Wolfe Island is a small community located a ferry ride away from downtown Kingston, Ontario. A quint town, lovely scenery and friendly residents make it a sweet location for this kick ass musical experience.
This summer we got invited to work some really incredible events that we’ve always wanted to attend, but have previously been too busy because of punishing summers working in busy kitchens. All festivals involved some sort of free beer, close proximity to the stage, happy people, sunny weather, camping and extrovert style fun. Pure food career bliss. I’ll open this story with our second large festival this summer, the Wolfe Island Music Festival.
Preparation for the festival had been intense.
We had it planned perfectly- the night before going over to Wolfe Island,
storing our large things with a freshly made friend (holla Leeanne, thanks for trusting strangers and all of their helpers to invade your space repeatedly). It takes a large mountain of equipment in order to be able to have a functioning field restaurant for the weekend, and we had to plan everything else to fit in one trip in a Malibu (as we all know, the most spacious of all catering vehicles).
To catch the ferry in the first place, we had to go very early, as thousands people of were about to swarm this normally pretty sleepy little island. We lined up, then were told to return in two hours to get the ferry we would need to be on. 12 minutes to, we show up to see the last car fill the boat. WE HAD TO BE ON THAT FERRY!!!! Thinking fast, we parted ways screaming instructions to each other, and me throwing a wallet over the edge to Knifey as the gate lifted. It was critical that Knifey stay with our vehicle, which was painfully overstuffed with our precious food cargo to feed 800. In the rush to get on the ferry, it was 5 seconds of “grab all you can and then awkwardly haul some serious ass”. One deceivingly calm ferry ride through the 1000 Islands later, I arrived on Wolfe Island and set to work. My impossibly impossible task was to transport and assemble (by myself) :
- A 75 lb tent metal frame tent that is supposed to roll, but indeed does not.
- Three bbqs, two small round charcoal barbies and then a giant propane behemoth.
- Three heavy as f*ck propane tanks
- Three very large tables, each both heavy and awkward in unique ways (pinchy! slivers! sharp thing!)
This impossibly impossible task was assisted by the following other reasons why it was even more impossible:
- I had to get all of these things out of a backyard, through a front yard, up a *very* steep hill, through 100 meters of gravel road, then again through a baseball field to our booth space.
- Did I mention that at mid-afternoon, the sun was blazing overhead and humidity was at 170% because I was on an island and I hadn’t slept in what felt like four days?
The best part about impossible things is that they are only that way because someone hasn’t figured it out yet. Necessity is the mother of invention or something, so there we were. Step one to solving impossible tasks is finding help, and knowing how to ask for and receive it are part of it. First up, Zoe, the friendly teenager of my newly made Wolfe Island friend. After a variety of people watched us haul the tent in the blinding summer heat, some other kind folks took pity on us and lent a hand. Enter the lead singer of Deux Trois, who was both opening the festival, *and* wearing a tank top made out of long underwear, and Chris-a kindly volunteer who managed to find a dolly *and* a truck. So the day was officially saved and I had a whole bunch of new friends. When Knifey showed up an hour later off of the next ferry, he was very surprised to find not only had I managed to get even one thing up the hill, but was completely set up and ready for business and I knew everybody there. No big deal 😉
The festival was wild/hot/loud/euphoric/successful/crazy/fun. We had a great view of the massive talent on stage, and we both revel in meeting and serving cool /artistic/ enthusiastic /foodie /funny /curious/ hilariously drunk customers. It is the most rewarding experience ever to see how excited and relieved vegans are when they realize that they have delicious options, especially at a music festival, especially on an island. I have been you, I am you, you are why we’re here and we LOVE you. Years of experience as a disappointed and hungry person at every event sparked to life a fiery passion to “be the change”, and here we f*cking are. Also, nom nom nom, I get to eat all the food.
Other things that are really amazing is the incredible community that develops during the course of an event like this (perhaps because of it being on an island, perhaps because of all the substances ha!) We got to work along side Kari of The PopStand who has the most adorable little red and white polka dot popsicle stand you’ve ever seen, with fancy flavors like cherry bourbon lime and Thai coffee. Not only did she help us out by giving us a battery powered light strand (it gets dark at night time-duh. First timers), but gave us unlimited popsicles for one stinkin’ burger. The people at Brickworks cider gave us 12 (!!!) ciders for a couple burgers, after this point, things got a little more rosy around the edges.
We got to meet Robyn, who covered us with glitter, and now works with Aubrey at Coco Bistro and has transferred mad airbrushing people talent into working with chocolate (which are flipping amazingly creative and beautiful BTW and a total Kingston success story).
Finally, we got to work along side dear friends from Black Dog Catering, Jess and Kezia (massively talented cooks who have an excited curiosity for plant based foods).
All in all, a pretty grand way to spend a weekend and yet again we’re wondering how life can be so damn sweet.
While music festivals on islands sound like an exciting idea, the obvious downside is that at some point you have to get off of it. Just like everybody else. Unlike everyone else, we had many coolers full of still perfect beyond burgers (the most delicious veggie burger you could ever taste, also very sought after, also sold out everywhere else, also not available yet in Canada, also very expensive to buy wholesale). I’d like to remind you all again about how hot it was. Despite our best icing efforts, 6 hours in the line up for the ferry killed all the foods. Upon our final bone weary exhausted and dirty arrival home, we temped our precious burgers at 23.5, which is a full 19.5 degrees hotter than food safe. Near tears at both our own food waste cost and the loss of food for the programs that we donate our overages to, we threw it all into the compost. Which turns out makes our compost over weight, and the city refused to take it. The next week, garbage night rolls around and it’s time to deal with this great big, stinking pile of trash. Opening it to see what the damage was, we were both greeted with a smell that my son describes as “a million rotting corpses” and a sight that I won’t ever be able to scrub from my brain. Since it was overweight, we had to borrow a compost bin from the church we rent our kitchen space from in order to break up the load. This means going right the f*ck in. Do you know how sometimes there are tasks in your path that are so horrible, so overwhelmingly huge/gross/unreal that you’re desperately looking for an adultier adult, or someone you can pay to do the work for you (I’m thinking about that time I had to dispose of a dead hamsters or getting through natural child birth)? This was one of those times. To take on this summer-time-fermented pile of maggots, we had to suit the hell up. Knifey chose to wear a plastic bag over their body, I chose operating masks covered in essential oil, multiple layers of gloves, rubber boots and a raincoat. Go time. We tipped it over and did the deed while Knifey dry heaved into the surgical mask. After it was done, we gingerly placed the additional compost bin in front of a vacationing neighbor’s house. Now we waited. The next morning at the roar of the garbage truck, we shot out of bed to watch the story unfold. He picks up the pail………tips it over……….puts it down……and puts a mo$#@!# F%*#)@! sticker on it! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! And then he does the same to the other. The sticker reads “compost rejected -too much liquid”. Because they wouldn’t take it the week before. Because it was a rotting pile of trash. I’d love to tell you this story has a happy ending, but the honest truth is we are too scared to open the compost, and one month later our backyard smells like 50 years of the plague. Some day soon we will load it up, and take it out of town to a dump to conclude the tale of the Wolfe Island Music Festival, but that means going back into the belly of the beast. And I don’t think either of us are ready.
flymetothespoonca.wordpress.com 