes used today. You can read all about medicines of that period, and how they changed because of the Trail and it's commerce in my little book if you are interested.

I pushed right on through Dodge City, which someone called, "Branson, without the music and a lot of fake tombstones and faux gunfighters." I drove highway 50, which mostly follows the original Trail along the Arkansas River. There are pull asides where you can still view the wagon tracks. They're just variations and folds in the prairie, but after those thousands of wagons went back and forth, compacting the soil, there are still different plants that grow in those tracks. Hopefully, if you click on the photos to enlarge them, you can see the variations in the grasses.

Kansas doesn't have a wide variety of wildflowers this time of year, mostly varieties of native sunflowers, some beautiful blue flowered salvia and lots of liatris (those are the purple spikes at the top of the page). Tumbleweeds are still green and are simply innocent looking weeds along the roadside. But come fall, a good heavy frosty night, and those waist sized weeds will curl into balls of stickery, stiff mobile objects. When the limbs curl inward, making the ball shape, the stem at the base of the ground weakens, and at the first wind - the wind blows a lot out here - that weed becomes a rolling ball of stickers that you won't want to be in the way of.

You have to dodge them on the highway, they pile up against the fences and buildings and can be a real pest. But of course, from the tumbleweed's point of view, it's how they spread their seed and get ready for next season. (No, those aren't tumbleweeds pictured, but some variety of perennial sunflower cousin that lines the roads).

I also found evidence of what really won the West, a piece of it laying in the road as I was walking off the plate of mountain oysters and eating my dessert of a local Colorado peach. Copenhagen, the label says, "since 1822" which means it came on the Santa Fe Trail. More about what else came on the Trail another day.

Garam Masala, Indian Rice Pudding, Chapatis

This is the Texas Star hibiscus, with deeply serrated leaves and big rosy blooms, each having a star in the middle. The flower petals make a mildly tart, pink hot tea. It's growing in the upper bed of the garden.

Random thoughts for today...
1 - I was at dinner one night with friends and one of the guests asked the late Adelma Simmons, Grande Dame of herbs and owner of Caprilands Herb Farm, if she was a vegetarian. (She was 80+ years at the time); she said, "I don't really like vegetarians. When someone comes up to me at Caprilands and asks me if I'm a vegetarian, I pretend like I'm asleep. I'm old; I can get away with it." She was a feisty but quite wonderful lady.

2 - In the July issue of Southern Living magazine there's an article on Big Cedar Lodge, an upscale wilderness resort near us on the lake. In the article the owner, Johnny Morris (owner of Bass Pro shops nationwide) said of his lake cottages..."When it's hot in July here, I encourage our guests to crank up the air conditioning all the way, then build a fire in the fireplace to set the mood." (I'm paraphrasing the quote; I'd heard the rumor from guests many times and just didn't believe anyone would be that wasteful, or to encourage such waste).

3 - In a restaurant outside of Miller, MO, on the 100 mile yard sale where we had breakfast, I spotted this item on the menu: "Granny's Eggs Benedict. We take a big ole' buttermilk biscuit, split it in half, cover it with sausage gravy, put the top on and add a fried egg." (So you trade the English muffin for a biscuit, the gravy stands in for the Hollandaise sauce, the sausage for the Canadian bacon and the fried egg on top stands in for the poached egg. Gotta love down home cookin'!

The big event in the garden this week was a visit from our two friends from Washington, DC. Puneet is a long time friend and former penpal who we visited in India in 2001, and his friend, Robert, who's family was from the Philippines. They meditated in the vine covered gazebo in the garden and gathered things from the herb beds for several of our meals.

Puneet threw out my 8 year old container of garam masala, which his mother had made for me when we visited his home in New Delhi. You can't buy authentic garam masala here, and it is the only seasoning I like in black beans and rice in the winter. So I've been stingy with it, and even though it's lost its flavor and smell, I would not throw it out. (Spices, as you likely know, last 9-12 months; beyond that, their flavoring demise is rapid). Garam masala is a highly individualized and variable blend of 8-15 spices and seeds and varies from family to family in India. It's used in cooking many kinds of dishes. It's not hot, but has a robust flavor; the English tried to duplicate and standardize it, and what we know of as, "curry powder" here in the West, was the result. Indians don't use curry powder, most don't even know what it is.

The spice seeds are roasted separately. Fennel, fenugreek, peppercorns, black cumin and several others are dry roasted first. Then a substantial amount of whole coriander is added after the other spices have nearly finished roasting. Coriander roasts quickly; then other spices, included asophedita, are added at the very last. Once the mixture has cooled, the whole batch is ground to a fine powder and stored in an airtight container.

