Second Annual Brookford Farm Quark Festival

On Sunday, October 9, the Brookford Farm in Rollinsford will be celebrating quark (a traditional German cheese) with a fall festival filled with plenty of food, fun and activities.

The festival’s namesake cheese is used in many favorite autumn recipes which will be showcased by local chefs, and savored by festival-goers in a cooking competition modeled on the Iron Chef reality show.

Though the festival is coordinated by Brookford Farm, the event will take place in conjunction with numerous community partners, including several area elementary schools, local celebrity chefs, non-profit organizations, artisans, small business owners, and a couple thousand of everyone’s closest friends.

Festival attendees are invited to sample delicious localvore cuisine from a growing list of QuarkFEST participants, including Black Trumpet, Flatbread, White Heron Tea, Meaghan’s Chocolates, and Henry’s Market of Newcastle – not to mention the finest local, organic, delicious festival fare anywhere, including Brookford Farm’s own storied pastured meats, grass-fed dairy, and organic vegetables.

This is a family-friendly event and kids of all ages can play cow-pie bingo, carve pumpkins, bob for kohlrabi, participate in a cake walk, a hay-maze, continuous hay-rides through beautiful countryside, as well as the crowning of a Quark Queen.

Live entertainment will include featured musical artists the Mill City Ramblers, as well as Deep Hole Road, the Freedom Rangers, and more, including hilarious instances of farmer-theater interspersed with more serious professional artists such as documentary filmmakers, storytellers, photographers, and puppeteers, followed by a live musical performance set to accompany a 1930s-era silent film.

Morning food workshops will include demonstrations on do-it-yourself cheese-making, baking with whole-grain flours, butchering poultry, and preserving fall vegetables.