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EXPLORING
KENTUCKY - March 2003 by Katherine Tandy Brown Eat Your
Way Across the State
Dozens of towns and counties in the Bluegrass state go all out to honor – and use as an excuse to indulge in – regional specialties, from the salt-cured Trigg County Ham Festival in the West Kentucky hamlet of Cadiz, to the W.C. Handy Blues and Barbecue Festival sizzlin’ on the Ohio River at Owensboro, to Irvine’s Mountain Mushroom Festival in the Appalachian foothills. Smack in those East Kentucky mountains, London has been hosting its hilarious tribute to Colonel Harlan Sanders the last full week of September for 14 years now. “A buddy and I got together and hatched this idea in 1990 to coincide with the opening of the newly-restored Sanders Café (the Colonel’s original, circa 1940) and Museum in Laurel County,” chuckles Ken Harvey, festival coordinator and executive director of the London-Laurel County Tourist Commission. “It’s fun. Period. You mention ‘Chicken Festival’ and people always laugh. We take the contests in a lighthearted fashion and bend over backwards to make everybody feel welcome.” In addition to being re-voted one of the Kentucky Tourism Council’s “Top Ten” and the Southeast Tourism Society’s “Top 20” events, the festival has landed as one of the American Bus Association’s “Top 100” events in the country. Coop-to-coop events at this fundraiser for local nonprofits include four stages of entertainment, a 10-block-long carnival, 200 arts and crafts booths, kids’ Chick-O-Lympics, mother-daughter and father-son look-alike contests, golf and slow pitch tournaments, parade and the big draw…the world’s largest known frying pan, in which 25 cooks crackle up 600 quarters at once. Now that’s a lot of finger-lickin’ chicken. Log on to www.chickenfestival.com to keep abreast of the festival’s fowl goings-on. There’s nothin’ like a little spoon bread and greens to go along with that chicken. Each year the first weekend after Labor Day, Berea hosts a Spoon Bread Festival, complete with a contest to see who can eat the most, a cook-off, tethered hot air balloon rides, a 5K run, parade, regional music and kids’ carnival. And the piéce de resistance, the Boone Tavern Spoon Bread Luau, where several tons of sand transform Main Street into a Hawaiian beach with roast pig and coconut slaw. “Spoon bread is a famous dish,” Kristie Fain, executive director of the Berea Chamber of Commerce explains. “No matter where you travel throughout the world, when you tell folks you’re from Berea, Kentucky, inevitably they’ll say, ‘Ah, Boone Tavern… spoon bread…love it!” Gulp down your greens at Harlan’s Poke Sallet Festival the first full weekend in June. For 49 years folks have been gathering to honor these native wild greens. “A long time ago, people ate more natural things,” says Gladys Hoskins, executive secretary of the Harlan County Chamber of Commerce. “Poke sallet is supposed to be a good spring tonic with lots of vitamins and minerals.” So popular are these greens, that at the event’s highlight Poke Dinner, diners take extra cooked poke home and freeze it. “They serve fried salt bacon, hard-boiled eggs, poke, cornbread and buttermilk,” Hoskins says. “Now that’s old-fashioned.” The Miss Harlan County beauty pageant, musical entertainment that includes a popular Elvis impersonator, and games for children round out the weekend. Kids are a major part of the focus of Georgetown’s Harvest Trail and Pumpkinfest that began about a decade ago on Double Stink Hog Farm. These days, the festivities have spread throughout the county. Downtown stores sport fodder shocks, scarecrows and pumpkins. Finch Farms and Quest Farms offer multicolored chrysanthemums, Amerson Farm adds Christmas trees, and families find Fall fun at two other local rural spots. At Biwater Farm kids can play on a pirate ship, pet animals in the Enchanted Barnyard, get lost in a five-acre corn maze and go on a hayride during Autumn Fest, the last two weeks of September and every weekend in October. And the very courageous can brave the Lost Pumpkin Mine. “Most people think pumpkins grow on top of the ground,” farm owner Steve Fister laughs. “But we’ve got these little miners that are down in the ground digging for pumpkins. Now you’ve got to use your imagination here.” Parents also can stock up on gourds, Indian corn and mums. Add apples to that list at Evans Orchards and Cider Mill during the June 6 through Christmas 2003 season (weekends only in December). And Christmas gift baskets, candles, pasteurized cider and cider slushees, homemade glazed fried apple pies, apple butter, honey and luscious condiments, such as locally made Zella’s Gourmet Salsa. September 13 and 14 is the Evans’s Apple Fest, with a corn maze, huge apple balloon and straw climbing “mountain.” “Here there’s a simple, slower pace where you can just let your kids go and have fun,” Jenny Evans explains. “At our picnic area you can hang out and enjoy the day.” Call to find out about school tours at both Biwater Farms (859-863-3676) and Evans Orchards (859-863-2255). Even though spitting is involved in one, two “seedy” festivals are also kid-friendly.