So Puneet cooked up a new batch then went right to cooking. Our Friday night dinner group came over for dinner on Sunday so Puneet and Robert cooked all day. I've not had homemade chapatis in years and Puneet whipped up a batch for us. (Chapatis are a flour & water dough, dry-fried in a particular way, not unlike parathas, tortillas or other similar flat breads around the world. However, chapatis are finished right on the flame of the gas grill and puff up with air like baloons).

Robert made pork adobo, a typically Filipino dish from his parents' country, and fried bananas wrapped in phyllo dough and baked. Puneet made grilled, curried chicken, a spinach dish which included queso fresca (fresh cheese that melts quickly), a rice and carrot dish with cinnamon and a big batch of kheer, also known as Indian rice pudding. Kheer is made by slowly boiling rice in milk for several hours, with a small amount of sugar and green cardamom pods, along with slivered almonds. There are no eggs, like rice puddings we make here, but it is rich, creamy and thick like American rice pudding when cooled. And it tastes incredible.

The meal was a big hit and even with 14 people, we had enough leftovers for lunch the next day.

Dogwood Blooming in August!

This was the third year for the 100 mile yard sale on Missouri Highway 39, going through Monet, Mt. Vernon and onward. Josh and I traveled the route, hoping it was a better organized and supported event than the first year. But it wasn't. Every town we went through, had a few scattered yard sales, but nearly all of the businesses on the town squares were tightly locked up. You'd think the host town businesses would do a little something, maybe a card table out front of their store with outdated merchandise. Something. But none did. They should be embarrassed.

No great finds were made at the sales and it was, overall, a very disappointing garage sale event. I think they are trying to model it on the great 100 mile yard sale that goes from Tennessee into N. Carolina. I happened upon that once, and it's worth a trip in that direction to catch it again.

But it was a fun day anyway and along the route, along about Miller, MO, I spotted a pink dogwood in full bloom. The cool, damp summer had caused the leaves to fall, most likely because of leaf fungus, something dogwoods are prone to getting in damp summers. The tree was evidently confused, first by the loss of its leaves, then by the unseasonably cool August weather (last night it was in the mid-40s and felt like fall). The confused tree was full of pink blossoms. It's likely, with the lack of leaves so early and the out of season blooming, the tree will probably not live through the winter.

Late August and early September is the time for yellow. Sunflowers, goldenrod, yellowing leaves on the Spicebush. This last plant, Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) is one of the few shrubby herbs that grows in the shade. It's the size of a lilac bush and produces spicy leaves, twigs and berries for seasoning soups, stews and venison. It's also a good tea herb for colds and flu in the wintertime. Ours here in the garden next to the Herb Shop already has red berries and is beginning to lose it's already yellowed leaves.

The air has been cool and clear, even chilly at times. It feels like fall. Peppers and tomatoes are producing well, although the tomatoes are smaller than in the heat of summer. I've cooked okra and tomatoes, we've eaten sliced tomatoes on everything, I've made cold tomato soup and we still have golf ball and tennis ball sized tomatoes. And we're still fully grateful for all of the produce from the garden.

I saw this great sunset the other day. We're on the east side of the big hill, so we seldom see a sunset unless we're out and about.

Every day, Josh's mother, Barbara, says this is without a doubt the most perfect summer day, and it's true, the days have been consistently perfect temperatures. I hope you are having such days, too, and enjoying them thoroughly.

Corn from Outer Space

We saw this corn on the trip to the Fair last weekend, corn like I've never seen before. Sure, like you probably have, I've grown sweet corn that has an occasional wimpy ear of corn, not well filled out, that appears with the corn tassel. But I've never encountered an entire field of corn with the ears where the tassels should be. Nor with suckers (they're called, "tillers") which have what appear to be normal ears of corn. I contacted my friend, Chuck Voigt, the State Extension Specialist in Vegetables and Herbs at the Univ. of Illinois, who sent the photos on to other folks at the University.

From the information they sent me, what I understand this to be is the following: an uncommon but not that rare of an occurrence. It requires the following: (1) a hybrid corn variety that contains long dormant corn genes (remember, corn is an ancient crop, selected from wild grasses in the much distant past, in Central and South America);
(2) an event that damages the corn tops, such as hail;
(3) weather conditions, such as this year's, with excess rain and cool weather.

This phenomenon is called, "tassel ears" but by the descriptions I read, this happens on the tillers (aka suckers). The suckers in this field appear normal, while the strange ears of corn are on the top of the corn plant, not on the sucker. And they're pretty well filled out, too.

