A Look Inside the National Heirloom Exposition

Last week was my first-ever visit to the National Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa, and stepping onto the Sonoma County Fairgrounds was like stepping into a Garden Betty dream. Imagine booth after booth of produce porn, tables lined with late summer bounties, vendors serving up local, sustainable, and organic food, and a pop-up farm filled with fluffy sheep, alpacas, goats, rabbits, turkeys, chickens, and other fowl.

If you like to geek out on garden stuff, run an urban homestead or a full-scale farm, strive toward a life of self-sufficiency, or simply appreciate good food that comes from the earth, coming to the Heirloom Expo is like coming home.

It’s the type of place where sheepherders, beekeepers, soil scientists, and food policy pundits come together with home gardeners, seed collectors, homebrewers, and wildcrafters. Duck into one of the speaker buildings any hour of the day, and you’ll find a presentation on everything from the benefits of biodynamic farming to the corporate takeover of organic agriculture.

Inside the food hall, the famous pumpkin tower loomed over 10 feet tall. (And I swear we did not coordinate our outfits beforehand.) Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds grew most of it on their seven acres of land to prepare for the show. I can only imagine how fun it must have been to harvest!

Around it were impressive displays of squash, melons, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic… almost every variety of vegetable and fruit under the sun. If you stayed until the end of the show on the last day, you could even take home your favorites, for free. (Whatever remained was donated to the Sonoma food banks.)

When I saw these adorable turbans, the theme song for Super Mario Brothers popped into my head!

What do you call a cucurbit that’s half pumpkin, half goat?

I passed intricate sculptures carved from watermelons, mobile gardens planted in the flatbeds of trucks, giant pumpkins sagging under their own tremendous weight (the winner came in at 1,427 pounds!), and garden exhibits demonstrating a range of techniques in permaculture, composting, and native planting.

I finally met the crew from Boogie Brew and BriteTap face to face (both of whom make the best products for gardeners and chicken-keepers, and I’ll be telling you more about them soon!) and must have circled the fairgrounds at least three times, taking it all in. You know it’s a good show when you keep finding new things you missed the last time.

But I have to say, my favorite part of the day (aside from meeting some of you rockin’ readers for the first time!) was spending an afternoon at the poultry and livestock exhibits. I mean, how could you not love a face like this?

Or this?

Or bring in this picture for your hairdresser? (I think a Polish needs to be in my future!)

The chickens were quite the stylie crew, donning all manner of hats and hairdos.

And this lovely lady? It looked like she had a strawberry sherbert ear.

I also saw sheep getting sheared for the first time. It was incredible to see the coat fall off in one piece, especially with some of those sheep sporting wool at least 6 inches thick. Touching freshly sheared wool left a thin layer of lanolin (or wool wax, as it’s known) on my hands, the same lanolin used in lotions to beautify our skin. No wonder the sheep were so soft.

After watching that demonstration, I’m still stunned that my fancy technical socks come from that nappy pile of wool. Farm to closet, truly.