The Pickle Festival in Rosendale, NY

This is pretty cool. We went to the Pickle Festival in Rosendale this past Sunday. Laura said she saw a sign for it on the road and then emailed me a link. I checked out their site and was intrigued, to say the least. “What the heck is a pickle festival?” I asked myself. Then I said, “Hmm, I wonder.” And then thought, “Well, maybe we should go.” OK, enough of that.

We got in the car and drove over the Ridge and through Ellenville. We made our way up Rt.209 and then made a right towards Rosendale. I haven’t been up that way for over a year. I am always shocked at how interesting of an area it is. It’s just so tucked back in the Ridge that you really need a reason to go there.

I really didn’t know what to expect for this type of festival. Well, we arrived and apparently it is a pretty popular happening in that neck of the woods. If I had to guess the whole day’s attendance, I would say about 1,500 people. Now, I didn’t hear a peep of advertising for this thing, so I would have to say that road sign worked pretty well.

We walked in the parking lot towards the entrance and couldn’t really find it, so we strolled through an opening in the tent around back. No one stopped us, so I guess it was free admission for us. After a brief look around, we discovered the typical booths…jewelry, t-shirts, fried dough, etc…Hmmm, not many pickles. We walked through the tent, lengthwise towards the front. There seemed to be more and more vendors giving out samples of food. There were different types of spreads, breads, jellies and finally…pickles! I started noticing that there was some sort of a line that snaked itself around the whole tent. I guess you just hop on this very slow line and get a sample from each booth. The only thing you had to do was battle the ladies who were trying to push their way through you. That’s right, through you. I don’t know why people think it is ok to be rude. They are lucky I didn’t body slam them. Perhaps a pile driver would’ve been ample…or a figure 4 leg lock.

We looked around for a bit and even bought a jar of Spacy Tracy’s Pickles…(hey, there’s some free advertising). She makes some pretty damn good pickles. Nice and garlicy…

…and then we noticed some commotion coming from all the way at the front of the tent. We made our way up there and saw this long line wrapped around…everyone was waiting for this dude to grab pickles our of these 5 gallon buckets and put them in quart containers. They must’ve been good pickles, so we got on line. A half hour later, we were getting our very own container of half-sour pickles for $5. Laura even got a different type of pickle for $1 (full-sour). We were kind of full. Who knew this guy filling pickle containers would be the coolest guy there.

He was hot shizznit. I ate one of them on my way down the parking lot…MMMMMMMM…gooooood! The best pickle ever! I have to find his recipe and make my own, or I can just wait until next year and get another quart. Over all, I would recommend this fun festival if you are in the area.