Yuma Lettuce Festival

There is a free paper here in Yuma called the White Sheet. It's basically advertising by individuals and commercial business. Last weeks edition featured on it's front page a ad for the 9th Annual Yuma Lettuce Days. Words like "lettuce entertain you" and "lettuce tell you more" drew our interest. There was to be cabbage bowling, farm equipment displays, arts and crafts booths, live entertainment and more. We decided that Saturday would be a great day to go.

If you enjoy crowds and lots of arts and crafts booths, well you would enjoy this festival. We saw no cabbage bowling, no farm equipments displays. What we did see was a lot of people and about 8 city blocks of arts and craft booths. There was entertainment at the Paradise stage which was very good. One man, who I guess must perform at the Paradise casino, was singing and entertaining. I had never heard a Cajun song with yodelling! That was a first. The casino had a booth set up with a wheel of fortune to spin. Dean and I both won a insulated lunch bag. We will use them in Alaska, I'm sure.

Most of the crafts were of the common variety that you see at any arts and crafts show. One that was different was a native American Indian who was playing a type of horn that was hand made. Oh, the music was so soft and so mellow, just listening to it made you relax, right there in the crowd. I did get a picture of him playing the instrument - wish I could remember the name of it...



That was the only picture that I took, there was nothing else different or unusual.

Ahhh, so much for the "Lettuce Festival". I was told that last year they had a house built of lettuce, but this year because of the freezing weather, they were not able to build it. Now that would have been interesting to see.

This would be a good place to tell a little about the agricultural in Yuma County. There are 229,935 acres of farm land harvested here. Hard to believe when you see how barren the land is, after all, it is desert. The biggest crop is head lettuce (iceburg) followed by leaf lettuce. Also grown are romaine, cauliflower, broccoli, cantaloupes, potatoes, spinach, watermelon, honey dews and other misc. vegetables. Amoung citrus grown is lemons, grapefruit and various type of oranges. Lemons are the major citrus crop. The irrigation for these crops comes from the Colorado River via irrigation canals.

Dean and I did have a great lunch at Famous Dave's BBQ. That ended up being the highlight of our day.

There are more sights to see here and in the area so check back soon - hopefully they will be more interesting........