Generally when this does show up, from what I read, it is only seen in a small percentage of the field, usually along the edges. The field I photographed appeared to be a hundred acres or more, with "normal" looking corn fields joining it on both sides. And the entire field, for as far as I could see (and you can see more in the field photo if you click to enlarge it) is the same. Even driving along at the speed limit on the highway it was easy to spot this corn with the ears at the top of the plants. All the corn plants have filled out ears on top of the corn, with the tassel sticking out the top. And all have clumps (tillers) at the bottom of the corn stalk, with multiple ears that all appear to be normal and with husks.

We saw the corn between Lincoln and Sedalia, MO, on the trip to the Fair. I didn't see a sign anywhere designating what hybrid corn variety it might be and I would have liked to talk to the farmer whose corn it was to get an opinion from him. Of course the seed corn company may have removed their company name to avoid publicity for providing seed for outer space corn.

Years ago, many of them, when I was just a kid, riding along in my father's truck, we visited a farm in that area of the country. My Dad was hauling corn or livestock, I don't remember which, but the owner of the farm where he was hauling, gave him an ear of corn that had no outside husk, but every kernel of corn had it's own, tiny husk. I kept that for many years because it was such an oddity and I wanted to grow some. I learned that aberration of corn was a throwback to the old corn gene pool, as is this strange field of corn with the ears on top. So maybe it's something in the water of northern Missouri. Of course it is a substantial corn growing area, so some occasional corn from outer space just makes it more interesting!

For plants I know somewhat more about, I just harvested a guinea bean for supper tonight. Sometimes you'll see these sold as "decorative snake gourds," sometimes guinea beans, sometimes, "New Guinea beans." In the community where I grew up, we grew and ate these every summer. In fact, they were much more common where I lived than eggplant.

I slice the tender guinea bean into quarter inch thick slices and dip each in buttermilk then flour and fry them until golden brown. This vegetable can be fixed many other ways, but this one is my favorite ways. It's soft and mild flavored inside with a crispy outside.

Guinea bean is from Papua, New Guinea (thus the name, "guinea bean"). It's a gourd, and the traditional covering for men on that island. While some of the villages I visited while in New Guinea a few years ago have been pushed by outsiders to give up their cultural traditions, most of the men still wear the penis gourd, called a "koteka," thid same "guinea bean" vegetable. What surprised me when I was there and collected seed in 1999, was I didn't find people in any of the villages eating the vegetable. It probably has more to do with the more than 200 varieties of sweet potatoes grown on the island, and the abundance of taro, but according to The Gourd Book, by Charles Heiser, there are 5 varieties of gourds in New Guinea (including West Papua, New Guinea, where I visited) and 3 of those are used for food. I was also there at a time of year the gourds were already nearing maturity. And I certainly explored only a small area. Different tribes use different gourd varieties and you can identify the members of those tribes by the kind of gourd worn.

In doing Google searches for New Guinea bean I found a lot of wrong and misleading information. Some websites labeled this gourd as "cucuzzi or Italian edible gourd" which it is not. That's a completely different plant, which I have also grown. And you'll find some seed companies labeling it, "snake gourd," which it's also not. Snake gourds are not actually gourds and don't have hard shells. I grow these as well as guinea beans and they are a very different plant. Snake gourd, shown here is Trichosanthes cucmerina, and is not the same plant as the guinea bean.

And to confuse you even more (if you're still with me here and I'm not getting too botanical for you), "snake gourd" is listed on one website I found as Curcurbita pepo, which I'm pretty certain is wrong, but it IS the new guinea bean I am growing and they have seed for sale. Most places it's listed as Lagenaria siceraria or just "Lagenaria species."

If you don't know, or ever wondered, gourds have white blossoms while loofahs (which are also edible when young, like guinea beans), pumpkins and squash, have yellow blossoms.

So there you have it, dinner tonight at Long Creek Herbs: heirloom tomatoes with lemon basil, grilled chicken with quick fried guinea bean and a few ginger carrots. There are so many good things to eat in the garden this time of year.

Mo Fair, Great Veggies

I've been going to the Missouri State Fair every year since I was 3 years old. My parents didn't have many traditions and they both worked so hard they never took a vacation. Running a small town grocery store was a 12 hour a day, 6 1/2 days a week job. It provided a respectable living for us, but it meant my parents had time for very little joy in their lives.

