ORANGE — It’s the festival that stinks.
Luckily, that oft-spoken slogan for the North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival is meant to be taken literally, not figuratively. While garlic is malodorous, yes, everyone at the festival this weekend seemed to be having a fun time.
Music, games, arts and crafts, vendors selling everything from banh mi, to apple cider, to — of course — artwork and garlic products and some strange games were available to the hundreds people who showed up to this year’s festival.
“I love it,” said Mary Bishop, holding her young son on her shoulder. “Ready, watch this. Gross!”
Bishop and a crowd of about 40 other people were gathered around three men standing in the center of the festival’s grounds. The three men laughed one second, gagged another, as they competed to see who can eat the most raw garlic in two minutes.
“C’mon people, you’re my time,” shouted one of the three competitors.
“Levi, Levi, Levi,” the crowd cheered him on. But, he grimaced, and stepped down from the stand after a few bites of the raw substance that lends the festival half its name.
“Two whole minutes, I can’t believe that,” Bishop said. “That’s so weird — it’s what makes this festival fun. It’s quirky.”
With its array of bands, activities and programs — including a “urine diversion” project, which collects urine from the portable toilets on site in order to use as fertilizer — the festival offers something for everybody, according to organizer and co-founder Deb Habib.
According to Habib, the festival began in 1999 following a conversation between Habib, her husband, Ricky Baruc, and friend Jim Fountain.
Fountain, an artist, and Baruc, a garlic farmer, both lamented that there weren’t many places to sell their goods. The three and some other neighbors then held the first festival at Baruc’s Seeds of Solidarity Farm, and it drew around 700 people. Now, the festival draws around 10,000 people, Habib said.
The festival still extols the same values of community and local planning, according to Habib, and organizers don’t plan on growing the festival.
Josephine Burnett, clerk for the Foundation for Community Justice, based in Greenfield, said the festival is a good chance for people to get their voices heard on a variety of topics.
Around Burnett were sustainable agriculture activists and green energy proponents. Burnett herself handed out pamphlets about the Foundation for Community Justice, a nonprofit that “wants to bring healing wherever healing is needed.”
The organization will give families and individuals small grants that can help them with a variety of life’s struggles, including paying registration fees for GED exams, giving gas cards to families involved with the Children’s Advocacy Center and providing monetary incentives for local drug courts.
“We’re all about healing,” Burnett said, grateful that the North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival gave the organization the chance to make themselves known.
“People don’t really know about us,” Burnett said. “But here we can tell them.”
Reach David McLellan at dmclellan@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 268.