Bethlehem’s 2020 Garlic & Harvest Festival Goes Virtual

Well fellow garlic lovers, we held out hope for as long as we could through the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. Damn you COVID-19, you took away our bars, concerts, live music, and now, the 2020 Connecticut Garlic and Harvest Festival. I've been watching their official Facebook page for most of the summer, holding out hope that it might be able to happen, but, as we've seen in the past couple of weeks, nope. The official announcement showed up late Wednesday 8/26/20 on the official website.

Greetings fellow garlic fans!

***UPDATE 8/26/2020: Due to the many restrictions currently in place for covid-19, unfortunately we will be unable to hold this year’s Garlic Festival.  Please check back next week, where we will have our “virtual marketplace” up and running, where you can order online from many of your favorite CT Garlic & Harvest Festival vendors!  Please be sure to join us next year for our 2021 event, scheduled for October 9-10, 2021.

This has been one of my favorite events to attend for years, it's grown to include over 200 vendors, and the Bethlehem Fairgrounds is such a beautiful venue. This particular event introduced me to the many different varieties of garlic, most of which I would have never known about. I was introduced to Spacey Tracey's wonderful fried pickles, fried corn on the cob, and fried pepperoncini's. I've tried garlic ice cream, not as bad as you'd think. There were incredibly delicious pickles from a vendor in Brooklyn, my good friends from Watertown's Hardcore Sweet, Jeremy and Nicole, always had their cupcake truck on the concourse. Very sad. I'm glad that the organizers of the event are going to try to pull off a virtual marketplace, I'll definitely be stocking up on some of my favorites if they're available online. Hopefully, we'll be able to attend the 2021 event in person.