This weekend, the Blue Ridge Music Center and The Bluffs Restaurant will host the first Fiddle & Fork Festival.
During the daytime at the Center near Galax, Virginia, there will be broom-making and chair caning presentations by master craftsmen. Luthiers will demonstrate their instrument-building skills, with live music performances all weekend.
Appalachian cuisine gets the spotlight this weekend as well, with free food demonstrations and lectures on Saturday and Sunday. Grand Marshall for Foodways Programming Sheri Castle is a food writer, cooking teacher and host of the PBS show, “The Key Ingredient.” She says mountain food is distinct.
“We have a much shorter and cooler growing season, which means that some of the crops that we might associate more with New England or even parts of Canada are what flourish here," says Castle.
Things like root vegetables, cabbages, apples, nuts. Castle says the region has some of the greatest diversity in legumes in North America, partially due to the shorter growing season.
“One of the genius characteristics of Appalachian cookery is our skills with food preservation, because if you can only grow food, say, 16 weeks a year, and you've got to eat 52 weeks a year, you've got to make it last," she says.
The Fiddle & Fork Festival kicks off with an extensive meal highlighting the flavors of the region at The Bluffs Restaurant on the Blue Ridge Parkway.