After an absence of about 25 years, the Rutabaga Festival is returning to Blyth on Saturday.
Festival Chair, Annie Sparling, says the festival ran for five years and in 1974 Blyth was named the Rutabaga capital of Canada and the Queen was presented with a rutabaga and every member of Parliament received a bag of rutabagas.
Sparling says they'll have different events all day Saturday at the Blyth Memorial Hall and the Lion's Park as well as several other locations around town. She says one of the highlights will be a tour of the Hubbard's plant where the rutabagas are packaged.
“Down at Hubbard's we have tours of the rutabaga plant and 15-thousand rutabagas were planted behind and you can go in after your tour and take a rutabaga home and see how you pull it right out of the ground.”
Sparling says another highlight of the festival is the Rutabaga Cook Book that contains, among other things, a great recipe for rutabaga cake.
“Rutabaga cake, which is excellent and for those that are gluten-free, there's a fantastic recipe for rutabaga pasta where you slice it really thin and boil it for 8 minutes and it makes a wonderful substitute for pasta and there's a recipe in there for rutabaga wine as well. It make an excellent Riesling.”
The Festival starts at 7:30 Saturday morning with Baga Yoga in the Memorial Hall and complete schedule of events can be found on the Blyth Rutabaga Festival Facebook page