by Elena Byrne

Partnering this year with the Minnesota Children’s Museum Rochester, the Feast! Local Foods Marketplace festival planning team is happy to bring some new family-interactive fun to the festival’s Children’s Area. 

The Feast! mission involves connecting people with their food, so it’s fitting to feature the Farmers’ Market and Garden exhibits.

As seen in the museum pictures here, there’s lots of potential hands-on play for ages 3-8 to enjoy with parents and others. Kids can identify the veggies and load them into shopping baskets at the market, and plant “veggie” markers in the fabric rows of the garden.

For making it come to life on another level, the Museum’s play farm truck will be great for climbing on, loading up and hopefully, making some “vroom, vroom” sounds!

Also on loan from the Museum will be their (almost) life-sized Holstein cow model, another great way to keep farms in our hearts and minds. We won’t be surprised to see some grown-up kids sneaking in some photo ops! (It might be a perfect selfie station for those so inclined!)

Along with this partnership, all Minnesota Children’s Museum Rochester members can show their membership card at the festival entrance to get free youth admissions with any paid adult ticket. Also, the Museum will be handing out 2-for-1 general admission coupons in the week leading up to Feast!

Kids of all ages (approximately 3-12) will love our new “Build-your-own-salad” station, open at select times during the day and assisted by our helpful volunteers.

Here's how it works:

Selecting their own veggies for a special sample salad, kids will enjoy the ability to make their own choices—this is an important way they can engage in a positive way! Then, with assistance, they can use special “choppers” to get that perfect bite-size, and see the colors come together.

A fun way to see the salad power:

When finished, they can add their own salad stickers to the Veggie Lover board—more veggies in your salad means more stickers!—before diving in to enjoy their salad creation. We'll be eager to see that Veggie Lover board reflect the numbers of sample salads created!

The Veggie Grand Prix racetrack, a festival favorite, will be returning for kids of all ages to enjoy. Because who doesn’t love vegetables on wheels!?

And finally, the comfy chairs will be back! We’ll have some fun food-themed books for any –ahem, kids– who need to take a load off and rest from all the activity, and maybe do some therapeutic coloring to boot!

The FEAST Local Food Network is proud to bring people together for this important connection around good food and good business, and we’re always looking for more ways to engage new audiences—especially children.

We hope that this year’s festival will be full of fun and positive experiences for children to associate with food, farming, and community.

Come satisfy your hunger and curiosity for local food at the fourth annual Feast! Local Foods Marketplacefestival, Saturday, Dec. 2 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, Minnesota.

Tickets available at the door. Admission is $2 for children and $5 for adults with an optional fee for wine, beer and hard cider tasting. 

We hope to see you there! 

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