In addition there’s a quilt show, 100-booth arts and crafts show, antique car show, parade, and nighttime cakewalk and street dance to live music. And a Rolley-Hole Marbles Tournament, a type of marbles unique to the area, passed down through generations and played mainly by adult men using handmade flint marbles. “We’ve had national champions from here!” exclaims Charlotte Arnett, extension agent for the Monroe County Cooperative Extension Service. An older event, and every bit as seedy, is the Blackberry Festival held in Carlisle during Fourth of July week (this year from June 30 through July 5) when activities will include a queen crowning, parade, street dance with live music, carnival rides, food booths fragrant with ribeye steaks, country ham, stuffed baked potatoes, and sometimes blackberry ice cream. Sometimes? Where are all the blackberries? “When the festival began 53 years ago, it was during blackberry season,” explains Gladys Shrout, chairperson of Carlisle-Nicholas County Tourism Inc. “Blackberries come in later now. People always come here and say, ‘Where’s the blackberries?’ But there’s not any. It’s too early for them. But we have an awful lot of fun anyway.” Visitors who show up at Litchfield’s annual K-105 Ice Cream Festival definitely get plenty of that cool, creamy treat on the second Saturday in July. And it’s free from six till eight p.m. Just bring your lawn chairs, set ‘em up on the Grayson County Middle School football field, listen to bluegrass music while the kids take carnival rides, and then buckle your seat belts for a splendid fireworks show. “It’s huge,” says Angela Buckles, account executive at radio station K-105, which sponsors the event. “There’s a pyrotechnician in town who puts it on and he goes all out.” Go all out to sate your sweet tooth and gather goodies for your Easter basket on April 12 and 13 in Old Washington at the 16th annual Chocolate Festival, when the historic 1700s log village serves a veritable smorgasbord of dark, rich delights. Contests include chocolate pie, cake and brownie baking (someone must sample!), Easter egg hunts, the best Easter bonnet, a “Chocolate Bee” or trivia contest, Chocolate Cake Walk and pounds of chocolate door prizes. “We have anything chocolate you could want – chocolate fudge, chocolate candy, Kentucky bourbon balls, chocolate coffees,” says Phyllis Helphenstine, owner of Phyllis’s Antique Lamp Shop. “People love it as long as it’s chocolate. And not white chocolate. They want it to be dark. They want that look of the real thing.” Once you’ve over-indulged, you can wipe off that chocolate moustache and take a walking tour of the town’s historic sites and antique and craft shops. See, if you play your cards right, you can explore the state for much of the year with a napkin permanently tucked under your chin, and you’re guaranteed to have a good time. “If you can’t have fun at the Chicken Festival,” laughs Peggy Scott of the London-Laurel County Tourist Commission, “you just can’t have fun!” Check out these and Kentucky’s
other fun festivals at www.kentuckytourism.com.
Katherine Tandy
Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report. |
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Copyright 1996-2003, by Kentucky Business Online. All rights reserved. Editorial content
is copyright 2003, Lane Communications Group The Lane Report is a trademark of Lane Communications Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
In
addition to speedy horses and handmade crafts, an ample slice of Kentucky’s
heritage is culinary. Just ask the more than 200,000 revelers who strutted
to London for the annual World Chicken Festival last September, gobbled
8,000 chicken dinners and acted like complete fools in off-the-roost
contests – chicken wing-eating, clucking, crowing and strutting,
Colonel Sanders look-alike and best chicken costume.
The
geographic center of Southern Kentucky, Monroe County rolls out the
pink-and-green carpet the Saturday before Labor Day (August 30 this
year) for its Watermelon Festival. Held on the courthouse square in
Tompkinsville, the 24th annual event will get downright messy, with
a seed-spitting contest, greased watermelon run for kids, and prizes
for largest and best decorated melons. (Sponge Bob Squarepants won last
year.)