Popular Gilroy Garlic Festival hoping you won't notice lack of actual garlic
 

The famed Gilroy Garlic Festival, popular not only with residents of Northern California, but with owners of local dry cleaning establishments, will shoulder on despite not having any actual locally grown garlic.

People enjoying the Gilroy Garlic Festival Saturday may not know that while the garlic may seem plentiful the area's garlic farms are disappearing.

Only three growers remain in Santa Clara County because of land-use pressure, economics and plant disease.

Garlic farmer Louie Bonino's farm used to be 40 acres, but the small farmer's crop now only covers 10 acres.

The county's garlic production has fallen due to economic pressures that have sent farmers east to the San Joaquin Valley and to China, where labor is cheaper.

Local residents who complain that they will miss the site & smell of the lovely garlic flower that grows on the cities ancient garlic trees, are reminded that they live only 45 minutes from Andersen's Pea Soup in lovely Santa Nella. "For those who miss the smell of garlic, be reminded that on a cool summer's day, when the wind is just right, the smell of pea will still fill our valley and arouse our senses."

Andersen's Pea Soup, in response, said that they are proud to represent the area with their famously undistinguished & mediocre green pea soup. "We do one thing," the founder of Andersen's pea soup once said, "and we do not do it well."

I am pea-ing reading your post.

Interesting....I was just commenting to my wife the other day that the Garlic Stuffed Olives I usually buy are almost twice the price of the same olives stuffed with pimentos; a year ago they were the same price.

Eh, if Venice can still lay claim to Venetian glass despite actual glass blowing being nearly illegal within Venice (what's now commonly called Venetian glass is actually made in nearby Murano due to strict fire codes within Venice itself), Gilroy can survive as a figurative garlic capital.

No more Orange groves in Orange, CA, and precious few in Orange County. Such is the nature of things. Orange did stop having its May Festival, which celebrated the harvest with a fair and full parade, back in 1991. Looking at the pictures from the years past had me wishing they hadn't stopped it.

Bah! I've been to the Garlic Festival in Gilroy. It's boring. It made me want to shoot myself in the mouth.
The lame Artichoke Festival in Castroville and the racist Festival of Lanterns in Pacific Grove both suck too.
Bleh!

While I imagine them boring and have yet to go to the artichoke, garlic and avocado festivals - they are three of my very favorite things on this planet, and I should go once, at least.

Meh. Just go to the produce section of a Whole Foods with some balloons and a bag of popcorn and there you have it.
:D

Anyone going to the Tofu festival in Little Tokyo?

For the most part I've found all produce festivals to share about 98% of the same genetic material. If you've been to one then you've probably been to almost all of them.

Though the worst was the Pumpkin Festival in Half Moon Bay where we walked the whole thing and hardly saw any pumpkin food. Gilroy is better than most in this regard.