But a trip to "The Fair" was one thing they always did. The store would be closed for all day Sunday and Mom & Dad would load up the car about daylight. Mom would have made sandwiches the night before. This was back in the days when there were lots of warnings to fair-goers to avoid foods like potato salad and fried chicken - back in the days when coolers were rare. So Mom would grind up a variety of cheeses, mix in mayonnaise, pimentos and celery seed, and make a bunch of sandwiches. Those were all wrapped up, then put in plastic bags, then into a box with ice. Iced tea in a jug, potato chips, celery sticks and carrots, and always a pie or dessert, rounded out the meal. My parents had lived through the Depression and buying "expensive" Fair food didn't occur to them.

And that same drinking fountain, above, was a fascination to me as a child. Early on, I couldn't reach the fountain and had to be held. But I always stopped there and drank my fill, wondering where the cold water came from. It's still there, unchanged, still a cool, refreshing spot for a drink.

So in keeping with that tradition, Josh and I still go at least once to the Fair every year. We always visit all the agricultural displays, the Dairy House, to see the one ton cow made of butter. The FFA (Future Farmers of America) house, with all of the youth vegetable exhibits is fun, as well. I have noticed the changes in what vegetables are displayed over the years. It used to be there was just one kind of eggplant, but in recent years, the Ichiban, a long, slender eggplant has appeared. This year there were several kinds of eggplants on display for judging. And peppers - it used to be simply bell peppers of different sizes and colors. Now, there are almost as many hot pepper varieties on display as bells.

Pumpkins, herbs of many kinds, watermelons, canteloupes, pumpkins and lots of tomatoes, both heirloom and hybrid, had been judged. It's exciting for me to know there are lots of young people coming along who value gardens, who put in enough time and energy to grow vegetables and to show them at the Fair.

We took in the Midway, always fun for me because I like seeing carnival art. And to see what "weird and unusual" things are on display on the Midway, as well. There used to be the calf with two heads, the woman with a snake's body, a hairless dog and more. When I was about 12 or 13, I started taking a friend or two along with us when we went and the friend and I would leave my parents to explore the "old people's" exhibits and we'd go off to the Midway for the rides. Back then, if you had 25 cents, no matter your age, you could (and we did) get into the girly shows. Not that they were anything exciting, but the idea that we could, "get by" with getting in was the excitement.

Ten cents was the price of admission to see the woman with the snake's body back then. The two headed calf, as you might expect, unless you were 13, was dead and in a jar of formaldehyde. Nearly all of those kinds of exhibits are gone now, and rightly so, but I was surprised to see, "The World's Tiniest Woman" on display. "You can talk to her, she talks to you." Ok, exploitation aside and the sick feeling you get in the pit of your stomach, I would assume some little person makes their living being, "The World's Tiniest Woman." I didn't go to see that, however.

I hadna dish of Pineapple Whip ice cream, however and Josh had handmade, homemade vanilla ice cream and we had earlier followed one of our own traditions, which is lunch at the Beef House, which is sponsored by the Missouri Beef Industry Council. The food is always good, the place clean and the service is outstanding. Servers and cooks are all volunteers from various counties across the State of Missouri.

The grounds of the Missouri State Fair serve other functions during the year. It's home to State Fair Community College, and the grounds are host to tractor pulls, International Fair and a variety of other events.

But the biggest event ever on the fair grounds, not by size but by impact, was the Ozark Mountain Music Festival, July 19-21. It was the last of the huge music festivals following Woodstock, and ended the era of the great outdoor music festivals of the 1960s. Sixty thousand young hippies took over the fairgrounds, and the town of Sedalia, for music. Bands playing that weekend included some of the all time greats of that period: the Eagles, Ted Nugent, the Marshall Tucker Band, Jefferson Starship, America, Nitty Gritty Dirty Band, Boz Scaggs, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band, Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynnyrd, Charlie Daniels and the Earl Scrubbs Revue. Wolfman Jack, the famous radiohead was the emcee. Now that really was a concert of a lifetime! I missed Woodstock by being in the military and I missed the Ozark Music Festival by being newly married, employed and too timid to go. That, and I couldn't find anyone to go with me. That year taught me a lot, but one big lesson I learned from missing OMF, was to seize the day - go, and do, instead of always wishing I had.

Jim Ryun, the athlete and runner who broke the world record for the one mile run (3 min. 51 seconds) in the 1960s was also there on stage. (He was a conservative Republican who represented the 2nd District in Kansas, as a U.S. State Representative from 1995 to 2006).

So, with pumpkins, peppers, lots of fish, turtles, snakes, coyotes, deer, great gardens, interesting displays and shows, the Missouri Department of Conservation's Gardens, tractor pulls, free music, car races, Demolition Derby and lots more, the fair lived up to all that I've seen and experienced there over the years. Agriculture is alive and well, young people are learning to garden and feed themselves and good, healthy food can still be found at the fair. Fresh roasted corn, anyone?