Asparagus Festival

The Asparagus Festival is a huge celebration in Stockton every April. The 3 day event attracts around 100,000 people from all over California. In addition to lots of food made with asparagus, music, vendors, art, a farmer's market, and street performers, this year they also held a street vault competition. They basically set up a pole vault runway and pit right in the middle of a city street and have a really fun, energetic competition where spectators can get really close to the action. The festival was actually on April 25-27, but it took me awhile to blog about it. Joe didn't jump because he was trying to recover from his hammy injury, but we were there each of the three days (it was HOT!)...and had a lot of fun not only watching all the great vaulting, but also exploring the rest of the festival. I love community events like this. I love people watching and seeing all the sights.

One of the main attractions at the festival is the deep fried asparagus. I tried some...and it was unbelievably good. I don't think I've ever seen such thick asparagus. As it turns out, the United Way in Stockton is in charge of the fried asparagus...it's one of their main fund-raisers every year. We have gotten to know the director of the UW, Andy Procop. He has been a big supporter of Tri-Valley Athletics and helped us with several fund-raisers. He knew that our cars run on veggie oil, plus Tye converted his truck to veggie, and another vaulter named Tommy is in the process of converting his vehicle to veggie. Andy told us that they used close to 1,500 gallons of veggie oil over the 3 day festival to fry all the asparagus...and that we could have it! Wow! Talk about the Mother Lode of veggie oil. Tommy has a 1,000 gallon container (pictured) plus we brought a few 275 gallon containers...and ended up with about 1,300 gallons when all was said and done. Joe and I have really had enough oil...never struggled to find it when we needed it. We'll probably use a little of the Asparagus Festival oil, but leave most of it for Tye and Tommy as they start their veggie oil journies. Yeah for deep-fried asparagus!

To see a bunch more photos of the asparagus festival (lots of pole vaulting!) click here