Farm, winery setting for Festival

What is the value of knowing your farmer and where your food comes from?

Practical Farmers of Iowa will explain that Saturday, Nov. 7, at the Fourth Annual Garlic Festival. This year, the event will connect the pitchfork to the salad fork in a display of the diversity of foods and flavor Iowa has to offer.

This year's event begins at 3 p.m. at Northern Prairie Chevre near Woodward. It continues at Snus Hills Winery near Madrid, with a tour of the winery, samples of its wines and an opportunity to buy a bottle for dinner.

A tasting of heirloom garlic varieties will be at 6:30 p.m. at Snus Hills. A dinner prepared by Donna Prizgintas featuring garlic and food grown by local farmers will follow.

Northern Prairie Chevre produces artisan crafted cheeses, handmade from goat milk. Cheeses are made in the traditional farmstead manner.

Northern Prairie supplies cheeses to local restaurants, specialty stores and wineries and sells from a store. The tour will include seeing the goats, facts about goat care and husbandry and an explanation of making cheese.

Snus Hill is an award-winning, family-owned winery that strives to create wines with a regional identity using American and French-American varieties of grapes.

The dinner is a fundraiser for Practical Farmers of Iowa in association with central Iowa's Buy Fresh, Buy Local Chapter. Registration is due by Friday. at www.practicalfarmers.org.