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Hood River Harvest and Craft Fair
I don't have any big trips planned until March, but I thought a couple of our one, two and three-day rambles this fall might be fun to describe.
Our first trip of the Fall was to Hood River (about 60 miles up the Columbia River from Portland) to help my younger son celebrate a birthday and to see the Fall salmon run up to Multnomah Falls. The traveling group this time was me, my sister Jeffi and our Aunt Margie, who has moved in with us. The birthday celebration was satisfactory but nothing to write the group about and the birthday boy didn't even get any really good presents since he is moving soon and needs prosaic kitchen stuff again, but we had chicken barbecue, sang Happy Birthday, ate cake and played games -- the usual fun time.
The drive up the Columbia River Gorge is beautiful, though, and the fields and orchards are at the end of the harvest so there's lots to see. This is apple, cherry and wind-surfing country. We were lucky enough to be there for the Harvest and Craft Fair at the County Fairgrounds in Odell. Several of the buildings at the Fair Grounds were in use for this event and we started at the apple-tasting and dahlia-bulb sale. There were huge boxes (twice as big as a washing machine box) of Asian pears and apples, each with its own farmers' wife sitting on a stool and polishing the apples (Asian pears have crinkly skin, so don't get polished). Many of the growers had paper plates full of apples bites to taste, at least two dozen kinds. The dahlia bulbs, however, were just there, in plastic bags in sawdust. And with price tags that went up to about $50 per tuber and usually not even a picture. Apparently you need to know what you're buying and from whom. This was no sale for amateurs.
It was okay, though, because just across the way, past the barbecue stand, and before the wine-tasting section, were the professionals -- the Odell and Hood River Garden Club Dahlia Show. There were displays and lots of cut arrangements by the Odell Garden Club to buy. The bouquets were lovely, each included at least 3 dahlias and several other flowers and greenery AND came with a vase and started at $5.00. And all of the ladies (only saw two gentlemen working the flower show) were very helpful. We got to admire many different kinds of dahlias and to vote for the best dahlia arrangement. The most fun in this activity, is walking around behind some local growers and listening to their comments. "Oh, you should never display a Water lily (dahlia) on an upright stem, it spoils the effect." "Too many pompoms at once, it looks like a clown explosion." (I really liked that display, no taste at all, apparently.) It was fun and we learned that dahlias are New World plants, originally brought into Spain from Mexico in the 18th century and treated as a vegetable. Then the Belgians and Dutch got their hands on them and !Behold! We now have hundreds of impressive blooming varieties and hardly anyone eats the tubers anymore. Especially not the $300/lb ones.
The craft fair was fun, too, we bought some Christmas presents and paid a dollar each to take a chance on a spinner that was a fund-raiser for someone, run by a lively and noisy witch about 80 years old (I mean an older woman dressed as a witch, of course). Jeffi won a basket of apples and I won some Easter lights to put in the window (don't know if I will) and I can't remember what Aunt Margie won. The best Christmas present I bought was a baby marshmallow shooter made out of PVC pipe. You put the marshmallow in and then blow through a set of angles and the marshmallow come out and flies quite a ways. I plan to have a target up at Christmas. I thought these were quite clever and original, and congratulated the pipesmith profusely, but a few weeks later I saw the same thing over at the coast. Not as well done, but the same idea. Maybe it was in a craft magazine somewhere. And I almost bought a garden gnome for my neighbor Lou Anne, but it wasn't quite cute enough. And Aunt Margie marveled at the prices and declared that she could make any of the sewn things and quite a lot cheaper. She's right, too.
Then we went to Multnomah Falls to see the salmon, but they weren't in yet (this was mid-October). They were in two weeks later when we went back to Hood River for a soccer game. So that's the next issue.
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