Oregon Coast TODAY **Toledo High School students Tenaya Cordova, from left, Kourtnie Wagner and Piper Rogers are instrumental in the schools gardening projects, including growing garlic.**

By GRETCHEN AMMERMAN/Oregon Coast TODAY

A new event that started from the ground up, GarlicPalooza will fill Toledo’s Memorial Field with the oh-so-sweet scent of the popular bulb sometimes called the “stinking rose” on Saturday, Oct. 11.

“It’s a harvest festival with a garlic emphasis,” said Jamie Nicholson, child nutrition program manager for Lincoln County School District, which is hosting the event. “We’ve wanted to do some kind of a fall harvest festival for many years because it aligns with many of our goals to grow and serve fresh food for our schools. This was just a great opportunity to get that started since we have recently harvested a lot of garlic from our school gardens.”

The event will feature live music, food and arts and crafts vendors, a chili cook-off, face painting, garlic poem and watermelon-eating contests and many more fall-themed activities.

Although entry and participation in most activities is free, some will have a small fee that will be part of the goal of raising money for the school gardens and food pantry.

“One of our favorite things planned is garlic braiding,” Nicholson said. “We’ve been harvesting and braiding our own garlic for about five years and putting it into our school kitchens, so one of the things we will be doing at the festival is passing that skill on to the community. People will learn how to create their own braids of garlic then take them home to put into their own kitchens. The proceeds for that will go right back into our garden program so we can grow more garlic.”

While mushrooms are often used as a sign of the season, event organizers say that garlic also deserves a place as an autumnal trademark.

“You harvest garlic this time of year here on the coast depending on how wet the season is,” Nicholson said. “It’s pretty easy to grow here in our school garden and it’s pretty user-friendly for our kiddos to plant because it grows really well around here.”

Facilities in the district’s growing garden program range from space-saving containers to the newly built hoop house at Toledo High School, an impressively large structure built almost entirely by students.

“We got repurposed barrels from Rogue Brewery and cut them in half and planted garlic in them so every school in the district has at least one barrel to grow garlic in,” said Nicholson, who partners with fellow district employee Patti Graves to help run the nutrition services at the school.

“Farm to table, or in our case farm to school, is very close to our hearts,” Graves said. “Our garden program where we grow things and put them right into the school meals is continuing to grow. It’s such a great thing for our kids to be involved with to learn about healthy eating and how to grow food of their own “

With a goal to provide the kind of autumnal event for locals that can be found in places like Corvallis and Albany without the drive, organizers have other things planned to give a full fall harvest festival vibe.

“Some of the other activities we’re excited about are things like the cider pressing,” Nicholson said. “We have two cider presses now that we use for school events, so we will be using those. We have a lot of donated apples coming in and people can bring their own apples from home, too. Cider will be available to buy. The scarecrow building contest should be fun, and we’ll have some fall games like sack races and a pumpkin cakewalk. We will even have a fall-themed photo booth for people to take pictures among hay bales, corn stalks and pumpkins.”

Commemorative t-shirts created by the Career and Technical Education program will also be for sale.

“The only thing we can’t plan for is the weather,” Graves said. “We’re hoping it will be good because based on the buzz the event has been generating, we’re expecting a pretty big turnout.”

Saturday’s festival runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Memorial Field on Northwest A Street.